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DeRay Mckesson

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2016-11-03

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2016-11-03

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1. “To do this work and to put forth and to implement the solutions, I think the people are there. We just are building the infrastructure on the back end.”

   2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “I don't know. I'm the interim chief of human capital for the school system. I believe in the superintendent. I believe in kids, which is why I came back. I believe in systems and structures. I'm mindful that systems break in pieces, right? And part of our work is organized is to think about what are the pieces that we put pressure on that will have the type of impact at scale that we think will be really important, which is why I believe in systems. That's why I work in one again today. I don't know what comes next will be organizing back to organizing at the national level. Like what does it mean to build a critical mass of people who know what to do and have the skills to do it? That we built a critical mass of people who understand there's a problem. How do we mobilize those people, that the Civil Rights Movement was about building a new class of leaders who would lead everybody? In this moment, we're saying let's build a critical mass of people in general who can lead in their communities. They can lead at the local state and the national level. And I think if we can do that, what would it look like if we said that we'll train 100,000 people a month to have the capacity?”

   2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “It was like a subtext in some communities. It wasn't like it didn't manifest overtly, but it did show up in some small ways. And I think that some of the people that I'm closest to, people will say things to them, even if they don't say things to me. And I'm around like some amazing people, something about Netta, who I'm always with and Sam and Brittany, some of the people I'm closest to in the movement space. And we all push each other about how we think about identity, how we talk about in public, knowing that the only way that people sort of grow is when they're exposed to these conversations. And I say all the time that we aren't born woke, something wakes us up. And for so many people, it was a tweet. It was a Facebook post. It was seeing somebody on TV, and that's important.”

   2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “the fullness of who they are. So it's important that we're talking about the trans community and public and transphobia. It's important that we're talking about all the nuances of identity and that black women, we're talking about the role that black women have always played in liberation work, whether they have been recognized or not historically that that is happening now in these moments. And that's important.”

   2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Yeah, so I think homophobia is an issue in all communities, and I don't think it is particularly more intense in black communities. There are some people who, you know, I think I got arrested in Baton Rouge, I was in jail for 17 hours. I got out, got on Twitter, and there were people who were like, I don't rock with him because he's gay, right? And that is some people feel like that, and I can't do anything about those people. But I think the movement has done that is so important is that it has opened up a public conversation about identity. So we're talking about sexuality and identity in complex ways in public in ways that we've not done before. And I know that it'll take us keep talking. It'll take continued conversation to push people in their thinking about it. I also know some people who supported me before they knew I was gay and this forced them to sort of grapple with how they're homophobia was showing up. And like people have a lot of work to do, and that doesn't happen overnight, but it's important work for people to do. We should build a world where people get to show up.”

   2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Yes, I think that there are some people who believe that Trump would usher in what I keep calling a productive apocalypse, that in a Trump presidency, so much would happen that would be bad, that it would force things to come to the service and we'd finally have to confront all of these tough issues. And I think that that is a dangerous notion. I think that we've seen that the system has never come to a grinding halt. But what it has done is grind certain people into ashes. And I think that'll happen with black and brown people of Trump as president. I think there's a lot at stake. And I think that you know you've worked in government is that it's the stuff that people don't see that actually has such a profound impact on people's day-to-day lives, right? It's like how an administration decides to operationalize. It's stuff that doesn't need the consent of Senate or Congress or anybody. Like who gets appointed for these 17-year terms? What does it mean that he might appoint four more as Supreme Court justice like that?”

   2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “My sense too is that she's done the homework and understands them at a deep level, that she is not just leaning on the policy people to like whisper in her ear, that she's actually offering these answers as her answers. And I think that's important. And again, like it showed up in the platform, the question is, how does it show up in the administration? And that is for us to continue pushing her on.”

   2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “I think that with Hillary, there is a when I talk to most people, there's a sincerity issue that people have with her that she will do and say anything to get elected is like how people perceive her to be. And again, like I'm trying to figure out where does it show up in the details. So like she could have released a platform that was sort of wishy-washy and really weak around racial justice. And undoubtedly the movement, the protests, like coalitions of people pushed her to be a much more aggressive one than anybody thought she'd be. There's $125 billion economic investment in low-income communities. And like, is that enough? No? Is it a beginning? Yes. Is it an entrance? Yes. So she's made some commitments that I think are actually strong anchor commitments that we need to continue pushing on.”

   2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “We can do it. I think that in the first hundred days, you know, Brittany Packnett was in the meeting that we just had with Secretary Clinton and asked her about the first 100 days. And I think that it would be important for Hillary to roll out a criminal reform, a criminal justice reform package that we can all stand behind that is like really aggressive and really robust.”

