A Quote by DeRay Mckesson
I've seen optimism because I grew up in communities of recovery where people put their lives back together and find tomorrows that they didn't think would be there. That fundamentally changed my life and is so much of where my hope comes from.
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You know, cancer is bipartisan. I mean, there are so many people whose lives are touched and changed by cancer that people are willing to work together to find cures, find solutions, make lives better for cancer patients. So I think people put politics aside. This isn't a political thing. This is a life issue.
People don’t find the personal lives of people with much, much more power than any celebrity would have — don’t find their personal lives interesting. I think if you put the lives of people who controlled billions of dollars on the front news of every single paper, the world would be a better place. It’s the spin culture. If you took away publicists and things and people spoke for themselves, then they’d have to be responsible for their words.
What can I say that will make people that are in recovery want to stand up and support Recovery Month? A friend of mine said, 'You know, the fact that you did a really honest book and it changed people's lives, that's something to talk about.'
You know what I find amazing is within Christianity it is not uncommon to find [married] people who don't have sexual intimacy, don't have emotional intimacy, don't have spiritual intimacy, don't pray together, don't do their life together, don't put their schedules together, don't put their budgets together, but they don't get divorced. So they can pat themselves on the back and say, 'We're good Christians.' They're divorced in everything but the paperwork.
You know, you have to start with hope...you don't get anywhere in this country without hope. So it's a necessity. What Barack says is that people have to understand hope isn't just blind optimism. It isn't passive. It isn't just sitting there waiting for things to get better. Hope is the vision that you have to have. It's the inspiration that moves people into action...There are more people engaged in this political process in this year than we've seen in my lifetime. And it is all because of hope because people believe in the possibility of something unseen.
I think there's sometimes too much attention to a few people who do hold extreme views. Most Americans go about their lives living in communities that are increasingly multiethnic, increasingly multi-religious. And they are welcoming of people who are not like themselves. Now, I don't have rose-colored glasses about America, because I grew up in the segregated South. But I watch it every day. I think that Americans are very tolerant people.
My siblings and I were friends with the boys who would become our stepbrothers - we grew up on the same street. I feel very special to have these amazing people in my life and if we hadn't all moved into this big house together I think I would have missed out on that, because we would have drifted apart.
That's how we grew up - kinda like Pops would put his drums, his percussion and instruments into the car and we would just go to a facility in the Bay Area and he would say to us, 'You think we have it bad? There are people worse off than we are. Let's go give back to the kids.' And that's how we grew up.
I think middle America has changed very, very much. I think people are way more open-minded. I think - I think it's because the Internet. I think they're exposed to so much. All the men talked about how much they love their wife, which I don't hear all the time in art communities.
So many people grew up with challenges, as I did. There weren't always happy things happening to me or around me. But when you look at the core of goodness within yourself - at the optimism and hope - you realize it comes from the environment you grew up in.
My friend Jim Parrack is in 'Child of God,' and we grew up together. Back then, we would watch old movies and go reenact them at a Blockbuster or a supermarket. We'd end up getting in trouble because you can't reenact movies. People think you're crazy.
I was a product of the relationships with my family, the environment I grew up in; all those things I kind of put on the back burner when I got into music, and my life all changed dramatically.
When people used to ask me what I missed about America, I would say, 'The optimism.' I grew up in the land of hope, then moved to one whose catchphrases are 'It's not possible' and 'Hell is other people.' I walked around Paris feeling conspicuously chipper.
I think God is back, I think there is a huge amount of spiritual interest in the country. And I think the bishops are supportive of it because they see people's lives being changed. They see the difference. I see people who've been in prison, whose lives have been messed up, who've been alcoholics, who've been drug addicts, set free and contributing to society.
When you had the World Trade Center go, people were put into planes that were friends, family, girlfriends, and they were put into planes and they were sent back, for the most part, to Saudi Arabia. I would be very, very firm with families. Frankly, that will make people think because they may not care much about their lives, but they do care, believe it or not, about their families' lives.
I want to tell you about the God that actually showed up and healed my heart. Not the God I grew up, because the God I grew up was fundamentally, and I use the word advisedly, fundamentally untrustworthy -- schizophrenic, narcissistic, unreachable, unknowable, and my concept within which I grew up was that Jesus -- He likes me -- but He came to save me from God the Father -- who was the one who was angry and distant, and unreachable, unknowable. All of that had to come crashing down.
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