Black Lives Matter activist running for Baltimore mayor

Civil rights activist and Black Lives Matter member DeRay Mckesson wants to join the system he has battled to fix, announcing on social media that he will run for mayor of Baltimore.

Mckesson, 30, filed his petition just before the deadline late Wednesday and said he will release details of his policy plans in coming weeks.

Mckesson has developed a reputation for activism driven by social media. He was involved in protests in Ferguson, Mo., after the fatal shooting of black teen Michael Brown by a white police officer in August 2014, and was arrested there during a protest marking the first anniversary of Brown's death. He also was involved in hometown protests following the April death of Freddie Gray, who died while in the custody of Baltimore police.

The city has struggled to recover from the riots and crime that followed Gray's death. The police chief was fired and six police officers are facing trial.

"I am not the silver bullet for the challenges of our city — no one individual is," Mckesson said in a statement linked from his Twitter account. "But together, with the right ideas, the right passion, the right people, we can take this city in a new direction."

Mckesson describes himself as the son of two recovered drug addicts. He is an alum of Maine's prestigious Bowdoin College and Teach for America, and has worked as an educator in New York, Minnesota and Maryland. He is on the planning team for Campaign Zero, a movement aimed at ending police violence in America.

"I am running to be the 50th Mayor of Baltimore in order to usher our city into an era where the government is accountable to its people and is aggressively innovative in how it identifies and solves its problems," he said.

Mckesson joins a crowded field of Democratic hopefuls in the heavily Democratic city of more than 600,000 people, almost two-thirds of whom are black. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is not seeking re-election. Well-known candidates include former mayor Sheila Dixon, City Council member Carl Stokes and state Sen. Catherine E. Pugh.

Mckesson, who has almost 300,000 Twitter followers, said too many people believe the city is run by money and political connections and can't be fixed.

"In order to achieve the promise of our city and become the Baltimore we know we can become, we must challenge the practices that have not and will not lead to transformation," he said.