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

I am not naive enough to believe that voting is the only way to bring about transformational change, just as I know that protest alone is not the sole solution to the challenges we face.

I think of protest as confrontation and disruption, as the end of silence.

Justice that is not rooted in equity, in social welfare, and in community is not justice at all.

I think hope is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today, and I don't lose hope.

I'm not desensitized to death.

You're not born woke. Something wakes you up.

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

We question these issues of race and struggle and white privilege because we know that those issues are real and because those issues have real implications in black communities. And white supremacy is not only dangerous, but it is deadly.

Find an issue that's important to you, and be as curious and close to it as possible.

There will always be a rule. There will be people who break the rules. There will be consequences. We fundamentally think these things will be true for a time. The question becomes, What are the consequences? Who enforces the consequences? What are the worst consequences?

I think about freedom as not only as the absence of oppression but also the presence of justice and joy.

If City Hall started projecting swastikas, no one would say 'You know what? Free speech.' People would say that is wrong.

I was a teacher. I also worked at Harlem Children's Zone. I moved back to Baltimore and opened up an after-school, out-of-school program on the west side and then worked in two public school districts, in Baltimore and Minneapolis.

If you close your eyes and think about where you feel the most safe, you're probably not going to tell me it's in a room full of police. You feel safe where you're around people that love you, when you have food and shelter, when you're being pushed to be your best self and learn.

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

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.

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.

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 people are uncomfortable talking about the racist history of this country and what we need to do to undo the impact of racism.

Most of my life's information is public. I got a text one day from a hacker who texted me all of my credit card information.

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 about freedom and the urgency around our imagination. If you can't imagine it, you can't fight for it.

I'm not ashamed to be gay.

Too often, the elected individuals we put our public trust in disappoint us.

What we choose to do today and tomorrow will shape our future and build our reality.

I am excited to return to city schools... and to continue doing the work to ensure that every child in Baltimore City receives a world-class education.

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.

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.

I just couldn't believe that the police would fire tear gas into what had been a peaceful protest. I was running around, face burning, and nothing I saw looked like America to me.

When I tweet, I'm mostly preaching to the choir.

I take statements that portray untrue statements about me seriously.

People are not as imaginative as they think they are.

Protest is political. It is as political as what our conception of America is.

I love Baltimore. This city has made me the man that I am.

I am running to be the 50th mayor of Baltimore in order to usher our city into an era where the government is accountable to its people and is aggressively innovative in how it identifies and solves its problems.

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.

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

I have a big following on Twitter, and Twitter has been invaluable for mobilizing and quickly sharing information. But I'm not really sure that people are learning deep content on Twitter.

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?

Activism in the street is truth-telling, and organizing is talking to people for a specific goal.

We have to create a world where people can show up as whole people every single time.

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.

Twitter is half me trying to live in the world and half me processing and sharing the world. I share a lot, and some of that is to keep me honest.

There are very few things that I don't talk about - even my relationships.

Expressing and loving myself is often so much more complex than 'out' affords me.