DeRay Mckesson Quotes
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I'm not desensitized to death.
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I have a platform, and I can help. I can be in spaces that reporters will never be in because I'm a protester.
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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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You're not born woke. Something wakes you up.
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The arts scene in Baltimore is really rich and very vibrant. It's one of the untold stories of the city.
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I think about Twitter as the friend that's always awake. It's why I tweet so much.
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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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There is nothing romantic about teargas. Or smoke bombs or rubber bullets or sound cannons.
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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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Protest is political. It is as political as what our conception of America is.
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I'm not convinced that stealing an iPhone is a felony or stealing a bike is a felony.
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I am running to be the 50th mayor of Baltimore in order to usher our city into an era where the government is accountable to its people and is aggressively innovative in how it identifies and solves its problems.
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Systemic change rarely comes overnight.
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I'm a black, gay man, and I should be able to live in a world where I'm able to live in the complexity of my identity in a way that is safe and secure, like everyone else.
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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.
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Some people are more interested in fighting than winning.
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If anything, any success that I have ever experienced has been because people who didn't have to care about me did, and they pushed me to see things in myself that I did not see in myself at the time.
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As a protester, I protested because I had to, not because it was exciting. I don't want to get tear-gassed again.
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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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We question these issues of race and struggle and white privilege because we know that those issues are real and because those issues have real implications in black communities. And white supremacy is not only dangerous, but it is deadly.
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I take statements that portray untrue statements about me seriously.
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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.
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Social media allowed us to become our own storytellers. With it, we seized the power of our truth.
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What we choose to do today and tomorrow will shape our future and build our reality.