I think that what we are doing is building a radical new community in struggle that did not exist before. Twitter has enabled us to create community. I think the phase we're in is a community-building phase. Yes, we need to address policy, yes, we need to address elections; we need to do all those things. But on the heels of building a strong community.

Berlatsky: You also publish—along with Johnetta (Netta) Elzie—an online newsletter about the protest movement called Words to Action. Do you see yourself as a journalist? Or as an activist? Or both? How important is social media to those roles, or to combining them?

Mckesson: I see myself as a protestor who is also telling the story as it happens. The newsletter started—I remember when Trayvon died, I wanted to follow the case, but I didn't know what was fact or fiction. I didn't want that to be the story of Mike Brown. There was so much news; there was so much stuff that was unclear. There were so many questions. The goal was to create a space where people could go to get true news.

Now the movement has spread beyond St. Louis, we cover stories from around the country. So the goal was to be a hub of information. I think the first newsletter that went out had 400 subscribers, and we're at a little bit less than 14,000 now. And we did a text-message alert for the no-indictment—you could sign up to get a text when the decision came out. And 21,000 people signed up in 10 days, which was wild. So the work is focused on, how can we use the tools we have access to in order to create infrastructure for the movement.

And that's what Netta and I have been focused on. None of this takes away from our protesting. We don't put the newsletter out when we're out until 4 in the morning protesting. The trade-off always veers in the favor of protest. It's rooted in the confrontation and disruption that is protest. We want to make structures to empower people. The newsletter is a way to empower people. Because we believe that the truth is actually so damning that we can just tell you all the news that's happening and you should be radicalized. We believe that.

Berlatsky: I saw you talking about Iggy Azalea and issues of appropriation on Twitter a little bit back. That's the sort of cultural issue that I think many people would say is just a distraction, or is just a way for people to express outrage without working for social change. Do you see cultural conversations around Iggy, or similar issues, as a distraction from your work as an organizer? Or are they complementary?

Mckesson: Good lord. Iggy. (laughs) You're really trying to get me in trouble.

When people think about protest, they think that protest is always confrontation, protest is always disruption. But protest is also intellectual confrontation and disruption. So part of what we do when the police speak is that we question. The thing about people like Iggy is that we also question. We question what it means to have your success be on a medium and a platform that was born of black struggle, like hip-hop or rap, and what does it mean that you identify with everything but the struggle part? Which is the Iggy issue.