The difference between equity and equality is that equality is everyone get the same thing and equity is everyone get the things they deserve.
DeRay Mckesson
Justice that is not rooted in equity, in social welfare, and in community is not justice at all.
I am not naive enough to believe that voting is the only way to bring about transformational change, just as I know that protest alone is not the sole solution to the challenges we face.
It is not a new tactic for people to use any avenue they can to silence black activists.
I think about freedom as not only as the absence of oppression but also the presence of justice and joy.
Most of my life's information is public. I got a text one day from a hacker who texted me all of my credit card information.
You are enough to start a movement. Individual people can come together around things that they know are unjust. And they can spark change.
You're not born woke. Something wakes you up.
The police, at their best, do three things; they prevent crime, they respond to crime, and they solve crime. In all three of those buckets, they need the trust of the community to do it, so I believe that if we restore the trust that we will change the way police are experiencing communities and ways that will preserve life and make everyone safer.
Too often, the elected individuals we put our public trust in disappoint us.
I think hope is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today, and I don't lose hope.
A cacophony of whispers is also noise. There are many ways to be heard, and there are many ways to be visible. There are many ways to be seen.
There are very few things that I don't talk about - even my relationships.
I am mindful that the goal of protest is not more protest, but the goal of protest is change.
I have a big following on Twitter, and Twitter has been invaluable for mobilizing and quickly sharing information. But I'm not really sure that people are learning deep content on Twitter.
There are people who have demonstrated their willingness to challenge systems and structures, and then when it comes to elections, some of those same people - I don't know where their fight went. What's interesting to me is to see people lose the revolution when it comes to elections.
As a protester, I protested because I had to, not because it was exciting. I don't want to get tear-gassed again.
I think the reality is that there's a role for everybody to play in the work of social justice and that we have to organize everybody. That means that Silicon Valley has to be organized, the fashion industry has to be organized, the formerly incarcerated have to be organized, the teachers.
Trump wants to take us back to a time when people like him could abuse others with little to no consequence, when people like him could exploit the labor of others to build vast amounts of wealth, when people like him could create public policy that specifically benefited them while suppressing the rights and social mobility of others.
Baltimore is a beautiful city. I started doing a lot of community organizing back in 1999 and met so many great people in neighborhoods all across the city. And that was an invaluable experience.
I will never forget the first time I was teargassed or the night I hid under my steering wheel as the SWAT vehicle drove down a residential street. I will never forget that it was illegal - in St Louis, in the fall of 2014 - to stand still.
Laws on hate speech and hate crimes do important work in a world that has been rooted in racism and bigotry since the inception of this country, which was not founded on ideals of justice.
I think people who are not from here think the Inner Harbor is the only center for culture or fun in the city, and there's so much more to Baltimore. The Harbor's a beautiful place, but there are so many gems embedded in other communities that don't get as much visibility.
My father and mother deeply loved me and my sister.
The first time I was ever impressed with Patagonia as a brand was when they released the 'Don't Buy This Jacket' campaign. That campaign highlighted their understanding of their role in a larger environmental justice space.
Asking people for money is really different than asking people for their support.
When I think about protest, I worry so much that people think about it only as standing in the streets. And I say that as someone who has been standing in the streets of cities across the country - but at the root of it is this idea of telling the truth in public.
I am excited to return to city schools... and to continue doing the work to ensure that every child in Baltimore City receives a world-class education.
Social media allowed us to become our own storytellers. With it, we seized the power of our truth.
I am often asked what it is like to be on the 'front line.' But I do not use the term 'front line' to describe us, the protesters. Because everywhere in America, wherever we are, our blackness puts us in close proximity to police violence.
Protest is political. It is as political as what our conception of America is.
People are more afraid of black unity than black rage.
Everybody has told the story of black people in struggle except black people. The black people in the struggle haven't had the means to tell the story historically. There were a million slaves, but you see very few slave narratives. And that is intentional.
People like to act like we don't have a legacy of racism here. I think people get really uncomfortable with it. We know that we can't change it unless we address that.
If you close your eyes and think about where you feel the most safe, you're probably not going to tell me it's in a room full of police. You feel safe where you're around people that love you, when you have food and shelter, when you're being pushed to be your best self and learn.
I just couldn't believe that the police would fire tear gas into what had been a peaceful protest. I was running around, face burning, and nothing I saw looked like America to me.
There will always be a rule. There will be people who break the rules. There will be consequences. We fundamentally think these things will be true for a time. The question becomes, What are the consequences? Who enforces the consequences? What are the worst consequences?
I think of protest as confrontation and disruption, as the end of silence.
What we choose to do today and tomorrow will shape our future and build our reality.
People often confuse visibility with a lot of other things. Sometimes I become a proxy for things that just aren't true about me. People will say, 'DeRay got millions of dollars in grants.' That's just not true... I'm broke.
Politics is compromise, by its very nature. But we never compromise on our values and beliefs.
A lot of organizers are trying to figure out how do we create entrances for people so they can be involved in the work in a way that makes them feel is aligned to the things they're interested in and not the things the organizer is interested in?
Black people have always been more than our pain. The joy is so much a part of how we have survived and thrived.
It's important to acknowledge the danger when we provide an academic venue for racism. It's interesting to hear people push the, quote, 'free speech' narrative in this way. They deny the speech of the people who disagree.
I think my imagination about jobs was pretty limited. There were so few jobs that I actually saw people who looked like me in, that I imagined myself in, that I think I just stopped imagining.
Bowdoin was the first place that I fell in love with. When I visited, I just had never been to a place with that many resources and that much access to information. That was stuff that you saw in movies. I didn't know that existed in real life.
I think that I, because of student government and because of working in Baltimore, knew how to be creative with very little resources.
I wasn't a very good writer before college. I don't think I was a very good reader.
I have a platform, and I can help. I can be in spaces that reporters will never be in because I'm a protester.
The student newspapers are as important to me as the 'New York Times.'
