My vest. My blue vest. I literally wear it every day. I wore it in Ferguson and in Baltimore. I wore it to the White House. I wore it when I met with Hillary, and Bernie, and Senator Warren. I keep getting it patched, I keep fixing it up. But I wear it everywhere.
It’s become a thing, a way people identify me. Which is funny because the only reason I bought it—this was in 2009—is that I made a split-second decision to visit friends in New York City and I underestimated how cold it would be. So I borrowed clothes and a hat, but I needed a jacket. I went to Paragon Sports and bought the vest.
Why do I wear it? It’s light and it’s warm, and I just feel safe in it. Okay, that’s totally irrational, but it’s like a security blanket.
In the early days of the Ferguson protests, the police stayed near their cars. And then one night they didn’t. They were moving into the streets. They boxed us in, and we started running. I was wearing shorts, and my iPhone cord was falling out of my pocket. At that time, we all kept our hands up—like, “hands up, don’t shoot”—and I thought that if I reached for my cord, the police might think I was reaching for a weapon. It hit me that I might die for reaching for my iPhone cord. Right there, I realized I could either be afraid or fight—but not both. And I knew that I needed to do something about that fear. That’s when I started wearing the vest all the time.
~ DeRay Mckesson, activist, organizer, and educator, Baltimore, MD