Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Rashad Robinson Talks ‘From Presence to Power: How to Take on the Fights That Matter and Win,’ Trump, Black Representation, Technofeudalism + More

Transcript

INTERVIEW: Rashad Robinson Talks ‘From Presence to Power: How to Take on the Fights That Matter and Win,’ Trump, Black Representation, Technofeudalism + More · The Breakfast Club

0:01
Speaker 1: Every day. Click up the breakfast Club. You don't finish
0:05
Speaker 1: for y'all dumb morning.
0:09
Speaker 2: Everybody is the DJ Envy just hilarious, Charlamagne de goud
0:12
Speaker 2: We are the breakfast Club. We got a special guest
0:15
Speaker 2: in the building. Yes, indeed we have Robinson. Welcome brother,
0:18
Speaker 2: thanks for having me.
0:19
Speaker 3: Good morning.
0:19
Speaker 4: How are you feeling.
0:20
Speaker 3: I'm feeling good. I'm feeling good. Pub day.
0:23
Speaker 1: Yes, this book Man, From Presence to Power.
0:26
Speaker 5: I got hit to it because I was listening to
0:27
Speaker 5: the Native Lampard with Angela Roy.
0:30
Speaker 1: I loved what you was talking about, so it made
0:31
Speaker 1: me dive into it. I love the title right from
0:35
Speaker 1: Presidence to Power.
0:36
Speaker 5: And you say that we black people confuse presence with power.
0:40
Speaker 1: Can you explain it?
0:41
Speaker 6: Yeah, Presence is visibility, awareness, It's all the things that
0:45
Speaker 6: gets incentivized in this moment, everything from you know, followership, numbers,
0:50
Speaker 6: shoutouts from the stage. Power is the ability to change
0:54
Speaker 6: the rules. And when you mistake presence for power, you
0:56
Speaker 6: can think something has happened that hasn't actually happened. You
0:59
Speaker 6: can misstate a black president for thinking that you know,
1:03
Speaker 6: we're post racial. You can mistake you know, our celebrities
1:08
Speaker 6: trending for the idea that you know, America loves black
1:13
Speaker 6: people as much as America loves black culture. And what
1:15
Speaker 6: we know is that America can love, celebrate, and monetize
1:19
Speaker 6: black culture and hate black people at the same time.
1:21
Speaker 2: So for people that don't know who Rashard Robinson is,
1:23
Speaker 2: break down who you are first before you diving into
1:26
Speaker 2: the book.
1:27
Speaker 4: Who is Rishard Robinson? Where are you from? And then
1:29
Speaker 4: let's talk about how you got into writing this book.
1:31
Speaker 6: Well, for the last twenty years, I've been building movements.
1:34
Speaker 6: I've been working across the social justice space to help
1:37
Speaker 6: win change on a wide range of issues. I grew
1:41
Speaker 6: up on eastern Long Island, the last excellent Long Island
1:43
Speaker 6: Expressway Riverhead, and my family.
1:45
Speaker 3: Got there through the out there. Yeah, but my family's
1:49
Speaker 3: like working class.
1:49
Speaker 6: We got there through the Great migration the farm fields
1:51
Speaker 6: of like southern Virginia to the farm fields of Long Island.
1:55
Speaker 6: And I grew up there where you have to understand
1:58
Speaker 6: power because just did anything done? You were black in
2:02
Speaker 6: a largely white community, and very early on I had
2:05
Speaker 6: to navigate what it meant to live in a world
2:08
Speaker 6: that was not designed for me to win. And I've
2:11
Speaker 6: translated that into the work I do every day, and
2:14
Speaker 6: whether it's working across criminal justice or voting rights or
2:17
Speaker 6: economic justice. I've won a lot of campaigns and we've lost,
2:22
Speaker 6: and along the way, along the way, I've sort of
2:26
Speaker 6: recognized that part of the reason why we lose is
2:30
Speaker 6: that we don't recognize the role of power and we
2:32
Speaker 6: mistake a lot of things that we've achieved a lot
2:36
Speaker 6: of recognition for the ability to actually shift the incentives,
2:40
Speaker 6: to shift the rules. And that's what this intervention is about.
2:43
Speaker 6: That's what this book is about. And my hope is
2:46
Speaker 6: that with it and with the tools inside of it,
2:50
Speaker 6: that it will be applicable for everyday people who just
2:52
Speaker 6: want to find their power in this moment, whether you're
2:55
Speaker 6: fighting a book band in your community or whether you
2:57
Speaker 6: want to get involved in shaping Congress.
3:00
Speaker 7: You were probably okay, it was probably screaming at the
3:02
Speaker 7: top of your lungs on the Black Square movement.