   2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Yeah, so just like Oprah's a recently, you don't have to love her, right? That you're not going to dinner with her every night. But the other thing is that voting is a way to build power, and we build power in many ways, that we build in the streets, we build it in boardrooms and commissions, we build in elected office, we also build at the ballot. And Hillary cannot win and cannot govern without black people. So if we can figure out how to manage the power of us collectively at the ballot, we can push that administration to do all of the things that are right for her to do, especially by our community. And the second thing is that in the details she's actually shown up. So the racial justice platform is not perfect, but it is really strong. It should include an end to the death penalty, right? Like she should support a $15 minimum wage at the national level and not just at the state level. So there are some things that we'll continue pushing your own, but the foundation is here and it's strong and we should continue to make sure we build on it.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “So they've said the apologies for that. What I'm looking for is like how that shows up in policy and practice, right? So in pushing her on those three things, that was my way of saying, like, show me that you've actually changed your thinking. And I think the platform shows that she's going to undo those things. Yeah, now we're just trying to see now we want to see that in an administration, right? Like, what does it look like? Will you have a special assistant for criminal justice reform, right? That would continue to show us that there would be like a different type of commitment to this work. And I think that's really important.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “I didn't talk to her about that because at this point, I don't know what. I don't know what she can say that she hasn't already said. She's already apologized for it. Bill Clint has said that it was the wrong thing to do, and he's importantly acknowledged that the crime bill set a model for what states would implement that is probably the most insidious part of the crime bill.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “And mental health providers that the police actually don't need any more money themselves. And with all of those, she was spot on. So with the community oversight, she agrees with community oversight boards and had a nuanced understanding of the importance of community oversight. With police training, she acknowledged and understood that the money should go to people and communities and to professionals, mental health professionals. And then with the nonviolent drug and finish, she acknowledged that undoing some of the architecture of the 94 crime bill will actually benefit many people.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Yeah, so met with Hillary before there was actually a platform around racial justice. So in that first meeting, there were about 10 of us and we were pressing her on some concrete things that we wanted to see show up in the platform. And many of those things have actually shown up. In this meeting and that first meeting, she said she'd be open to another meeting and we finally got it all scheduled in some ways to like follow up on some of those first things. But it was much shorter this time. So in this last meeting, Press on three specific things. One was our platform talks about the end of sort of it explicitly focuses on nonviolent drug offenders. So the question was like, what about everybody else? Another question was she said that in the meeting we had before, she talked about the importance of community oversight, but that doesn't actually show up in the platform anywhere. So I wanted to talk about what that looked like. And the third was about training. So she wants to invest in police training, but we think that the money should go to people in communities to train the police.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Maybe. And in Baltimore, the national attention only played negatively. Like it wasn't a help at all when I was knocking on people's stories. But I think, you know, I understand that we have to have an inside-outside strategy, right? That we have to be organized in both places at an outside strategy is not an outside only strategy is not a strategy to win, that we have to be as organized on the inside as we are on the outside.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “But not long enough with any, yeah. So I should have announced earlier. And we did some important, you know, the people that fundraised for raise for me and we raised more money than almost any local race in the country during the time span. We had 5,000 individual donors, more donors than anybody I ran against all the people I ran against combined. But importantly, they're at highest number of donors from Baltimore City, right? So that was important. I think that one of the challenges with having a big social media presence and or being so closely associated with the movement in that way is that people felt like if they didn't see it on social media, that there wasn't real. So we knocked like 20,000 doors in the last 30 days. But people felt like if I didn't tweet every time we were knocking doors, if I didn't live stream or whatever, that I was actually just like sitting at home on my couch, which wasn't the case. We were actually doing a lot. So that was really hard.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “With what happened with the election? You know, in hindsight, I need to write about the election. I haven't written about it yet. One of the things that I should have done differently is just announce earlier. Like that would have, you know, it was like the longest 83 days or so of my life.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Economics, it's about infrastructure, all of these things we'll have to address. And I think that the critical, we can build a critical mass to do it.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Do you think that what comes next is continuing to develop a holistic understanding about what's happening? So it is not just a matter of the police. Like I get that, that it is about public education. It's about health. How do we think about health differently?”