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

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" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Music helps shape the way people think about the world and act in the world. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I'm not desensitized to death. "

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

" 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. "

" Asking people for money is really different than asking people for their support. "

" Find an issue that's important to you, and be as curious and close to it as possible. "

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

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

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

" The police, at their best, do three things; they prevent crime, they respond to crime, and they solve crime. In all three of those buckets, they need the trust of the community to do it, so I believe that if we restore the trust that we will change the way police are experiencing communities and ways that will preserve life and make everyone safer. "

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

" I'm not ashamed to be gay. "

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

" Justice that is not rooted in equity, in social welfare, and in community is not justice at all. "

" 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. "

" The activism of marginalized people often comes with visibility and being heard. Which can lead people to believe that recognition and awareness is the actual end point. And it is not. "

" Baltimore is a city of possibility, and we've got to challenge the traditional pathways of politics and politicians who lay those paths. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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