3:03
Speaker 6: Huh. I mean, you know, I led an organization at
3:07
Speaker 6: the time that did not take corporate money, and so
3:10
Speaker 6: I was watching as these corporations were naming my organization
3:14
Speaker 6: saying we're giving money. Corporations that I had been running
3:17
Speaker 6: campaigns against for years, so you knew. I knew right
3:20
Speaker 6: away that it was performative, that it wasn't real. These
3:23
Speaker 6: companies were not shifting their policies, they were not changing
3:27
Speaker 6: their rules, and at the time launching a campaign that
3:30
Speaker 6: was called beyond the statement, you know, are you going
3:32
Speaker 6: to change your rules about hiring formally incarcerated people? Are
3:35
Speaker 6: you going to change your hiring practices? And over time
3:38
Speaker 6: we saw that these companies were not serious, but many
3:42
Speaker 6: folks took the money and thought that there was change happening.
3:45
Speaker 6: And I think what we have to recognize is the
3:49
Speaker 6: things that we've done to walk into this mess that
3:51
Speaker 6: we are in are not the things that are going
3:53
Speaker 6: to help us walk out of it.
3:54
Speaker 5: You know, I'd love to hold from presidence of power concept,
3:57
Speaker 5: and I feel that often on social media you said,
4:00
Speaker 5: you know, I guess some people would call it, you know,
4:02
Speaker 5: Twitter activism, But just because you're viral and have a
4:05
Speaker 5: presence on social media doesn't mean it's actual power. Right,
4:09
Speaker 5: So what's the biggest mistake people make by confusing representation
4:14
Speaker 5: with actual power.
4:15
Speaker 6: Well, you know, we end up not winning real things,
4:20
Speaker 6: or we think we've won something and we can't hold
4:22
Speaker 6: on to it, it slips away very quickly. And so
4:27
Speaker 6: the the idea of sort of going viral on platforms
4:33
Speaker 6: that we don't own, designed by people who actually don't
4:36
Speaker 6: want us to win in the first place, is already
4:39
Speaker 6: a setup. There are not rules to these platforms, right.
4:42
Speaker 6: Our cars are not safe because the auto industry is benevolent.
4:45
Speaker 6: They are safe because there are rules and regulation that
4:48
Speaker 6: people have.
4:48
Speaker 3: Won over time.
4:49
Speaker 6: When you go into the supermarket and you look at
4:52
Speaker 6: the back of a label of a food product, you
4:56
Speaker 6: see a whole bunch of things on it that our
4:58
Speaker 6: result of people fighting and winning. And so we don't
5:00
Speaker 6: even have rules on social media about how these platforms
5:03
Speaker 6: are designed. And as someone who's fought these platforms and
5:06
Speaker 6: also tried to fight for regulation, I know that there
5:09
Speaker 6: are designed for us to stay on there and fight
5:12
Speaker 6: amongst each other.
5:13
Speaker 3: They are designed.
5:14
Speaker 6: You know, when I testified in front of Congress about
5:17
Speaker 6: you know, social media platforms, I testified next to the
5:20
Speaker 6: Facebook whistleblower who had all these papers about the ways
5:25
Speaker 6: in which they've set up the algorithms to keep you fighting.
5:28
Speaker 6: They monetize it because they can place ads next to it.
5:32
Speaker 6: If we stay on longer if we share more. And
5:35
Speaker 6: so it is by design, and so you know, you
5:38
Speaker 6: may think that you're making a little bit of money,
5:40
Speaker 6: you may think that you're going viral, but over time,
5:43
Speaker 6: they're going to change the algorithm. The minute that we
5:46
Speaker 6: get a little bit of progress, they're going to change
5:49
Speaker 6: the system. And so what I want to do is
5:51
Speaker 6: I want to help us begin thinking about how we
5:54
Speaker 6: change the environment. And that's not just about corporations. That's
5:57
Speaker 6: also about the Democratic Party. I've watched the right wing
6:02
Speaker 6: change how their politicians have to operate, change the incentive structure.
6:08
Speaker 3: And so I'm not here.
6:10
Speaker 6: To say we we vote just because or we follow
6:14
Speaker 6: just because. I'm saying we have to change the air
6:16
Speaker 6: and the water for the politicians. And that looks like
6:19
Speaker 6: what the right wing has done. They wear their caps
6:22
Speaker 6: and they wear their jerseys. You go into the gym
6:24
Speaker 6: and they will turn change the channel to Fox News.
6:28
Speaker 6: They have created an incentive where their politicians have to
6:31
Speaker 6: follow them, and I think we have to do some
6:33
Speaker 6: of that as well, because we're not going to be
6:36
Speaker 6: led by those that are currently in office.
6:41
Speaker 1: Is power morally neutral?
