DeRay Mckesson Quotes

As Jason Mogus has written, organizing is the act of building power; mobilizing is the act of spending the power you've built.

The theory of policing is quite far from the reality of policing. For us, at least, that is.

Faith is the belief that certain outcomes will happen, and hope is the belief that certain outcomes can happen. So when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. says, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice," he is speaking from a place of faith. He is confident that justice is inevitable, even if it may come in another lifetime. Faith is often rooted in the belief of a higher power, in God. Hope on the other hand would mean reframing the statement to say, "The arc of the moral universe is long, and it will bend toward justice, if we bend it. Faith is rooted in certainty, hope is rooted in possibility, and they both require their own different kinds of work.

We need to remind the peers of the bully that they benefit from bullying even if they are not themselves the transgressors. Indeed, they benefit from it, but they are tarnished by it. To chip away at the humanity of select groups is to chip away at humanity itself.

There's a double standard to protest in America. Something is different for black people who should dare to ask questions, and further, for those who protest in blackness. Protest in and by black bodies is never deemed legitimate, never deemed worthy of engagement. It seems that we have simply have not earned our grievance, our grievance is illegitimate – we do not deserve sympathy or, ultimately, justice.

I have grown tired of the notion of an ally. I prefer the language of an "accomplice." An ally loves you from a distance. An accomplice loves you up close. We need allies to make the transition to accomplices. An ally is someone who has unpacked her personal privilege but hasn't yet made the link to institutional issues and is not willing to risk anything besides her mental comfort. An accomplice rolls up her sleeves and engages in the work that is beyond her. She'll march in the streets, yes. But an accomplice also faces her own participation in whiteness, acknowledges it, and then looks beyond that personal acknowledgment to identify how her awareness can be applied to changing the systems and mindsets that prop up the system.

Protest is telling the truth in public. Sometimes protest is telling the truth to a public that isn't quite ready to hear it. Protest is, in its own way, a storytelling. We use our bodies, our words, our art, and our sounds both to tell the truth about the pain that we endure and to demand the justice that we know is possible. It is meant to build and to force a response.

To acknowledge the existence of the bully and his accompanying risks is not the same as accepting him as a permanent feature of our world. I know that if we accept trauma and fear, it wins.

"Bullies don't just go away. Their legacies don't just disappear. The bully must be confronted intentionally, his impact named and addressed. Even so, it seems there's no clear consensus on how to deal with the bully on our blocks. Do we confront him? Match violence with violence? Do we ignore him, or try to kill him with kindness? I don't think there's a silver bullet to handling the bully, no one-size-fits-all strategy. But the right strategy has to be rooted in a context bigger than the immediate one, has to be rooted in more than aiming to end the presence of the bully himself. We must focus on the type of world we want to live in and devise a plan for getting there, as opposed to devising a strategy centered on opposition.

If your love for me requires that I hide parts of who I am, then you don't love me. Love is never a request for silence.