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In episode three of Making of an Activist we discover that after stints in Baltimore and Harlem Children’s Zone, DeRay Mckesson heads to Minneapolis to lead the human capital department for Minneapolis Public Schools. In the safety and security of a career-defining role, DeRay watches the immediate aftermath of Mike Brown’s brutal murder at the hands of a police officer in Ferguson and simply cannot sit still. There is no going back for DeRay, we discover what sparked his drive down to Ferguson, and how life changed forever. Expert and historical context provided by Harvard Professor Brandon Terry, and others. We learn more about what came before the death of Mike Brown and the systemic issues of policing in the US.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Robin, Brandon Terry, Calvin, DeRay Mckesson, Wesley Lowery, News, Interviews, Travon Free

Interviews  00:16

It was just really with these killings, it was like, we can’t have this. This is not okay. There was an indignity and leaving his body out that that the people in the community saw it as an insult and to their eternal credit, they found that indignity and tolerance and rebelled. Twitter was like, they’re lying to you. They’re trying to kill us. People need to come down. There was growing outrage tonight after an unarmed African American teenager was shot and killed by police in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri.  The shooting sparked a furious reaction. Police responded in force, brandishing assault rifles.

 

Travon Free  01:50

This is the third and final episode of The Making of an activist, and I’m your host. Travon Free, it was 2009 when DeRay made the move back to Baltimore to start an after school program.

 

DeRay Mckesson  02:06

Baltimore is like, always my first love. You know what I mean? New York will always be a hotbed of talent. People will always move there. I just saw people not moving back home. People weren’t going to Baltimore. People weren’t coming back. People weren’t thinking Baltimore as a place where we recruited the best and brightest, and I wanted to do that. It was like, if I love Baltimore, I can do my best work there. So I went back and opened up the After School Center. And that was that was an easy choice.

 

Travon Free  02:29

DeRay was back in his hometown community and laser focused on supporting kids the after school program. He started what’s called Higher Achievement, and he thought about it constantly.

 

DeRay Mckesson  02:39

I woke up and went to work. It was tunnel vision.

 

Travon Free  02:42

Higher achievement. Shared facilities with a public school, and DeRay says he and that school’s principal didn’t always get along, which is helpful context for this next story.

 

DeRay Mckesson  02:52

So somebody left one of our kids IEPs on the cafeteria table.

 

Travon Free  02:58

An IEP is a confidential document about students, learning needs and goals.

 

DeRay Mckesson  03:03

I remembered it in the middle of the night like I was like, oh my god, I think somebody did it, and the principal hated me. So I was like, if he walks in in the morning and sees this kid’s IP from our achievement on the table, it’s gonna be hell. So I wake up really early. I’m wearing like, a hoodie, a Bowdoin hoodie, some shorts, some flip flops, and I just like, need to get to school. And I know the custodians, because we had to mock the floor every night, so we were close to them. And I’m like, I just need to be there when the school opens, because if he, like, it’s just gonna be bad.

 

Travon Free  03:35

So DeRay gets in his car and starts driving to school.

 

DeRay Mckesson  03:38

So, and I’m not even speeding, but I see this officer, like, sort of weirdly behind me, and this is like, I’m gonna have to drive through a really wealthy part of the city, and I pull myself over. So I pull over, and I’m looking for my license, and he comes up to the window. The officer comes to the window with his gun drawn, and he’s like, Bucha, hands on the thing today, he’s like, screaming, and I’m like, it’s early. It’s like, 6am and he’s like, pointing his gun at me. And all I say is, like, it’ll be okay. It’s okay. It’s like, I’m like, trying to calm him down, because he’s so intense. So he runs myself. I’m not speeding. Like, he’s like, oh, you know, misunderstanding some like, some crazy mind you, gun this pointed at me. And then as I drive to go to school, he pulls up next to me. I’m like, What am I? Like? Leave me alone. He’s like, oh, I see it’s like, your birthday, so you’re gonna have your birthday. I’m like, get out of here.

 

Travon Free  04:28

DeRay’s experience with the police that morning may not surprise you. You might even have a similar story yourself. I know I do, but before the Black Lives Matter, protest made the problem of racist and aggressive policing common knowledge. Outrage about this kind of thing was pretty much contained to black people who dealt with it firsthand. But Deray knew that what had just happened to him wasn’t right, and being DeRay, the first thing he did was turn to his community.