6:44
Speaker 6: No, power is not morally neutral. And the you know,
6:49
Speaker 6: they are all different types of power. But you know,
6:52
Speaker 6: when I think about sort of the work to both
6:57
Speaker 6: understand power, build power, and then practice power, it absolutely
7:03
Speaker 6: isn't morally neutral. I mean, we watch we look at
7:05
Speaker 6: what Donald Trump is doing right now, and that looks
7:09
Speaker 6: very different than people that we might put in office.
7:13
Speaker 1: But I think, could that power in the right hand
7:16
Speaker 1: be good? Absolutely?
7:19
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, that's what we want, right, that's what we want.
7:22
Speaker 6: I mean, we want power, Like the fact of the
7:25
Speaker 6: matter is is that we should strive to have the
7:28
Speaker 6: type of power that changes rules, that changes the incentive
7:31
Speaker 6: structure of the criminal justice system, that changes how banks operate,
7:35
Speaker 6: that changes how things And we've won things over time,
7:39
Speaker 6: and then we can sometimes lose them and we can
7:41
Speaker 6: sometimes have backlash. The backlash that we're experiencing right now
7:46
Speaker 6: is a direct result of what we've won. We want
7:49
Speaker 6: a lot of things over the course of twenty seventeen,
7:52
Speaker 6: twenty sixteen into twenty twenty, and now we're experiencing backlash.
7:56
Speaker 4: And what do we want that power?
7:57
Speaker 6: Right?
7:57
Speaker 4: We talk about it, but do we really want it?
8:00
Speaker 6: Right?
8:01
Speaker 4: I'm gonna tell you, we say we want it right.
8:03
Speaker 2: We talk about the social media app right and you
8:05
Speaker 2: just talk about the app that we're.
8:07
Speaker 4: All on that we don't own, that's not designed for us.
8:09
Speaker 2: There's a brother that owns a social media app and
8:13
Speaker 2: we don't.
8:13
Speaker 4: Support a lot of us. Well we do, a lot
8:15
Speaker 4: of us do, but the.
8:16
Speaker 2: Community doesn't support it like we support these other apps,
8:19
Speaker 2: Facebook or Instagram or x.
8:21
Speaker 4: Right, you look at HBCUs.
8:23
Speaker 2: We do support them, but we don't go all out
8:25
Speaker 2: for our HBCUs like they go out for all these
8:27
Speaker 2: other schools out there. When you talk about clothing brands, right, yeah,
8:30
Speaker 2: we don't support our clothing brands like people support the guccies, Defendy's,
8:34
Speaker 2: the Bosses, the Levi's.
8:36
Speaker 4: And all that.
8:36
Speaker 2: So we say we want it, but when it comes
8:38
Speaker 2: to somebody in our community that designs it.
8:41
Speaker 6: It takes a lot for us to follow, to support
8:43
Speaker 6: and to support absolutely, I mean, and that's also by design.
8:47
Speaker 3: We live. We live in a in a.
8:50
Speaker 6: Society that does send us constant messages to you know,
8:55
Speaker 6: perhaps not support one another, to fight amongst each other.
9:00
Speaker 6: Part of what I've done with this book and try
9:01
Speaker 6: to do with this book is there's nine exercises at
9:04
Speaker 6: the end of the chapters. Because there's a lot of theory,
9:07
Speaker 6: and there's some definitions, but I wanted everyone at the
9:11
Speaker 6: end of it to be able to do something that
9:12
Speaker 6: I talk about is find your power. So it's about
9:15
Speaker 6: finding your power in the singular and through those you
9:18
Speaker 6: can take the exercises and really sort.
9:20
Speaker 3: Of dig into.
9:24
Speaker 6: What do I have at my disposal, what am I
9:26
Speaker 6: not using, what am I not sort of leaning into?
9:29
Speaker 6: And then how do I find my power in the plural,
9:32
Speaker 6: how do I sort of understand my people find my people?
9:37
Speaker 6: And I do want us to ask those questions and
9:40
Speaker 6: dig into those questions, perhaps about what am I not supporting,
9:45
Speaker 6: what am I not leaning into, how do I engage differently.
9:48
Speaker 6: I also have one of the most important chapters in
9:51
Speaker 6: the book to me is the chapter on profiteering, because
9:54
Speaker 6: I do think we do lean into the system of profiteering.
10:00
Speaker 6: And I don't talk about profiteering just about money. Profiteering
10:03
Speaker 6: is also about hierarchy. Stephen Miller is one of the
10:08
Speaker 6: biggest profiteers, and I don't think he's in it for
10:10
Speaker 6: the money. I think he's in it because he wants
10:12
Speaker 6: his kids to have access to things and your kids
10:16
Speaker 6: not to. And so when we talk about profiteering, and
10:19
Speaker 6: we talk about sort of how these rules are designed.
10:22
Speaker 6: We do have to disrupt these rules, and I think
10:24
Speaker 6: when we do disrupt them, when we do disrupt the challenges,
10:27
Speaker 6: more people will follow, more people will engage.
