DeRay Mckesson Quotes
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You are enough to start a movement. Individual people can come together around things that they know are unjust. And they can spark change.
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So many of us don't know what we want; we just know we don't want what we have. We spend 99% of the time talking about how bad it is, but only 1% of the time talking about how we can do something about it.
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I think people are uncomfortable talking about the racist history of this country and what we need to do to undo the impact of racism.
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I think that I, because of student government and because of working in Baltimore, knew how to be creative with very little resources.
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I think that Silicon Valley and technology can play a huge role in redefining what community looks like and how people come together and what authentic relationships look like, but that is not only their burden.
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Music helps shape the way people think about the world and act in the world.
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My father and mother deeply loved me and my sister.
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I'm not ashamed to be gay.
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If Trump is president, I think that his administration will do real structural damage that will take years or decades for us to undo.
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I've never been a surrogate for Bernie, Hillary, or the DNC.
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It will always be important that people continue to push on the system from the outside. It will also be important that people make the changes that we know are necessary on the inside.
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The student newspapers are as important to me as the 'New York Times.'
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Asking people for money is really different than asking people for their support.
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Activism in the street is truth-telling, and organizing is talking to people for a specific goal.
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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.
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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.
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As a gay black man, it's important to me to show up - that I'm able to show up as my whole self, in every space that I'm in, because that's how I'm able to be the most true to who I am.
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The difference between equity and equality is that equality is everyone get the same thing and equity is everyone get the things they deserve.
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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.
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I think about all of my students who were math-phobic, who didn't believe they could learn math, who didn't understand, who didn't think they were smart enough, and by the end, they understood that they already had the gifts, and my job was to help them access them, and I believe that.
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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.
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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?
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We have to create a world where people can show up as whole people every single time.
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I grew up in a world of Officer Friendly. It was just the image I had.