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" When Trump says, 'Make America great again,' he is referencing an era when people were singled out and harmed because of their race and religious beliefs, and when violent enforcement of Jim Crow masqueraded as the will of the people. "

DeRay Mckesson

America

Great

Out

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

" 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 ashamed to be gay. "

DeRay Mckesson

Gay

Ashamed

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

" Bowdoin was the first place that I fell in love with. When I visited, I just had never been to a place with that many resources and that much access to information. That was stuff that you saw in movies. I didn't know that existed in real life. "

" Laws on hate speech and hate crimes do important work in a world that has been rooted in racism and bigotry since the inception of this country, which was not founded on ideals of justice. "

" I'm not desensitized to death. "

DeRay Mckesson

Death

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

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

DeRay Mckesson

Seriously

Portray

" As a protester, I protested because I had to, not because it was exciting. I don't want to get tear-gassed again. "

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

" 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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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'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. "

" Skills acquisition is really at the heart of what it means to learn. "

" 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. "

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

" I think hope is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today, and I don't lose hope. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I think that I, because of student government and because of working in Baltimore, knew how to be creative with very little resources. "

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

DeRay Mckesson

Mostly

Preaching

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

DeRay Mckesson

People

Black

" 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