10:30
Speaker 3: And that's the role.
10:33
Speaker 6: We don't need everyone for the march, the civil rights movement.
10:37
Speaker 6: Not everyone march, not everyone engage. We need enough of
10:40
Speaker 6: the right people focused on enough of the right things
10:43
Speaker 6: in order to actually make the type of change possible.
10:46
Speaker 6: And when we win, that is reinforcing, more people will follow,
10:50
Speaker 6: more people will engage, and I think that is part
10:54
Speaker 6: of I think the work of disrupting this current trend
10:57
Speaker 6: that we're in, the current challenges that we're facing up.
11:01
Speaker 7: But speaking of that, you talk about magical thinking, Yeah,
11:04
Speaker 7: you know what, can.
11:05
Speaker 5: You break that down?
11:06
Speaker 6: Magical thinking is sort of the stories that we tell
11:09
Speaker 6: ourselves that are not true. Like if you're not at
11:12
Speaker 6: the table, you're on the menu, and you can be
11:14
Speaker 6: both at the table and on the menu at the
11:16
Speaker 6: same time. The stories like the moral arc of history
11:20
Speaker 6: bends towards justice, we actually have to bend it. Donald
11:23
Speaker 6: Trump is a perfect example that it doesn't just bend.
11:26
Speaker 6: It's not automatically. Progress doesn't automatically happen, but there are
11:30
Speaker 6: all these stories that were almost incentivized to believe that
11:34
Speaker 6: can sometimes, you know, keep us tired or relaxed or
11:40
Speaker 6: not sort of on our front foot about what is
11:43
Speaker 6: happening in the world. And magical thinking is part of
11:47
Speaker 6: one of the reasons why I wrote this book because
11:49
Speaker 6: after the twenty sixteen election, I was going to all
11:52
Speaker 6: these meetings and watching people act like they did not
11:56
Speaker 6: just get surprised by a Trump victory, and we're acting
11:59
Speaker 6: like they knew what to do now that he was
12:01
Speaker 6: in office. And I was watching people walk into the
12:04
Speaker 6: Trump election like it was George W. Bush three point zero,
12:08
Speaker 6: designing what they were going to do next, not thinking
12:10
Speaker 6: that we were walking into an authoritarian regime.
12:13
Speaker 3: And many of.
12:14
Speaker 6: The people who lost really badly were trying to then
12:17
Speaker 6: show up as the resistance. And I and even watching
12:22
Speaker 6: going to the Obama White House as they were sort
12:24
Speaker 6: of wrapping up going to meetings about criminal justice, and
12:27
Speaker 6: they were celebrating things that they were just announcing, and
12:30
Speaker 6: I was like, Jeff Sessions is about to become the
12:34
Speaker 6: attorney general, how is any of this safe? And they
12:37
Speaker 6: were like well, we've made the type of culture change.
12:39
Speaker 6: We changed things and they actually obviously didn't. And so
12:44
Speaker 6: going to those meetings, going to meetings with Chuck Schumer
12:47
Speaker 6: and Senator Schumer and having him say to me and
12:51
Speaker 6: other activists, don't worry about Jeff Sessions becoming Attorney general.
12:56
Speaker 3: I can work with him.
12:57
Speaker 6: We work out together in the gym. Right, those were
13:01
Speaker 6: the things that we were hearing, and it was just
13:03
Speaker 6: one more recognition that we needed to not just run campaigns.
13:08
Speaker 6: And over those years I ran campaigns. I led the
13:11
Speaker 6: largest boycott in American history, taking on Facebook. I led
13:16
Speaker 6: campaigns to force credit card companies to stop processing fees
13:20
Speaker 6: for white nationalist groups. But if we but we actually
13:24
Speaker 6: had to change some of the ways that people think
13:26
Speaker 6: about power. And the goal here is to make that
13:29
Speaker 6: intervention in ways that people can understand and people can use.
13:32
Speaker 6: And whether you're just just starting out just wondering what
13:36
Speaker 6: you can do, or whether you're a season activist, I
13:39
Speaker 6: think there's something in here for everyone.
13:41
Speaker 5: You know, you're right about power instead of just progress. Yeah,
13:45
Speaker 5: what's what's the difference.
13:47
Speaker 6: Well, power allows us to actually win progress. Power is
13:52
Speaker 6: being able to dictate what happens being able to force
13:56
Speaker 6: decision makers to do things that they don't want to do.
13:59
Speaker 6: I Ope the book up with Hurricane Katrina, which I
14:01
Speaker 6: think is really important because it really does show the
14:05
Speaker 6: difference between presidence and power. Right, Kanye West had probably
14:10
Speaker 6: the most visible sentence in that sort of moment of
14:14
Speaker 6: George Bush doesn't care about black people, And there was
14:17
Speaker 6: no movement or infrastructure to take those sort of very
14:20
Speaker 6: visible words and translate it to anything else. But while
14:24
Speaker 6: all that was happening, Mike Pence, then a congressman not
14:28
Speaker 6: vice president yet twenty years before Project twenty twenty five,
14:32
Speaker 6: was at the Heritage Foundation, which created Project twenty twenty five.