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Yes, I think, you know, you think about two years ago that people had. People thought that Ferguson had a problem. There's a problem in Ferguson. They did not think that there was a problem in America. And two years later we've sort of gotten people to that point, which is huge. I'm also mindful that the movement is young, that what we now call the civil rights movement was a decade long, right? So the next part of the work is helping people understand what the solutions are in a really concrete way. You know, we put out, there have been other platforms that have emerged recently. We put out Camping Zero like a year after the protests in St. Louis. So it was like the first thing to come out. At the national stage that had like a concrete set of recommendations and it is explicitly focused on policing and safety. So I think that this is one of the platforms that I think is the strongest definitely around this issue. We met with Bernie and Hillary and President Obama and Ballard Jared and Attorney General Laura Lynch. It is all it was all focused on these concrete sets of recommendations.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “There would be no movement if not for those protests, and nobody, no organization started those things. And I try to be mindful to say, like I said to you here, is that I'm just one of many people, right, who like did this, who helped press, you know, I had a big Twitter platform then, and I started this newsletter that became, you know, we went from 400 subscribers to 20,000. And part of the work and part of how I see my role is to help connect people across the country, to help amplify the work of other people. It is, though, rooted in acknowledgement that the movement is much bigger than any one organization, that the movement did not start out of an organization or anything that has chapters, but there was this beautiful spirit of unrest.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “No, I think that this definitely won the critiques. I think that people nobody founded the movement, right? Like people in St. Louis came Assad and forced this conversation and so many people sit in solidarity with those first people that came out on August 9th and 10th and 11th. And I didn't get there till the 16th and so many of us stayed in solidarity and continued the pressure and no one, two or three people started that, right? And that's actually the beauty of the movement. I think that one of the confusing and unfortunate things is that the moniker that has emerged nationally is Black Lives Matter. And as one of the people who said that very publicly, like we tweeted it back in the fall 2014, it was not because we were part of any organization or there was no chapter of anything that like we were out in struggle. And it's been interesting two years later to see how people just forget everything that happened in Ferguson for those 300 days that that now is not what people talk about.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Did me and so many other people, I'm one of many people who sacrificed. The other thing is that it was illegal to stand still in August of 2014 in September 2014, right? Like we marched not in solidarity with the Civil Rights Movement, but because we had to. Like we physically couldn't stand still, and that there was no organization that started it. There was no chapter. There was not like it was people came outside and like forced this issue. And we figured out how to have infrastructure without an organization. So like I was one of the tweeters, there were live streamers. There were the bail fund people in addition to our act of protests who like took it on to do other roles. And like that was really important. And so many people contributed to that. And I feel like that has been forgetful.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “And I like roast in pieces, and I started a newsletter. I called the news every day, but I had always had a big Twitter platform, is that people forget two things about Ferguson in the fall 2014. One is that we were in the street for over 30, 60 days, right? People remember it as like a weekend or like a month. And it was a really long time that people committed to be in struggle. The second is that you quick.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “In those early days, we were just hashtag Ferguson. It was like hashtag Mike Brown. And Black Lives Matter became one of the phrases that people were saying because there were people who are part of what is now the organization who came down and had like big posters and flyers and had a lot of them. So you can see at the end of August 2014 that there are a lot more photos and stuff like that with that phrase in it. And then when the garner no indictment came is when the first... In New York is huge protests in New York, and the media needed a way to talk about the movement that wasn't just like the Ferguson protests in another city. And Black Lives Matter became the way that people started to talk about it in the national narrative. But what was so beautiful about what happened in Ferguson”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Going, I don't know anybody in Missouri, so if you know somebody's couch I can sleep on, let me know. And that's how I started, you know, and it was important to me to see for myself the second night I was there was the first night of the curfew. It was the first night I ever got tear gassed. And I was like, I'll do whatever I can to make sure that nobody else has to experience this because this is wild. And that was it. Like that was why I started. And I think about the birth of the movement. You know, people confuse at this point, two years later, people confuse like the hashtag the organization and the movement.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “So I was seeing Mike got killed. Mike Brown got killed in August 9, 2014. I was sitting on my couch on August 16th, which is a Saturday morning, one o'clock, and I saw and CNN what was happening, and I was like, this looks wild. And then I saw on Twitter what was happening. And I was like, whoa, the protesters are saying something completely different. So I was like, I'm going to go. I just wanted to see what was happening on my own.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “So I think that I hope that the Charter School conversation opens up some more of those conversations, saying that's where the work is. But I think it's a zero-sum world to live in, like the charter school, like is the devil, public schools are the only, like traditional public schools are the only win. I don't think that's a fair dichotomy. I don't think this is fair to kids. I don't think it's fair to parents who are choosing to send their kids to charter schools. Like people are making informed decisions about this. And I don't think it's fair to say that those decisions suddenly don't matter.