Former teacher and school administrator Deray McKesson — who was arrested yesterday while protesting in Ferguson — says the “Black Lives Matter” protests have been successful “in creating a crisis.”

The professional protester, who has also appeared in Baltimore, McKinney, Texas and Charleston, South Carolina, was a guest on “News Nation with Tamron Hall” today. He was asked to respond to criticism from a Daily Beast writer who called the protesters “just destructive and pointless.”

MCKESSON: This work will always be more important than it is popular, and we know that. The other thing is that we won’t undo 400 years of racism in 300 days. We spent a year exposing and convincing, exposing the terror of police violence and telling people that it’s happening here and cities across the country. Now people acknowledge that terror across the country. That is important. People are questioning police narratives in ways they have never done before…

HALL: How would you grade the Black Lives Matter movement at this point and its success?

MCKESSON: I think the movement has been successful so far in creating a crisis that helps people understand the terror of police violence. In that sense, it’s been wildly successful. I think the next steps for the movement are showing people how to end the terror.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, McKesson refused to say when a police shooting is ever justified.

“If someone killed your child, what would it take for you to say it was justified?” he said in response, according to Mediate.