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.

DeRay Mckesson

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

Equality Very Things

Justice that is not rooted in equity, in social welfare, and in community is not justice at all.

DeRay Mckesson

Welfare Us Unity

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.

DeRay Mckesson

Change Alone Way

It is not a new tactic for people to use any avenue they can to silence black activists.

DeRay Mckesson

Venue Use Us

I think about freedom as not only as the absence of oppression but also the presence of justice and joy.

DeRay Mckesson

Freedom Us Think

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.

DeRay Mckesson

Life Car Who

You are enough to start a movement. Individual people can come together around things that they know are unjust. And they can spark change.

DeRay Mckesson

Men Change Art

You're not born woke. Something wakes you up.

DeRay Mckesson

You Woke Wake

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.

DeRay Mckesson

Trust Life Change

Too often, the elected individuals we put our public trust in disappoint us.

DeRay Mckesson

Trust Us Too

I think hope is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today, and I don't lose hope.

DeRay Mckesson

Hope Tomorrow Tom

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.

DeRay Mckesson

Whisper Ways Way

There are very few things that I don't talk about - even my relationships.

DeRay Mckesson

Relationship Very Things

I am mindful that the goal of protest is not more protest, but the goal of protest is change.

DeRay Mckesson

Change Test T

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.

DeRay Mckesson

Learning Wit Wing

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.

DeRay Mckesson

Willingness Willing Will

As a protester, I protested because I had to, not because it was exciting. I don't want to get tear-gassed again.

DeRay Mckesson

Want Use Us

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.

DeRay Mckesson

Work Teacher Car

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.

DeRay Mckesson

Time Wit While

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.

DeRay Mckesson

Great Experience Art

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.

DeRay Mckesson

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.

DeRay Mckesson

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.

DeRay Mckesson

My father and mother deeply loved me and my sister.

DeRay Mckesson

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.

DeRay Mckesson

Asking people for money is really different than asking people for their support.

DeRay Mckesson

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.

DeRay Mckesson

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.

DeRay Mckesson

Social media allowed us to become our own storytellers. With it, we seized the power of our truth.

DeRay Mckesson

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.

DeRay Mckesson

Protest is political. It is as political as what our conception of America is.

DeRay Mckesson

People are more afraid of black unity than black rage.

DeRay Mckesson

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.

DeRay Mckesson

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.

DeRay Mckesson

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.

DeRay Mckesson

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.

DeRay Mckesson

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?

DeRay Mckesson

I think of protest as confrontation and disruption, as the end of silence.

DeRay Mckesson

What we choose to do today and tomorrow will shape our future and build our reality.

DeRay Mckesson

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.

DeRay Mckesson

Politics is compromise, by its very nature. But we never compromise on our values and beliefs.

DeRay Mckesson

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?

DeRay Mckesson

Black people have always been more than our pain. The joy is so much a part of how we have survived and thrived.

DeRay Mckesson

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.

DeRay Mckesson

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.

DeRay Mckesson

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.

DeRay Mckesson

I think that I, because of student government and because of working in Baltimore, knew how to be creative with very little resources.

DeRay Mckesson

I wasn't a very good writer before college. I don't think I was a very good reader.

DeRay Mckesson

I have a platform, and I can help. I can be in spaces that reporters will never be in because I'm a protester.

DeRay Mckesson

The student newspapers are as important to me as the 'New York Times.'

DeRay Mckesson