 

DeRay Mckesson  04:53

And I’ll never get calling one of my at the time like she’s sort of like a like an aunt to me. I call her because she worked in the State’s Attorney’s Office. And I’m like, you know, this thing just happened. I can’t believe it’s pulled. It’s kind of me. And her advice is, like, Deray just like, let it go. She’s like, it happens sometimes. Like, there’s really nothing you can do about it. This is and I’ll never forget that. You know, I would I in my work today. I’m like, I would never tell people that. But that was, like, my only experience with, like, a really rogue officer, you know, and that happened the time that I was in the after school program.

 

Travon Free  05:28

This was DeRay’s first experience with a really rogue officer. But it wouldn’t be his last. In this episode, we’re following Deray up to his biggest turning point yet, the moment he decides to leave home and join the Black Lives Matter protest in Ferguson, Missouri. But at this point in the story, DeRay is still a young educator living and working in Baltimore, and he certainly isn’t alone in his experience as a black man dealing with the police.

 

Wesley Lowery  05:56

I think that growing up as a young black man, even growing up in a more suburban place, not unlike Ferguson, Missouri, there was always a relationship between my blackness and the police.

 

Travon Free  06:12

This is Wesley Lowery. He’s a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author who has written extensively about Ferguson police violence and race in America, I also know Wes and I love him dearly. But well before he and DeRay met on the streets of Ferguson, Wesley was also grappling with the knowledge that a traffic stop for him could be dangerous in a way that it just wasn’t for his white peers.

 

Wesley Lowery  06:33

I think for a lot of people, especially a lot of white people coming into this era, they couldn’t imagine that these things were true of the police. Well, for me, it really wasn’t that much of a stretch to imagine that the police might behave this way or treat people this way.

 

Travon Free  06:53

In 2008 President Barack Obama was elected, and for many Americans, especially white Americans, it felt like maybe America had finally solved racism once and for all. This was definitely not true, obviously, but Obama’s election did set the stage for a dramatic shift in American activism.

 

Wesley Lowery  07:12

In the period prior to Barack Obama, a lot of the activist energy on the left was tied up in anti war activism, climate activism, in pushes around immigration and in the fights over abortion and gay marriage.

 

News  07:35

Just one of many same sex unions today, proudly under the banner of love, but now also under the protection of the US Constitution warming. Representatives from more than 160 nations are signing a historic climate agreement now at the United where. Union members, where community members, where environmentalists were students, where workers. What we see as we progress into the Obama years is a rise of activism around income inequality and the rise of Occupy Wall Street, but then also now this grassroots civil rights movement. […].

 

Wesley Lowery  08:24

Once a Democrat is elected president, suddenly it opens up space for a more robust debate across the Democratic Party and Across the political left about the disagreements within that coalition, and you start to see that the rise of these progressive movements, as they push and pressure the presidency to try to be in a different place.

 

Travon Free  08:55

The election of a black president also activated an intense backlash movement. Birthers tried to undermine Obama with false allegations about his place of birth. Anti immigration sentiment soared, and racist voter suppression tactics flourished.

 

Brandon Terry  09:09

Every time we seem to make progress or be on the cusp of dramatic social transformation, there are really powerful forces in the society that are arrayed against those things.

 

Travon Free  09:22

This is Brandon Terry, the Harvard professor and scholar we’ve heard from throughout the series. He says that this pattern and the reality of racist violence and oppression means that we’re not guaranteed progress, but the people fighting for a better world do have something on their side. The best activists are often

 

Brandon Terry  09:39

This going to be people who have remarkable talents, for thought, for action, for courageous action. They’re going to be people who can intuit the suffering of others and have deep empathy. They’re going to be people who are trustworthy, but I think at the end, and I. Respect to Ray would say something similar he often does when we talk the most profound source of hope is community solidarity. I should say that when you see other people, struggling together, sacrificing together, striving together, learning together, the idea that this is something worth fighting for, that your dignity is tied up in their dignity. These things are easier to live out when you see that solidarity in action.

 

Travon Free  10:39

Community and solidarity is something that DeRay has been learning his whole life, from his dad’s NA meetings when he was a kid to community work he did with other young people in Baltimore, to his college campus to the classroom, he was always finding a way to connect with others and build a better world.

 

Brandon Terry  10:57

I often teach my students that one way to understand Martin Luther King’s claim the night before he is assassinated, that he seen the promised land is not just as a kind of prophetic, idealistic vision, but that he seen the promised land enacted day to day in the movement he was a part of that in seeing people organize their entire lives and often their deaths around a principle that people should not be treated unjustly because of their race, that everyone has a say in the governing of the society they live in. That’s the promise land. Knowing that people do that in the here and now, is the promised land, in a sense, and to me, that’s really the most resilient source of hope.

