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" 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. "

DeRay Mckesson

Change

Community

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

" Systemic change rarely comes overnight. "

" I think of protest as confrontation and disruption, as the end of silence. "

" It is not a new tactic for people to use any avenue they can to silence black activists. "

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

" 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

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

" 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. "

" Expressing and loving myself is often so much more complex than 'out' affords me. "

DeRay Mckesson

Complex

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

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

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

" Being mayor is about offering a vision for the city, putting the right people in the right place, and executing that vision. "

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

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

DeRay Mckesson

Change

Goal

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

DeRay Mckesson

Revolution

Fight

" 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. "

" What we know to be true is that comfort isn't always freedom. People confuse the two. "

" 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. "

" It is one thing to talk about fundraising and another to do it as a candidate, and I have learned so much about how much money it costs to run a campaign and what it means to raise money. "

" We have to create a world where people can show up as whole people every single time. "

" I've never been a surrogate for Bernie, Hillary, or the DNC. "

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

" 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. "