14:37
Speaker 6: He was in late night meetings where after the levees broke,
14:40
Speaker 6: they divided up New Orleans, they privatized it, and they
14:45
Speaker 6: put in motion the work to make it impossible for
14:48
Speaker 6: so many people to come back into so many people
14:51
Speaker 6: to recover. So, while we had we were very present
14:54
Speaker 6: on Telethon's Folks Giving charity, they were working for structural change,
15:00
Speaker 6: actually changing the rules. And so the difference between presence
15:03
Speaker 6: and power is oftentimes a difference between having charity versus
15:06
Speaker 6: structural change. It's the difference between being able to be
15:10
Speaker 6: heard versus being heated.
15:12
Speaker 5: So presence and progress can really never equate the actual power.
15:17
Speaker 6: I mean, progress is a result of having power. People
15:21
Speaker 6: who have power win progress, and we see when our
15:25
Speaker 6: opponents have have power, they get progress for their side.
15:30
Speaker 5: But I feel like progress is when somebody people be like, oh,
15:33
Speaker 5: we got we got the first black Oh that's representation, okay,
15:38
Speaker 5: but people call that progress.
15:39
Speaker 6: People people do call that progress, And I and I
15:41
Speaker 6: think that, like you know, the New York Police Department
15:46
Speaker 6: can be as diverse as ever, that doesn't necessarily mean
15:50
Speaker 6: black people having a better experience. I don't think that
15:54
Speaker 6: things will change without diversity, but diversity alone will not
15:58
Speaker 6: change things. And then when we mistake diversity for actual
16:02
Speaker 6: structural change, that's once again sort of mistaking presence for power.
16:06
Speaker 7: Do you think in twenty twenty six, with all of
16:08
Speaker 7: the performative stuff that you see in activism, we actually
16:11
Speaker 7: have the leaders that will make the real change you're
16:14
Speaker 7: talking about and not just get stuck in a performative
16:17
Speaker 7: like in a real way.
16:18
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think part of what we have to recognize
16:22
Speaker 6: is that we need more people on the playing field.
16:25
Speaker 6: This cannot be about expecting some leader, individual leader, an
16:28
Speaker 6: elected leader to show up. What I hope is that
16:31
Speaker 6: more people recognize their role to play and their role
16:35
Speaker 6: in pushing back, and more people have the tools to
16:39
Speaker 6: you know, understand the difference between what's real and what's fake.
16:42
Speaker 6: And my goal is to try to unlock that for folks,
16:45
Speaker 6: because I think if we're waiting for an elected leader
16:49
Speaker 6: to come and save us, you know, it's just not
16:52
Speaker 6: going to happen. And what I've seen on the right
16:54
Speaker 6: is that over the last you know, ten to fifteen years,
16:57
Speaker 6: they have forced their elected leaders to have to change.
17:00
Speaker 6: They've you know, taken people out, made people actually have
17:06
Speaker 6: to change. And what we've watched is politicians who were
17:09
Speaker 6: once considered perhaps institutionalists, like they would follow the rules,
17:14
Speaker 6: have to bend and change, you know, things that were
17:19
Speaker 6: once kind of sacred insider rules. They've changed and they've shaped,
17:24
Speaker 6: but they've shaped it as a result of the people
17:27
Speaker 6: on their side expecting something different. And so I think
17:32
Speaker 6: for us, particularly for black people, we have to demand
17:35
Speaker 6: something different from our elected leaders. And I'm not just
17:37
Speaker 6: talking I'm talking about the leaders that look like us
17:40
Speaker 6: and the leaders that don't.
17:41
Speaker 3: Look like us.
17:42
Speaker 6: But if you come to our community and ask for
17:43
Speaker 6: our vote, we have to expect you to do something
17:46
Speaker 6: different and we have to expect you to engage differently.
17:49
Speaker 6: And I think that that is going to be part
17:51
Speaker 6: of the work moving forward if we're going to get
17:53
Speaker 6: anything different out of our politicians.
17:54
Speaker 4: How does money play into all it is?
17:56
Speaker 6: Well, money does play. I mean, this is profiteering I
17:59
Speaker 6: think is so oh incredibly central.
18:01
Speaker 2: So people would say that when you talk about power
18:03
Speaker 2: is usually financial.
18:05
Speaker 4: More finances you have, more power you have, That's what
18:08
Speaker 4: people would.
