Quotes from DeRay Mckesson

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.

For our kids to go to school, they must be alive, and for adults to work, they must not be in jail.

There is nothing romantic about teargas. Or smoke bombs or rubber bullets or sound cannons.

I was a teacher. I also worked at Harlem Children's Zone. I moved back to Baltimore and opened up an after-school, out-of-school program on the west side and then worked in two public school districts, in Baltimore and Minneapolis.

When I tweet, I'm mostly preaching to the choir.

I think about Twitter as the friend that's always awake. It's why I tweet so much.

I actually get very little phone calls. I get way more tweets and texts. My phone rarely rings.

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

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.

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.

If Trump is president, I think that his administration will do real structural damage that will take years or decades for us to undo.

When I reflect on the Colbert interview, it moved so quickly that what we didn't do was define white privilege, and I wish we had done that. White privilege is the benefit resulting from white being seen as the standard, regardless of gender and income.

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

People are more afraid of black unity than black rage.

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

I'm not convinced that stealing an iPhone is a felony or stealing a bike is a felony.

I take statements that portray untrue statements about me seriously.

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

I grew up in a world of Officer Friendly. It was just the image I had.

I think about freedom and the urgency around our imagination. If you can't imagine it, you can't fight for it.

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.

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.

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?

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.