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 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.

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

Some people are more interested in fighting than winning.

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

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.

The history of blackness is also a history of erasure.

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.

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

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.

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

I think the reality is that there's a role for everybody to play in the work of social justice and that we have to organize everybody. That means that Silicon Valley has to be organized, the fashion industry has to be organized, the formerly incarcerated have to be organized, the teachers.

I think that Silicon Valley and technology can play a huge role in redefining what community looks like and how people come together and what authentic relationships look like, but that is not only their burden.

It will always be important that people continue to push on the system from the outside. It will also be important that people make the changes that we know are necessary on the inside.

I'm not a politician. I'm somebody who knows the world can be better, and I'm willing to fight for it.

Systemic change rarely comes overnight.

I actually get very little phone calls. I get way more tweets and texts. My phone rarely rings.

People are more afraid of black unity than black rage.

The police, at their best, do three things; they prevent crime, they respond to crime, and they solve crime. In all three of those buckets, they need the trust of the community to do it, so I believe that if we restore the trust that we will change the way police are experiencing communities and ways that will preserve life and make everyone safer.

I think about all of my students who were math-phobic, who didn't believe they could learn math, who didn't understand, who didn't think they were smart enough, and by the end, they understood that they already had the gifts, and my job was to help them access them, and I believe that.

My father and mother deeply loved me and my sister.

If anything, any success that I have ever experienced has been because people who didn't have to care about me did, and they pushed me to see things in myself that I did not see in myself at the time.

It is one thing to talk about fundraising and another to do it as a candidate, and I have learned so much about how much money it costs to run a campaign and what it means to raise money.

Asking people for money is really different than asking people for their support.

Being mayor is about offering a vision for the city, putting the right people in the right place, and executing that vision.

I've worked in two public school districts, Minneapolis and Baltimore, one as a senior leader. And while we might not always have agreed with the union, and we might have had deep differences, they came to the table.

Laws on hate speech and hate crimes do important work in a world that has been rooted in racism and bigotry since the inception of this country, which was not founded on ideals of justice.

It's important to acknowledge the danger when we provide an academic venue for racism. It's interesting to hear people push the, quote, 'free speech' narrative in this way. They deny the speech of the people who disagree.

I grew up in a world of Officer Friendly. It was just the image I had.

People in power make the path to power. It means that we will always get the same system, and it's one that is not necessarily in the interest of people's lives.

When I reflect on the Colbert interview, it moved so quickly that what we didn't do was define white privilege, and I wish we had done that. White privilege is the benefit resulting from white being seen as the standard, regardless of gender and income.

There are people who have demonstrated their willingness to challenge systems and structures, and then when it comes to elections, some of those same people - I don't know where their fight went. What's interesting to me is to see people lose the revolution when it comes to elections.

For our kids to go to school, they must be alive, and for adults to work, they must not be in jail.

Music helps shape the way people think about the world and act in the world.

I'm a black, gay man, and I should be able to live in a world where I'm able to live in the complexity of my identity in a way that is safe and secure, like everyone else.

The arts scene in Baltimore is really rich and very vibrant. It's one of the untold stories of the city.

When Trump says, 'Make America great again,' he is referencing an era when people were singled out and harmed because of their race and religious beliefs, and when violent enforcement of Jim Crow masqueraded as the will of the people.

Trump wants to take us back to a time when people like him could abuse others with little to no consequence, when people like him could exploit the labor of others to build vast amounts of wealth, when people like him could create public policy that specifically benefited them while suppressing the rights and social mobility of others.

Black people have always been more than our pain. The joy is so much a part of how we have survived and thrived.

A cacophony of whispers is also noise. There are many ways to be heard, and there are many ways to be visible. There are many ways to be seen.

The activism of marginalized people often comes with visibility and being heard. Which can lead people to believe that recognition and awareness is the actual end point. And it is not.

What we know to be true is that comfort isn't always freedom. People confuse the two.

I think Twitter is an incredible platform. I want to see it succeed.

Every fight, I train for the opponent very hard and smart.

In MMA, you can literally cheat over and over again, and it's OK. The media will back you.

If you look at my career, it's been nothing but consistency.

I haven't been given a lot of respect in the division. But you know what? I'm OK with earning it.

I know what I'm capable of when I'm prepared and dialed in.

I miss my family so much, my kids are everything to me.

I came into MMA and I had a strong core and a lot flexibility. I could put myself in a lot of different positions when it comes to scrambling.