DeRay Mckesson

“I think Twitter is an incredible platform. I want to see it succeed.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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'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.”

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

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

“Some people are more interested in fighting than winning.”

“My father and mother deeply loved me and my sister.”

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

“I am mindful that the goal of protest is not more protest, but the goal of protest is change.”

“Sometimes, the hate that I endure is not necessarily about me but about the space I'm in.”

“A cacophony of whispers is also noise. There are many ways to be heard, and there are many ways to be visible. There are many ways to be seen.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Asking people for money is really different than asking people for their support.”