18:08
Speaker 6: Say, right, absolutely, Well, money, money is absolutely connected. But
18:12
Speaker 6: we have a history of winning things even when we've
18:15
Speaker 6: been outspent. We have a history of disrupting systems even
18:20
Speaker 6: when we don't have money. And I think money is
18:24
Speaker 6: a piece of this. But I don't think that overnight
18:28
Speaker 6: we're going to have as much money as the other side.
18:30
Speaker 6: We're not going to outspend them. So we're gonna have
18:32
Speaker 6: to be smarter, We're gonna have to be more strategic.
18:36
Speaker 6: And I think that that is about finding and picking
18:40
Speaker 6: the right fights. It's about making profiteering unprofitable. Right injustice
18:46
Speaker 6: has to be unprofitable. Behind every injustice, behind every sort
18:51
Speaker 6: of thing that we face, whether it's the mass incarceration,
18:55
Speaker 6: whether it's what the banks do to us, there is
18:58
Speaker 6: someone profiting from it.
19:00
Speaker 2: Now, how do you feel about Well, you look at
19:02
Speaker 2: let's say Donald Trump, how he uses his power right now.
19:05
Speaker 4: He uses his in a negative way, but he uses
19:07
Speaker 4: his power.
19:08
Speaker 2: I feel like, regardless who's in office, we never use
19:13
Speaker 2: our power the way he uses his. He's gonna take
19:15
Speaker 2: care of home, He's gonna take care of ours. I
19:17
Speaker 2: feel like we have to beg for that. Beg for
19:19
Speaker 2: somebody to say this isn't right. Beg because I think
19:22
Speaker 2: we a lot of times look at that's not right.
19:25
Speaker 2: What are they gonna think? We heed his first date
19:28
Speaker 2: signing and throwing pins in the stands.
19:30
Speaker 3: We have a lot we play by.
19:33
Speaker 6: We play by an old set of rules that were
19:35
Speaker 6: not designed for us to win, and I think Donald
19:37
Speaker 6: Trump has proven that you can disrupt those rules. I
19:40
Speaker 6: remember back during the Obama administration, I was working with
19:43
Speaker 6: a group of formerly incarcerated leaders and we were working
19:46
Speaker 6: to ban the box, the box that gets yeah you
19:49
Speaker 6: have to check for employment that says were you incarcerated
19:53
Speaker 6: or not? And if you check the box that you've
19:56
Speaker 6: been incarcerated.
19:57
Speaker 3: You don't get the job. If you lie, you the job.
20:00
Speaker 6: And then a month later they find out. And so
20:03
Speaker 6: these leaders, we we built this campaign, We had you know,
20:08
Speaker 6: tens of thousands of people signed petitions.
20:10
Speaker 3: We show up to the White House.
20:11
Speaker 6: We are out in front of the White House with
20:12
Speaker 6: the petitions, and we did not have a meeting at
20:15
Speaker 6: the White House. But they called and they said we
20:17
Speaker 6: want we want you guys to come in. And then
20:20
Speaker 6: they said we want you Rashad to come in. And
20:22
Speaker 6: I was like, well, I'm not the leader of this effort.
20:25
Speaker 6: I'm just the person that helped build the technology and
20:28
Speaker 6: the petition. But these folks have been working on this
20:31
Speaker 6: campaign for you. Well, we can't clear them to come
20:34
Speaker 6: into the White House because they are formally incarcerated. And
20:39
Speaker 6: I said, well, I won't go into the meeting. And
20:42
Speaker 6: they said, well, we are gonna are you will We
20:45
Speaker 6: tell people, will tell people that you decided not to
20:48
Speaker 6: go into a meeting at the White House. I said, well,
20:49
Speaker 6: I will be on the Amtrak back to New York
20:54
Speaker 6: this afternoon, one way or the other. And they found
20:57
Speaker 6: a way with all the rules that they said they
21:00
Speaker 6: couldn't they found a way to invite the leaders in.
21:04
Speaker 6: Folks like Norris Henderson and others went into that meeting.
21:07
Speaker 6: They told stories to Valerie Jarre and others around what
21:11
Speaker 6: it meant to be denied the ability to take care
21:15
Speaker 6: of their families. They told very clear, compelling stories. I
21:19
Speaker 6: was not in the room. I was on the train,
21:21
Speaker 6: like I said I was going to be. And in
21:23
Speaker 6: forty eight hours later, they put an executive order out
21:27
Speaker 6: to ban to deal with that issue at the federal level.
21:31
Speaker 6: But had we just played by the rules, had I
21:34
Speaker 6: went in that meeting, There's no way in the world
21:36
Speaker 6: I would have told as compelling of a story. It
21:38
Speaker 6: would have been a performative act of a professional activist
21:41
Speaker 6: going in instead. So over and over again, what I've
21:45
Speaker 6: learned is that you don't take the first offer. You
21:49
Speaker 6: push back. If you want to change the rules, then
21:51
Speaker 6: you have to make a different type of demand. And
21:54
Speaker 6: I do think that if we are going to not
21:59
Speaker 6: just be present but powerful, then we have to sort
22:02
Speaker 6: of recognize that rules are oftentimes designed for us to lose,
22:06
Speaker 6: and part of it is that we have to change
22:07
Speaker 6: those rules.
