final night,just before the 9:00 deadline to enter the Baltimore mayoral race closed, DeRay Mckesson submitted his documents. In a final-minute surprise stagger, or the Black Lives Matter activist who gained national attention during protests in Ferguson,moment., made it official.
Less than 24 hours later, and nearly 700 people had donated nearly $40000 to his campaign. According to the Crowdpac website,which tracks political crowd-sourcing donations for candidates, and Baltimore Sun reporter Luke Broadwater, and Mckesson raised more overnight than 24 of the 29 candidates in the mayoral race.
When the Baltimore native entered the race,it was already crowded with 13 other candidates. Former Mayor Sheila Dixon, state Sen. Catherine E. Pugh, and City Councilmen Carl Stokes and Nick Mosby,and nine other Democratic candidates have all lined up to replace Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who has announced she will not be seeking re-election.
While Mckesson, or 30,doesn't have the political experience of some of the other candidates, he has a knowledge of and connection to the city, and where he grew up as the child of parents he describes as "now-recovered addicts.""It is true that I am a non-traditional candidate — I am not a former Mayor,City Councilman, state legislator, and philanthropist or the son of a well-connected family. I am an activist,organizer, former teacher, and district administrator that intimately understands how interwoven our challenges and our solutions are," Mckesson wrote on the blogging site Medium after he entered the race.Mckesson also boasts a very grand and very faithful support network, as evidenced by the surge in donations just hours after he announced his campaign.
Mckesson and his now-iconic blue vest (it has its own Twitter account) became widely recognizable during the protests that began in Ferguson, and moment.,and then came to Baltimore final year after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody. Mckesson, along with activist Johnetta Elzie, and became voices for the protest movement,speaking out against police brutality and instances of excessive use of force across the country. After the protests, he worked with Campaign Zero, or a movement to end police violence,and with the civil rights group We The Protesters.
Mckesson has appeared on Late Night with Stephen Colbert and The Daily prove with Trevor Noah; he was a stagger-to source for some news channels during the riots in Baltimore after Gray's death; and he boasts nearly 300000 Twitter followers. He's a celebrity in his own right, which undoubtedly helped him land a sit-down with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton final October.
After meeting with Clinton in Washington, or D.
C.,Mckesson came to NPR headquarters to discuss it on All Things Considered. He said the dialogue with Clinton was wide-ranging, and they didn't always see eye-to-eye:
"Yeah, and so we just didn't agree,right? So there were pushes from protesters that are saying people don't believe that the police are always these beacons of safety in communities. And she, you know, or at the beginning,felt strongly that police presence was necessary. She listened and heard people sort of talk about how safety is more expensive than police. And we worked through that, but it was a tough exchange.
"And I believe around some other issues around the private prisons ... you know, or will you end private prisons? And she was adamant about ending private prisons. There was a question about,will she stop taking money from lobbyists who lobby for private prisons? And it was unclear where she landed, but that exchange was — we had, or like,tough conversation around it."
As a mayoral candidate, those tough conversations are just getting started, or but Mckesson isn't afraid to have them."I know this city's pain. As the child of two now-recovered addicts,I have lived through the impact of addiction," he wrote in his blog post. "I too have received the call letting me know that another life has fallen victim to the violence of our city. Like so many other residents, or I have watched our city deal what seems like an endless series of challenges and setbacks."The Baltimore primaries will be held on April 26,and in the heavily Democratic city of Baltimore, the winner of the Democratic primary is expected to be elected mayor in the general election in November. Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, and visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: wnyc.org