Top 108 Quotes & Sayings by DeRay Mckesson
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American activist DeRay Mckesson.
Last updated on November 4, 2024.
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.
I think about Twitter as the friend that's always awake. It's why I tweet so much.
The first time I was ever impressed with Patagonia as a brand was when they released the 'Don't Buy This Jacket' campaign. That campaign highlighted their understanding of their role in a larger environmental justice space.
When I tweet, I'm mostly preaching to the choir.
Twitter is half me trying to live in the world and half me processing and sharing the world. I share a lot, and some of that is to keep me honest.
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 think of protest as confrontation and disruption, as the end of silence.
Asking people for money is really different than asking people for their support.
I'm not desensitized to death.
I just couldn't believe that the police would fire tear gas into what had been a peaceful protest. I was running around, face burning, and nothing I saw looked like America to me.
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.
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.
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.
There will always be a rule. There will be people who break the rules. There will be consequences. We fundamentally think these things will be true for a time. The question becomes, What are the consequences? Who enforces the consequences? What are the worst consequences?
I take statements that portray untrue statements about me seriously.
You're not born woke. Something wakes you up.
I think that I, because of student government and because of working in Baltimore, knew how to be creative with very little resources.
The student newspapers are as important to me as the 'New York Times.'
A lot of organizers are trying to figure out how do we create entrances for people so they can be involved in the work in a way that makes them feel is aligned to the things they're interested in and not the things the organizer is interested in?
Too often, the elected individuals we put our public trust in disappoint us.
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.
There are very few things that I don't talk about - even my relationships.
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.
I am mindful that the goal of protest is not more protest, but the goal of protest is change.
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.
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.
Sometimes, the hate that I endure is not necessarily about me but about the space I'm in.
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.
Activism in the street is truth-telling, and organizing is talking to people for a specific 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.
I think Twitter is an incredible platform. I want to see it succeed.
I wasn't a very good writer before college. I don't think I was a very good reader.
The arts scene in Baltimore is really rich and very vibrant. It's one of the untold stories of the city.
For our kids to go to school, they must be alive, and for adults to work, they must not be in jail.
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.
Being mayor is about offering a vision for the city, putting the right people in the right place, and executing that vision.
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.
Protest is political. It is as political as what our conception of America is.
The history of blackness is also a history of erasure.
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.
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.
I think hope is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today, and I don't lose hope.
Systemic change rarely comes overnight.
Find an issue that's important to you, and be as curious and close to it as possible.
Music helps shape the way people think about the world and act in the world.
I have a platform, and I can help. I can be in spaces that reporters will never be in because I'm a protester.
I love Baltimore. This city has made me the man that I am.
I think about freedom and the urgency around our imagination. If you can't imagine it, you can't fight for it.
What we choose to do today and tomorrow will shape our future and build our reality.
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.
People are more afraid of black unity than black rage.
Black people have always been more than our pain. The joy is so much a part of how we have survived and thrived.
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.
The difference between equity and equality is that equality is everyone get the same thing and equity is everyone get the things they deserve.
What we know to be true is that comfort isn't always freedom. People confuse the two.
So many of us don't know what we want; we just know we don't want what we have. We spend 99% of the time talking about how bad it is, but only 1% of the time talking about how we can do something about it.
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.
People are not as imaginative as they think they are.
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