Quotes from 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.

If City Hall started projecting swastikas, no one would say 'You know what? Free speech.' People would say that is wrong.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

The history of blackness is also a history of erasure.

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.

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

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

The difference between equity and equality is that equality is everyone get the same thing and equity is everyone get the things they deserve.

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

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.

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.

People are not as imaginative as they think they are.

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.

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 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.