YouSaid · the spoken record

DeRay Mckesson

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69
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2016-11-03
most recent
2016-11-03
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1
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  1. “I think that's probably true and representative. And think about that data is that that is only the people who actually knew how to navigate the system and file a complaint, right? So it's probably like far more people actually had these negative experiences with people. And the same way that we think that the police violence statistics around death are actually. Underreported because in America, if you get killed in America Right now, any number you've ever read about police violence is from local media reports. If you get killed an American and a newspaper doesn't write about it, it's literally not in the data set, which is wild. So there are some cities across the country where there are no local newspaper, right? So if somebody gets killed, like you're just not in it.”

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

  2. “And say that there's like a real need for change, that like, you know, most cities of police are one of the most well-funded, most heavily funded departments, a lot of resources. And some of that is taking away from some of the stuff that actually would be prevention work. You think about black people specifically is that Historically disadvantaged, right? Like intentionally. And what does it mean? I think about Baltimore. Baltimore is a city where 40% of adults cannot functionally read. That means that people have a very different set of options in a very different set of access points about how they interact in the city. And if we don't deal with that, then all of that will always be dealing with these random things.”

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

  3. “It's not about empathy for a lot of people. And it's not about whether they're good officers and bad officers. This is about a culture and a system that is broken. So what does it mean when some of the police actually contribute to the way that violence looks in community, right? Like that's just like a different equation. And you think about what most people don't know is that not only do the police kill three people a day in 2016, but the homicide rates in most cities include the people killed by police, so like in Albuquerque, one in three people killed in Albuquerque as a by a police officer, but you don't know that when you just look at the homicide rates, right? So what I'd say there is that they are actually contributing to the violence in the city. So it's not about empathy for individual officers in the same way that the officers don't have empathy for every person that they just sort of upset within communities. This is about how do we deal with some of these systemic things. And what I will continue to offer is that I've not seen the police show up at the local level.”

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

  4. “In Maryland, it was 10 days when Freddie Guerre killed, now it's five. In Chicago, there's a closet that says a police officer's discipline files are deleted every five years, right? In Cleveland, it's two years, right? So, like, those are structural issues that we have to deal with. But then there's a cultural piece that allows officers to say that they are afraid every time they kill somebody regardless of the circumstances or that doesn't require them to intervene if they see another officer doing something that is just wrong, like something that is culture. You think about what happened with teaching, no matter where you fall in the Ed Reform sort of side of the equation, is that before there was testing, before there were these alternative teacher programs, before charter schools became as big as they were, like what Emma to teach was just very different. And what the Ed Reform community did, whether you agree with it or not, is changed the systems and structures like Sand Sess, what did it mean when you ranked this schools, when you gave schools letter grades? That like changed the face of public education. And I believe that we can do something similar in a way that there's more consensus on with the police. We can actually change the structures and systems in a way that changes who becomes a police officer.”

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

  5. “Right, which isn't a training issue. And trying to think about this notion that we can actually change systems and structures in ways that fundamentally change culture, that some of this is about the structural piece with the police. What does it mean that”

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

  6. “So some of it training, but one of the things about campaign zero, which is a platform that we put out that's important is that it is all or nothing. It is either we implement all of these things that will fundamentally change systems and structures, or there just won't be an impact. Training alone isn't good enough. You think about Tulsa, where we saw Terrence Crutcher killed by the police recently, and we saw everybody saw the helicopter footage of the killing, is that in Tulsa, the use of force policy doesn't actually require that the officers de-escalate. So who cares what they got trained, right? Because the policy doesn't actually require them to implement any de-escalation. So that would be a situation where it would have required the policy, like the rules to be such that they actually had to de-escalate and a training program to be real. But I'm not convinced that we can train people not to be racist.”

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

  7. “And officers are not prepared to deal with somebody in crisis like that. You know, so we have to think about what safety looks like in a completely different way and at scale. And I'll push and say that The amount of energy that was put to create these systems that disproportionately disadvantaged people like redlining, right? Like you think about public education and the history of how underfunded public school systems were for so long, that we have to put that same energy into undoing some of that mess, like the 94 crime bill. We have to undo that stuff with the same vigor that people did in the first place.”

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

  8. “When they think about black bodies, they think about the police as being like, that is how you make people save. That's how you keep people safe. Like, that is what safety means to so many people when they think about how to make black community safe. What we know to be true is that that just isn't real for people. They're like, what would allow them to be safe and functional would be exactly what you're talking about. It would be like having a job and having a house and having options. Like that contributes to people's sense of safety at best a police or response to trauma, like at best, or they help solve crime, that they shouldn't be a part of the crime prevention strategy, right? We should think about crime prevention in a completely different way, about options and access, not about policing or like the response to crime. You think of one in three, one in four, depending on what study you read, people who the police kill have mental health issues, right? Like, what does it look like when we built a society where when you call, if I call 911 right now saying somebody in this room is threatening to commit suicide, an officer's gonna come, that's like a wild thing.”

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

  9. “That was intentional, though. People, like a system designed it to be that way is important. It's not like the under an economy just emerged on its own. It's like people, like you think about the history of redlining, you think about all these things that forced a set of people to live a certain way. Like that, that has consequences. And people chose that to be the case. And what I was saying about the conception of safety is that when we think about where do you feel the most safe, the question is, how do we scale that for people? It's not for some people,”

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

  10. “That's just the reaction, though. But the question wasn't about weighing the options, it's about where do you feel the most, right?”

