DeRay Mckesson Quotes
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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 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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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.
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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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Baltimore is a city of possibility, and we've got to challenge the traditional pathways of politics and politicians who lay those paths.
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I am mindful that the goal of protest is not more protest, but the goal of protest is change.
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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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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.
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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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People are not as imaginative as they think they are.
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I've worked in two public school districts, Minneapolis and Baltimore, one as a senior leader. And while we might not always have agreed with the union, and we might have had deep differences, they came to the table.
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Protest is political. It is as political as what our conception of America is.
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Black people have always been more than our pain. The joy is so much a part of how we have survived and thrived.
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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.
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I think hope is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today, and I don't lose hope.
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What we know to be true is that comfort isn't always freedom. People confuse the two.
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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.
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I've never been a surrogate for Bernie, Hillary, or the DNC.
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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.
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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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Being mayor is about offering a vision for the city, putting the right people in the right place, and executing that vision.
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I'm not desensitized to death.
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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.
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Activism in the street is truth-telling, and organizing is talking to people for a specific goal.