22:09
Speaker 1: You know, algorithms, right, they shape attention?
22:12
Speaker 5: Now are social media companies the most powerful I want
22:17
Speaker 5: to say political institution, but just institution in America that
22:20
Speaker 5: nobody voted for.
22:21
Speaker 6: I mean, the technology that can bring us into the
22:24
Speaker 6: future is dragging us into the past. I look at
22:27
Speaker 6: all of the ways in which the technology you think
22:31
Speaker 6: about AI and algorithms that can decide whether or not
22:36
Speaker 6: you get to rent an apartment, can decide whether or
22:38
Speaker 6: not you get.
22:41
Speaker 3: A callback for a job, and these.
22:45
Speaker 6: By design, can get around all the civil rights laws
22:49
Speaker 6: that we've fought for. The lack of regulation on these
22:54
Speaker 6: platforms has to absolutely change. And this is a problem
22:59
Speaker 6: that we face by both Democrats and Republicans. I have
23:02
Speaker 6: been in the room when Democrats could have moved legislation forward.
23:06
Speaker 3: And they you know, didn't.
23:08
Speaker 6: And we are we are in a time right now
23:12
Speaker 6: where we did not get regulation during the sort of
23:17
Speaker 6: rise of the social media age, right and people said, oh,
23:20
Speaker 6: we helped get Obama elected. It gave us Arab Spring,
23:23
Speaker 6: it gave us all these moments. And then we saw
23:26
Speaker 6: the ways in which the technology was used in the
23:28
Speaker 6: twenty sixteen election. We saw a foreign interference. We saw
23:32
Speaker 6: all the ways that we've talked about earlier around how
23:35
Speaker 6: the algorithms incentivize people to sort of be their worst selves.
23:42
Speaker 1: Cloud the cloud capital is conflict.
23:45
Speaker 6: It's it's conflict and and right, you know, sometimes people
23:50
Speaker 6: will respond, oh, this is about freedom of speech, but
23:54
Speaker 6: the tech companies are deciding what gets amplified. This is
23:57
Speaker 6: not freedom of speech. This is about what they decide
24:01
Speaker 6: to push forward.
24:02
Speaker 3: And so during sort.
24:03
Speaker 6: Of the height of some of that work back in
24:06
Speaker 6: twenty seventeen through sort of twenty twenty twenty one, you know,
24:11
Speaker 6: I was running campaigns against Facebook, trying to take them
24:14
Speaker 6: on and some of the other platforms, and we were
24:16
Speaker 6: winning some stuff along the way. We got some we
24:19
Speaker 6: got some victories. We called for a civil rights audit,
24:22
Speaker 6: We got a civil rights audit at Facebook. And you
24:25
Speaker 6: know what was really interesting is while that happened, while
24:28
Speaker 6: we were sort of in these conversations, the New York
24:31
Speaker 6: Times sort of found out that Facebook had hired this
24:35
Speaker 6: PR firm to attack me in the organization, and they
24:38
Speaker 6: were training placing stories about, you know, to try to
24:42
Speaker 6: undermine what we were doing, even though they was saying
24:45
Speaker 6: that they were coming to the table in good faith.
24:47
Speaker 6: That forced Facebook to actually have to deal with us differently.
24:51
Speaker 6: And so I ended up moving from talking to like
24:54
Speaker 6: senior level folks to having to go directly to being
24:57
Speaker 6: conversation with Mark Zuckerberg and Schryl Sandberg on a regular basis.
25:01
Speaker 6: I remember the first time I went out to Menlo
25:03
Speaker 6: Park to their offices. They wanted me to sign an
25:05
Speaker 6: NDA and I was like, no, like you all were
25:08
Speaker 6: attacking us. So they gave me a big badge to
25:10
Speaker 6: say that said no NDA on it and.
25:14
Speaker 3: War no DA.
25:15
Speaker 6: But I talk about in the book that I learned
25:18
Speaker 6: very clearly the difference between being in a dialogue and
25:21
Speaker 6: a negotiation. Your opponent wants to keep you in a dialogue.
