Black Lives Matter Activist Running for Mayor of Baltimore

Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson filed to run for mayor of Baltimore on Wednesday night, joining a crowded Democratic primary race hours ahead of the registration deadline.

"It is true that I am a non-traditional candidate -- I am not a former mayor, city councilman, state legislator, philanthropist or the son of a well-connected family," Mckesson said in a Medium post announcing his candidacy. "I am an activist, organizer, former teacher and district administrator that intimately understands how interwoven our challenges and our solutions are."

Known simply as @deray to his nearly 300,000 Twitter followers, Mckesson, 30, is a Baltimore native who rose to prominence during the demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri.

In this presidential cycle, Mckesson has met with both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders as part of a broader effort to lobby for the end of "broken windows" policing and an increase in local oversight of police departments, WBAL TV reports.