Social media allowed us to become our own storytellers. With it, we seized the power of our truth.
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.
Politics is compromise, by its very nature. But we never compromise on our values and beliefs.
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?
Black people have always been more than our pain. The joy is so much a part of how we have survived and thrived.
It's important to acknowledge the danger when we provide an academic venue for racism. It's interesting to hear people push the, quote, 'free speech' narrative in this way. They deny the speech of the people who disagree.
People are more afraid of black unity than black rage.
Find an issue that's important to you, and be as curious and close to it as possible.
I think about freedom and the urgency around our imagination. If you can't imagine it, you can't fight for it.
If Trump is president, I think that his administration will do real structural damage that will take years or decades for us to undo.
I think people are uncomfortable talking about the racist history of this country and what we need to do to undo the impact of racism.
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.
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.
I think that I, because of student government and because of working in Baltimore, knew how to be creative with very little resources.
I wasn't a very good writer before college. I don't think I was a very good reader.
I have a platform, and I can help. I can be in spaces that reporters will never be in because I'm a protester.
The student newspapers are as important to me as the 'New York Times.'
Sometimes, the hate that I endure is not necessarily about me but about the space I'm in.
When I tweet, I'm mostly preaching to the choir.
I'm not desensitized to death.
