DeRay Mckesson, one of the most renowned voices of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, filed to run for the mayor of the city of Baltimore, one of the biggest cities in Maryland state, late Wednesday.
“Baltimore is at a moment,” Mckesson told the Washington Post in a phone interview Wednesday night shortly after filing a last-minute application.
“I’m running to usher Baltimore into a new era where our government is accountable to its people and aggressively innovative in how it identifies and solves problems.”
The prominent activist waited until the final hour before the 9 p.m., Feb. 3, filing deadline. Now he will enter a race for the Democratic party nomination. The Democratic primaries will take place in April 26 and because the city has far more democrats than republicans, whoever is nominated will be expected to be the next mayor of Baltimore.
DeRay Mckesson, a prominent activist linked to the Black Lives Matter protest movement, filed paperwork Wednesday evening to enter the Democratic primary in the 2016 Baltimore mayoral race.
“I’ve lived through too many lofty promises and vague plans,” Mckesson, 30, said. “We’ve come to rely on a traditional model of politics only to be rewarded with disappointing results.”
However, it might be hard for him to score the nomination. According to media reports, Mckesson will be competing against well-established public servants and politicians in the city.
The list includes former mayor Sheila Dixon, who is leading in the polls, state Sen. Catherine Pugh, and city councilmen Carl Stokes and Nick Mosby as well as 10 other Democratic candidates.
The young activists rose to fame when he became one of the most important voices leading the debate on race and police brutality in the U.S. following high-profile cases of White police officers killing Black unarmed men, women and teens.
Mckesson joined the protests in Ferguson late 2014 and has since become a full-time organizer for the Black Lives Matters movement. Before his activism, he served as a school administrator in public schools systems in Baltimore and Minneapolis.
This content was originally published by teleSUR