 

Travon Free  11:57

DeRay quickly moved up the ranks in the Baltimore public school district and then took a job working for the school district in Minneapolis, and in each place, he met people who would become lifelong friends and sources of solidarity. He also was constantly revising his understanding of what the problems in the education system were and how to fix them. Here’s Robin, his first boss from back in Baltimore.

 

Robin  12:20

He got inside and was like, Okay, well, you know, there’s certain things we can do and other things. Was like, Good Lord, how do you fix this? So each of those places along the way, sort of changing his perspective on where the problem really lies, and then what’s possible in terms of a fix, you know, like, how do you make this stuff, right?

 

News  12:42

The unarmed Missouri teen shot and killed by a police officer over the weekend.

 

12:47

His weapon was already drawn when he got out the car, he shot again, and once my friend felt that shot, he turned around, he put his hands in the air, and he started to get down, but the officer still approached with his weapon drawn, and he fired several more shots, and my friend died.

 

News  13:03

1000s of families who crowded the sweltering church to say goodbye to Michael Brown walked in with their hands up. Don’t shoot the gesture that has come to symbolize the protest against police here. Let us not lose sight of the fact that this young man should be doing his second week in college.

 

Travon Free  13:24

And then on August 9 of 2014, 18 year old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. He wasn’t the first black man killed by police around this time, not even the first case that got national attention. Video of Eric Garner being suffocated by police in New York City came out just a week earlier, and people were still reeling from the death of 17 year old tray von Martin, but Michael Brown’s death marked a tipping point in America and into Ray’s own life.

 

Robin  14:58

Was just really with these killings, it was like, we can’t have this. This is not okay. So that was like a line in the sand in a way that things I’m going to be part of this.

 

Brandon Terry  15:46

There was an indignity and leaving his body out, that the people in the community saw it as an insult, as an attack on their dignity, or Michael Brown’s dignity, on the dignity of his family, on the dignity of black people attempt to humiliate and terrorized them, and they were right to see it that way. And to their eternal credit, they found that indignity and tolerance and rebelled.

 

Travon Free  16:17

And in that rebellion was a call for solidarity.

 

DeRay Mckesson  16:20

I remember the first time I heard about Ferguson because it was in the middle of the night. I was sitting on my couch in Minneapolis, and I was looking at CNN, and it was like chaos. It was like things burning, and I was on Twitter, and Twitter was like, they’re lying to you. They’re trying to kill us. People need to come down.

 

Travon Free  16:38

The way people, particularly black people, were able to use social media to challenge the narrative of the police had an impact across the country and eventually the world. It reached DeRay in Minneapolis, and was a clear example of how working within the system, changing school district policy, or supporting kids in the classroom, things DeRay is really, really good at just weren’t going to be enough. Here’s Wesley.

 

Wesley Lowery  17:01

I think that people become activists when they’ve tried everything else they can think of to change something that very often it’s an act of last resort. I don’t know that people fully understand that. I think people think about it in the opposite direction, but I think a lot of activism is born of deep frustration and exhaustion with the systems as they exist, and happens by people who have worked within the system and tried to work within the system, and that system has failed them.

 

DeRay Mckesson  17:35

We tried all other stuff, and nobody listened. We emailed and testified and called and tweeted like we did all those things, and nobody cared, and we shut down the street. Cared. We shut down the street, and all of a sudden, everybody’s like, Oh, this is what’s up, the Qt burns down. And everybody’s like, Oh, we need to pay attention. You’re like, you know what? Like, we tried everything else, you know? And that was true of me too. It was like, We tried everything else. I do know that the only thing that will scale change is the structure, but the only thing that will create the like force to do it as the protest.

 

Travon Free  18:05

And Michael Brown was only 18 years old when a police officer killed him in Missouri, which made it even more clear that if DeRay wanted to support and protect students, he needed to take on the system that was allowing young black men to be killed with impunity.

 

DeRay Mckesson  18:20

It was my responsibility to kids that I think made me go into the street and if not for teaching and after school, like you know, Mike Brown was the same age as my first students, and that meant a lot to me.

 

Travon Free  18:33

And the protests happened quickly, but they didn’t just materialize out of thin air. It still took some time for the people who lived in Ferguson to communicate what had happened to Mike Brown and how police were responding.

