Deray McKesson Quotes

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.

It's important that people press from the outside. It's important that people are able to make change from the inside. Both of those things are important. Protest is fundamentally a political act.

I don't want to live in a world where Donald Trump is the President. He is not doing anything in Baltimore, but I am dedicated to using whatever platform I have to make sure that he is not the President. This is not simply a disagreement about ideas. It's a disagreement about values, and the values that he espouses are values of bigotry and hate, and that isn't OK.

Leadership means making sure that people are adequately skilled, making sure people are earning a living wage, making sure people have access to resources. That's not sexy, it doesn't sound great at a rally or a forum, but that is actually the work that it will take to change cities. We know that.

So much of what people think about when they think about health is primary care, but health is so much more than that. Health is about the decisions you make everyday. It's about where you sleep. It's about are you exercising, it's about what you eat.

When our response to all trauma is to call the police, then that gets us into a cycle of perpetuating trauma. Mental health trauma is different from somebody breaking into a store. Those are not the same things, and our response has to be different.

Donald Trump is dangerous. The truth is that the bigotry and hatred that he speaks have real consequences in people's lives.

Not only do we need to focus on classrooms, but adult literacy is a huge issue in historically marginalized communities. That's a crisis, and it's one that you can't see.