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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. "

DeRay Mckesson

People

Story

Struggle

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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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

DeRay Mckesson

Time

People

" Sometimes, the hate that I endure is not necessarily about me but about the space I'm in. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

DeRay Mckesson

Always

Black

" Activism in the street is truth-telling, and organizing is talking to people for a specific goal. "

" I think about freedom as not only as the absence of oppression but also the presence of justice and joy. "

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

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

" People are not as imaginative as they think they are. "

" 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. "

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

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

" People are more afraid of black unity than black rage. "

DeRay Mckesson

People

Black

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

DeRay Mckesson

Teacher

Two

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

DeRay Mckesson

Change

Goal

" 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. "

" Trump wants to take us back to a time when people like him could abuse others with little to no consequence, when people like him could exploit the labor of others to build vast amounts of wealth, when people like him could create public policy that specifically benefited them while suppressing the rights and social mobility of others. "

" Some people are more interested in fighting than winning. "

" People often confuse visibility with a lot of other things. Sometimes I become a proxy for things that just aren't true about me. People will say, 'DeRay got millions of dollars in grants.' That's just not true... I'm broke. "