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “and that we should close our schools that aren't performing well. Like, I think that that makes sense. I do worry about this idea that anybody's qualified to lead a school, right? Which in some places I have seen a proliferation of charter schools, like that actually becomes sort of the mentality, and I don't think that works. But I do think charter schools have forced people to own the like teacher certification question and the development question that there are some charter schools where the teachers don't have to be certified or don't have to have degrees and they're knocking out of the park, right? And there are tons of schools where everybody's certified and nobody's learning, right?”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “The reality of that has been mixed in so many places, but I think that's like the theory. I believe in the theory behind it. The other thing is that public schools have been failing so many people that I know people who are like, we don't even know if the Charles me good, but we know this school has been bad for 20 years. So we're willing to take the risk. And I think that tells us something about public schools, right? That we also need to be honest about what's happening in so many of them.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “And the less thing I say on that is like health insurance people just miss the cost of all this stuff. And I don't think public school assistants have done a very good job of being transparent about how funding works until there's a fight with the union, right? And they should get out in front of that stuff way before there's a battle just so people are primed to take it in. Charters, I think that the idea of charters was this notion of if we decrease constraints, it should increase innovation, which should lead to increased results, right?”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “The cliff will just be so big. There'll be nothing left to piece together. And I think that people aren't believe that. And like the rubber is going to meet the road one day soon with that. We won't be able to afford some of the things that the union. Part of the issue.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “I think that unions are important. I was a union leader when I taught. I represented all the teachers in my school to the teacher union. I think that there is something about making sure that somebody is bargaining on behalf of people so that I left behind. I think that one of the things that I've struggled with with some of the unions is And I think the public doesn't always believe about the funding cliff, right? At some point, with a lot of our big urban school districts, there's going to be like a point of no red. Like there's just not going to be money. Right now people are like CPS is piecing it together. They're like, oh, At some point”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Hard because you get these huge funding cliffs, right? So we're running at a definition of it. But I think the focus on standards is the right focus. Like, should we tweak it? Is Common Core perfect now? No. Is it better than what was before? Yes. Like, I think that's how I believe about those things. I think the focus on SES supplement education services was the right push.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “I think it was the right intent. I think that they did it for the right reasons. I think that the impact on districts. One of the hard things when the federal government infuses so much money into public school districts, like at some point it ends, right? So in Baltimore, we lost a lot of position, like a lot of, we had to stop a lot of things in the racist top money left, right? So we had a lot of money and then had a lot less money.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “Teachers, so we don't talk about that enough. And the second thing is that the teacher prep, like the pipeline of teacher prep programs are not very good. So we're not having an honest conversation about teacher prep.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Yeah, they can do something that is so high quality. And what we have done in low income communities is that we just people have punted on the quality piece and they just, it's like if there's any service. So like let's just put the kid in after school, whether they're actually teaching reading or not or like doing any math development. They're just like excited that something exists. Whereas in high-income communities, the whole focus is quality. So people will pay to make sure that the kid actually knows math and that the kid actually can teach reading. And I think that's sort of one of my gripes about a lot of after school programs, especially around literacy or like math. I hate it when some of my kids would go to math after school programs because they come back and be like, well, the big number always goes in the bottom. And you're like, the big number doesn't always go on the bottom in a fraction, right? Like, so the focus on quality, I think, is big. And the second is people don't talk enough about the teacher shortage. I'm the chief human capital officer in Baltimore City Public Schools today. And I've done this work in Minneapolis as well. And there's a real shortage of people who want to be.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “You know, in a lot of urban spaces, it is an acknowledgement that so many of our kids are in a grade level for reasons beyond their control, right? So you think about a group of their graders that can't read. It's not a group of dumb third graders, right? Like they didn't do that, like somewhere along the way, like a system in adults failed them. And there's so many. I would get kids who didn't couldn't really divide, right? It's like, well, what did you, what happened in elementary school, right? Or like when you go to second grade classrooms and kids don't know sight words, yeah, right? Like we gotta, we have to own that and have to figure out in the early grades how to make sure our kids are in grade level. And that might not be just things in classrooms, right? Like what would a radical investment in supplemental services look like in a way that like actually scales for people? So what high income parents can do that low-income parents can't is that like when their kids are struggling, they can just they can put them in a program.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “Be a huge school system, so we did a lot with schools around us, but we didn't do a lot with like a ton of schools from other places just because it, that's how it was designed at that point. I'm sure the structures change a little bit, but I taught at middle school math, sixth graders, sixth grade is great, best grade ever to teach seventh grade is puberty and deodorant, which is not exciting. Sixth grade is they still believe in magic and still like want to do great work.