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" 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. "

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" 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. "

DeRay Mckesson

People

Think

Imagination

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" The history of blackness is also a history of erasure. "

" 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. "

" It's important to acknowledge the danger when we provide an academic venue for racism. It's interesting to hear people push the, quote, 'free speech' narrative in this way. They deny the speech of the people who disagree. "

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

DeRay Mckesson

People

Black

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

DeRay Mckesson

Student

New

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

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

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

" Politics is compromise, by its very nature. But we never compromise on our values and beliefs. "

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

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

DeRay Mckesson

Complex

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

" 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. "

" 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 a politician. I'm somebody who knows the world can be better, and I'm willing to fight for it. "

" I take statements that portray untrue statements about me seriously. "

DeRay Mckesson

Seriously

Portray

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 will never forget the first time I was teargassed or the night I hid under my steering wheel as the SWAT vehicle drove down a residential street. I will never forget that it was illegal - in St Louis, in the fall of 2014 - to stand still. "

" 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. "

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

" Systemic change rarely comes overnight. "

" I'm not ashamed to be gay. "

DeRay Mckesson

Gay

Ashamed

" 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. "