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

  11. “certain segment of the country. So this is about safety. What does safety look like? And if I ask you where you feel the most safe, it's not in a room full of police. It's in a room where people care about you, where people love you, where there's food and shelter, where there's love, like that's what safety is. And then the question for us becomes, how do we feel?”

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

  12. “That changes the way that people function in space, right? That that has an impact. And then that breeds a certain type of conflict in places. And then we see the manifestation of that. So that's like institutional, that was intentional in cities across the country, including cities like Chicago, in cities like Baltimore. And also mindful that with community violence in the legal economy, there's a way to deal with conflict, that in the legal economy, if I disagree with you, I call your manager, I file a lawsuit, I file a complaint. Like in the illegal economy, which so many people have been forced into by factors beyond their control, that there's only one way to deal with conflict, and that's violence. So if we don't help transition people out of the illegal economy to the legal economy at scale and in ways that make sense, like we will always have this problem that anything else will just be a band-aid, when we think about police violence, what we know to be true is that people are using, the police are using their power in ways that disproportionately disadvantage.”

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

  13. “Yeah, so when we talk about community, so these two issues, police violence and community violence, both important issues, important differently, but important nonetheless, when we think about community violence, I'm mindful that so many communities were designed to be a certain way, right? So what does it look like when you impoverish people in a certain way, like put them in economically disadvantaged parts of cities when you stacked them on top of each other in housing projects, when you make sure that they have to travel an hour one way to, like, did that actually change? To get to work.”

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

  14. “As soon as school opened, so I'm like, you know, trying to get to school early, it's like six o'clock in the morning. I get pulled over by an officer and he approaches my window with his gun drawn and he's like cussing and he is like really intense and I'm, you know, really afraid of the principal at this point. So I'm like just trying to get to school. So the prince, the cop is being really crazy and I'm saying to him like, it's okay. It's okay. Calm down. It's okay. So we get him calmed down and he, you know, gets hisself together. I don't even get a warning. I go to school, pick up the thing I need to pick up and then get back. And when that happened to you, I remember telling people and I thought that I was like, that never happened. I hadn't heard people talk about that happening as much. I thought I was like the only person. Now, like, you know, since the movement, I realized that the police have been abusing their powers in large ways for a long time. Whereas I thought these were sort of like outlier events that I'd heard about before, but I just never heard about them at scale.”

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

  15. “Getting that Tanahasi probably says it best about Baltimore is that which you what was so real and what was so felt was the fear, right? So I remembered what it was like to walk home from school when we lived with my grandmother in one part of the city and like not walk certain places, not walk home certain ways because you felt like it was going to be dangerous and not to drive certain ways. The fear was so present. With the police, actually I got the talk like everybody got the talk got the talk around like, you know, if you see the police just be, you know, don't do anything that might make them think you are dangerous. But I remember getting pulled over in 2009. So I know we haven't gotten there yet, but I opened up an after-school center in Baltimore after college and after I taught. And I left something on the, or somebody, one of our staff members had left something on the lunch table. So like, I needed to go get it.”

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

  16. “She has now. Yeah, yeah. I'm 31, so we've missed a lot of time together So, trying to figure that out. And she actually is close to my grandparents on my father's side, or my grandmother on my father's side. So yeah, so if she's around and trying to figure out what it means to have a relationship with her, my sister and I are really close, so my sister has two kids who are five and three. And a husband, and I just was with them yesterday over the weekend, and they're great. So it's good. And we both grew up and became middle school math teachers completely crazily. So from Baltimore, went to Bowdoin, which was a grade school in Maine. Maine is a...”

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

  17. “Yeah, so I think she spent a lot of time in this. You know, we don't have a super close relationship. I have a sister, so my sister is a year and a half older. She remembers my mother leaving in a way that I don't. I just know what it's like to grow up without a mother around. But me, my father, my sister really close. So my mother's back and we're trying to, you know, we're trying to figure out what does it mean to have a relationship now that I'm 31 and she's missed a whole lot and also trying to remember that addiction is a disease, right? That this is like that she needed help, that she didn't have access to when I was three.”

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

  18. “You know, in so many ways I think about what it means to grow up in a community of recovery that I saw my father in NA and mentoring people and being a sponsor for so many people and going to meetings my entire childhood so I saw so many people put their lives back together in ways that they didn't believe that they could and that has stayed with me because I know the power of recovery. Like I know the power of seeing people put things together again.”

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

  19. “Yeah, no, it's an honor to be here at the IOPE. I remember that first DM on Twitter that I got from you, which is how we met. And the seminars have been great to meet so many people, and they continue to get pushed in the work. It's also interesting to be here in the middle of the movement, you know, like the movement is very much a still living, present thing. We just met with Hillary Clinton on Friday, and I'll be the first time I'll be talking about it really we'll be here at seminar tonight, so that's exciting. You're born and raised in Baltimore, like from Baltimore, both my parents are drug addicts. My father raised us. My mother left when I was three. She just came back about a year ago.”

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