 

Wesley Lowery  18:45

We’re in a time where the media itself is much more democratized than it’s ever been before, that you no longer have to navigate gatekeepers in the same way that if you have information and information that is compelling, it can be seen by people across the world, what we see is a local rapper in St Louis taking photos and live tweeting what has happened to Michael Brown, creating the moment in Ferguson and so social media, cell phone cameras and citizens themselves testifying to what they’ve experienced and they’ve seen really creates, empowers an entire national movement.

 

DeRay Mckesson  19:28

Just remember that Black Twitter was literally it was telling it was like two different worlds. CNN was like, crazy, protesters, lawlessness, vandals, looters, and Black Twitter was like, very sane and calm, like, this is nuts that police are trying to kill people. They left his body Street for four hours. They killed my brother like it was like, very clear, and it wasn’t like a fringe at Black Twitter. It was like Black Twitter itself was like, these people are lying.

 

Travon Free  19:53

So DeRay first went to a moment of silence for Michael Brown with some other teachers in Minneapolis, but his sense that he needed to do more was growing.

 

DeRay Mckesson  20:01

And then I stood on the street afterward in Minneapolis with a sign. And then that weekend, I was like, Okay, I’m gonna go.

 

Travon Free  20:08

And luckily, DeRay wasn’t alone. Even people who did not physically go to Ferguson were watching. And the longer the protesters in Black Twitter kept sharing their accounts of what was happening, the more the narrative understood across the country started to shift.

 

Brandon Terry  20:27

I think when the rest of the country saw that their rebellion was met with militarized repression that they did not expect to see on the streets of a small suburb in Missouri, they began to be concerned not only about the original indignity, but about what this meant for the kind of country we’ve created together. What does it mean that people asking for questions, asking the hard question, asking for answers about the death of a teenager at the hands of someone tasked to protect and serve. Are met with the war material of Afghanistan and Iraq coming home to American streets.

 

Travon Free  21:21

Police in Ferguson were using all sorts of equipment that was originally designed for war. They were driving armored vehicles, carrying military rifles, wearing gas masks and body armor, using sound weapons that cause pain and firing tear gas, which legally can’t even be used in a war zone because it’s a chemical weapon. And all of this force was being directed at protesters at home on American streets.

 

Brandon Terry  21:46

And then when the people of Ferguson did not give up in the face of that repression, I think that inspired enthusiasm from all around the world, but particularly from black people in this country and their racially progressive allies to rush to their aid.

 

Travon Free  22:06

It was a moment for action, and action, as DeRay’s, dad, Calvin, says, is always how DeRay has shown his love.

 

Calvin  22:14

I just preached to him that love wasn’t a feeling, it was an action. You know, I tried to teach him the opposite of love wasn’t hate is laziness. He took that literally. Because man dealing with people, he felt like the way he showed people how much he loved them is based on what he did, and he carried it to this day.

 

Travon Free  22:35

So the protesters in Ferguson were calling for people to come join them on the streets. And DeRay said, Yes, I’ll be right there.

 

DeRay Mckesson  22:42

And I was like, the least I like, if I care about kids, at least I can do is go to St Louis for two days. I was like, I can go for Saturday and Sunday. Like, come on, that’s the least. I’m not doing anything Minneapolis.

 

Travon Free  22:51

But it was dangerous. Protesters were being shot at, tear gassed and arrested, and Deray knew he had to tell someone his plan, but not everyone was gonna be the right choice.

 

Calvin  23:02

He said, Daddy, I picked up the phone and called you. And was like, Oh heck no, I called him. My father gonna tell me, don’t go stay on the job and pay it safe. And he was absolutely right. I’d have told him, heck no, don’t go down there with all them people. So he knew not to call me.

 

Travon Free  23:20

But he knew who to call a friend from his earliest days of fighting for kids who had always given him solid advice.

 

DeRay Mckesson  23:27

So I called Donnie, and I was like, Donnie, I think I’m gonna go. Like, what do you think? He was like, if you think you should go, you should go. And by then, I’d already packed the car. I was like, ready. I need somebody to be like, This is not totally crazy. That’s how I went. And, yeah, it changed my life.

 

Travon Free  23:43

As DeRay drove the nine hours down to Ferguson, he had no idea that this weekend trip to march in solidarity would turn into an all consuming, 400 day protest and put him on an entirely different life path.

 

News  23:57

Here at the spot where Michael Brown was killed, hundreds still gathering with calls for an even bigger rally tomorrow at the police station […]

 

Travon Free  24:17

This has been the making of An Activist Podcast. This series is the companion to a new documentary about DeRay’s life and activism. The documentary covers the next chapters in DeRay’s life as an activist. Take it into what happened in Ferguson, and trust me, you don’t want to miss it.