I think about Twitter as the friend that's always awake. It's why I tweet so much.

People like to act like we don't have a legacy of racism here. I think people get really uncomfortable with it. We know that we can't change it unless we address that.

You are enough to start a movement. Individual people can come together around things that they know are unjust. And they can spark change.

Everybody has told the story of black people in struggle except black people. The black people in the struggle haven't had the means to tell the story historically. There were a million slaves, but you see very few slave narratives. And that is intentional.

The history of blackness is also a history of erasure.

When I think about protest, I worry so much that people think about it only as standing in the streets. And I say that as someone who has been standing in the streets of cities across the country - but at the root of it is this idea of telling the truth in public.

As a protester, I protested because I had to, not because it was exciting. I don't want to get tear-gassed again.

Some people are more interested in fighting than winning.

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

I think people who are not from here think the Inner Harbor is the only center for culture or fun in the city, and there's so much more to Baltimore. The Harbor's a beautiful place, but there are so many gems embedded in other communities that don't get as much visibility.

Baltimore is a beautiful city. I started doing a lot of community organizing back in 1999 and met so many great people in neighborhoods all across the city. And that was an invaluable experience.

I'm not convinced that stealing an iPhone is a felony or stealing a bike is a felony.

I am often asked what it is like to be on the 'front line.' But I do not use the term 'front line' to describe us, the protesters. Because everywhere in America, wherever we are, our blackness puts us in close proximity to police violence.

I will never forget the first time I was teargassed or the night I hid under my steering wheel as the SWAT vehicle drove down a residential street. I will never forget that it was illegal - in St Louis, in the fall of 2014 - to stand still.

There is nothing romantic about teargas. Or smoke bombs or rubber bullets or sound cannons.

Social media allowed us to become our own storytellers. With it, we seized the power of our truth.

Baltimore is a city of possibility, and we've got to challenge the traditional pathways of politics and politicians who lay those paths.

It is not a new tactic for people to use any avenue they can to silence black activists.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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