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “I've worked in three public school districts, so taught in New York, senior leader in Baltimore, and a senior leader in Minneapolis public schools. The New York system is just so big. Like the implications as a teacher were like, what did that meant for what did that mean for like professional development? And like, you know, we did a lot with the schools around us because there were so many schools that we weren't, you know, I don't think I ever did anything with the teacher from Manhattan unless we did it in Teacher America because a lot of the things are geographical given just how big the city was.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “Ah, you got to. It's called the Philosopher King Remembered. They were great. Did that, yeah, but teacher, I wanted to figure, I wanted to teach. So I got placed in East New York, Brooklyn, which is like far east Brooklyn. Which is great. I taught sixth grade math. And, you know, my sister actually, we both grew up and became middle school math teachers, which is like random.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “While I was in high school, and then I helped lead Baltimore's only youth-led grant making organization. So it was 20 young people, 10 adults. We gave out money every year to youth-led community projects. And I read for all the major funders in Baltimore for after-school programs. I was appointed by the governor to the after-school advisory board. So I did all of this work around advocacy. Some of it is an organizer like in communities, but a lot of it as sort of a young person sort of fighting for equity and justice with funding and allocating resources. And I wanted to teach. I had always wanted to do something like that and I just didn't know a pathway to it. I didn't major in education.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “So, in Baltimore, I was a community organizer when I was younger, so I worked at Safe and Sound, which was sort of a popular.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “I think one of the hard things about going to a small school in your small school, there were 400-ish, 450 people in my class, right? So a class at small means a Your group might not be there anyway, like regardless of race, gender, like the people that you're like most affiliated with just might not exist because small, small. And then what people of color, like I said, they're probably like 15 or 20 in my class. So we all got along, like we all knew each other and were really thoughtful about building community. So we were fine as a class. I think that some of the older students had the older black students had a much more negative experience at the college than we did. And we got there right when sort of a new president had just started and he was really, he is the person who ushered in this new commitment to diversity. So we benefited from being there. I think the people before us had a much more tenuous relationship with the college.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “I mean, so my hospital is probably 1,400 people Boden was 1,700, so it was similar. And Boden's commitment to diversity was just beginning to be robust again, so they're probably like 20-ish black people in my class, which was big then. You go back now and it's like so much more diverse, like the commitment so much deeper, which is really important and powerful. Leboden has its work to do like every place. Was a good place in Maine was like a different type of peaceful, you know, like we were in Brunswick, which is the largest town in the state of Maine, 20,000 people, which is the smallest place I'd ever lived, but is great part of that is why I went to New York after, because I was like, I gotta, I need to be around more people in so tiny here.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “A love boat, and I can't say anything bad about Bowden. Bowden is incredible. Bowden was the first place that I fell in love with my mind. I'll never forget reading The Republic by Plato in my first semester. Socrates is leaving this, I just all of it, I remember it and it was beautiful. When he gets called back into the city and that foreshadows the tension between power and wisdom and all this stuff. So a beautiful at Boden. And then I did teach for America. So I taught in Eastern New York, Brooklyn.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “In that way, in the schools I went to, they were very good. And that was like a big part of, I think, what allowed me to have to come out and go to place like Bowden and things like that. My elementary school was actually very good too, but my father took a bet by moving us. And that was really...”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “I went to public school for all but one year of my K twelve. There was a year in fourth grade our house burned down, so like we lost everything and we went to go live with my grandmother and that year we went. So like I think fifth grade I probably went to like a black Catholics go in Baltimore. And then my father, you know, both my parents, they were young when they had their like early 20s when they had us and my father didn't go to college because he had just had my sister. So he was like a stockboy in a local convenience store. And he didn't know much about how to help us K-12, but he was like, I'm just going to move outside of the city because he didn't think he didn't want us to go to city schools for middle school and high school, even though we went to city schools for elementary school. So we literally just moved to the county. Like we moved right across the city line just so we'd be zoned differently.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Yeah, yeah. And, like, what does it mean to work on a team or be a part of a system where the people who are doing the worst work on actually held accountable, that that taints the entire department and the perception. The police should stand up and talk about that.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “You think about some towns in Texas, it looks like white people are being disproportionately killed more than people of color, but we think that Latinos are just being miscoded as white because it's names. That's all people have to go off. So we think that the numbers are probably far worse in reality than they are, like from what we have right now. So I would agree with that assessment that it's probably like a small number of people who are disproportionately disadvantaging or like, but it's important to know that.”

    2016-11-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 93 - DeRay Mckesson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source