DeRay Mckesson

It really felt at that time like the winds of social change were really blowing, and everybody was on board, right? Or aware of it, you know? Like, peop- like really like dense, deep academic activists became like public figures, right? Like Angela Davis became a public figure.

Alicia Garza, Roxane Gay, and then there was like, you know, obviously there's like DeRay Mckesson in his blue puffy jacket, and then Sean King scamming bitches, but, you know, neither here nor there.

[laughs] You can't have, you can't have it all.

You can't win everything.

The press ran into a related problem, and mostly solved it by inventing a leader that grassroots organizers in Ferguson had never actually elected.

DeRay McKesson, who was not from Ferguson and had no organizing history there before August 2014, became, through sheer volume of media appearances and a rapidly growing social media following, one of the most recognizable names attached to the uprising nationally.

Organizers who had been doing the unglamorous, unpaid work on West Florissant Avenue since the beginning were, by multiple accounts, openly frustrated by this.

And McKesson has faced sustained criticism from local organizers ever since, over credit, over funding, over the basic question of who actually gets to represent a movement that never voted anyone into that role.