25:25
Speaker 6: They want to keep you talking. They want to say,
25:26
Speaker 6: we were talking to those black folks. How often do
25:28
Speaker 6: you see that we had a meeting. It was a
25:30
Speaker 6: constructive meeting. A dialogue is just their way of placating you,
25:35
Speaker 6: it's their way of being presents. A negotiation is when
25:38
Speaker 6: you have leverage, when they either want something from you
25:41
Speaker 6: or want you to stop doing something. That's when you
25:44
Speaker 6: have actual power. Now you may not win everything in
25:46
Speaker 6: a negotiation, but that's when you are on the path
25:49
Speaker 6: to change. And I think for all of us we
25:51
Speaker 6: have to look at our leaders and our organizations who
25:54
Speaker 6: are representing us. Are they in constant dialogue or are
25:58
Speaker 6: they a negotiation? Are we getting one hundred thousand dollars
26:02
Speaker 6: check from an organization that's spending one hundred million dollars
26:05
Speaker 6: to keep us down? Those are the type of questions
26:08
Speaker 6: that allow us to recognize is something moving us in
26:11
Speaker 6: the right direction or is something holding us back? And
26:14
Speaker 6: I think far too often we are mistaking dialogues conversations
26:18
Speaker 6: with those that are not on our side for actual
26:21
Speaker 6: negotiations where we have the leverage to change rules that
26:24
Speaker 6: will make a difference.
26:25
Speaker 7: What do you think black people's limits are when it
26:29
Speaker 7: comes to disrupting profiteering? Actually, because I know they use
26:33
Speaker 7: it for like war and like prison systems. Right, But
26:36
Speaker 7: whenever you find out about a black person or any
26:38
Speaker 7: type of company involved with any black being an owner
26:42
Speaker 7: or any profitable person from like a prison or jail
26:44
Speaker 7: or whatever, people get really really upset. But then there's
26:46
Speaker 7: a conversation of like, in order for us to fix it,
26:49
Speaker 7: we have to be a part of it. What's our
26:51
Speaker 7: role in disrupting? If we are our own people don't
26:53
Speaker 7: want us to be in those conversations.
26:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think that.
26:59
Speaker 6: I think when you expose profittering, and I've had a
27:02
Speaker 6: lot of experience with this, when you expose it, you
27:04
Speaker 6: give people the facts and the background information, folks are
27:09
Speaker 6: ready to take action with you. I've led campaigns sometimes
27:13
Speaker 6: against black institutions where profittering became very clear and people
27:18
Speaker 6: are like, you know, this organization is taking money from
27:22
Speaker 6: private prisons, and but we do have to make it clear.
27:26
Speaker 3: We have to lay it out for folks.
27:27
Speaker 6: We have to make it plain and help people understand
27:30
Speaker 6: what's at stake. And so I think that's part of
27:34
Speaker 6: the work. And my experience is that the community will
27:40
Speaker 6: follow us if we give them very.
27:41
Speaker 3: Clear things and very clear ways to engage.
27:43
Speaker 5: And I know I keep going back to social media,
27:45
Speaker 5: but it's because I feel like that's where we have
27:48
Speaker 5: a large presence that we think is power, but it's
27:52
Speaker 5: actually not. So I've been reading a lot about techno feudalism, yeah, right,
27:57
Speaker 5: and how the new ruling.
27:58
Speaker 1: Class is these albums, the Musk and the Zuckerbergs.
28:01
Speaker 5: And the sam Altmans, and we know how they're using
28:05
Speaker 5: social media to misinform and disrupt and consolidate power. But
28:08
Speaker 5: yet we're still on those platforms, and a lot of
28:10
Speaker 5: times when I talk to people abou why they're still
28:11
Speaker 5: on those platforms, they say they feel like that's where
28:13
Speaker 5: they can get their messaging out.
28:15
Speaker 3: Right.
28:16
Speaker 5: Can the same tools used to oppress also be used
28:19
Speaker 5: to advance justice and get us power?
28:24
Speaker 3: It depends on how we use it, right.
28:26
Speaker 6: You know, television and movies were not designed for our liberation,
28:32
Speaker 6: but there are ways in which certain types of content
28:35
Speaker 6: advance things. I mean, you think about Birth of a Nation,
28:38
Speaker 6: which was one of the first movies, and right, and
28:42
Speaker 6: so you have. You there's a history on all these platforms.
28:45
Speaker 3: So I think it's not.
28:47
Speaker 6: Being fool to think that by these by the design
28:50
Speaker 6: of these platforms alone is going to produce sort of justice.
28:54
Speaker 6: It's recognizing how we're using them and how and how
28:59
Speaker 6: they are using us. And you know, I met with
29:03
Speaker 6: Elon Musk right after he bought then Twitter, and you
29:08
Speaker 6: know there was all this talk right black Twitter. You know,
29:11
Speaker 6: we had helped to make this company profitable, and all
29:14
Speaker 6: along the way we had been winning changes at the platform,
29:19
Speaker 6: content moderation, other things that were heading into the twenty
29:22
Speaker 6: twenty two election, and then I had to sit in
29:24
Speaker 6: this meeting with this you know, you know, white South
29:27
Speaker 6: African who I think I've never heard him talk about
29:30
Speaker 6: what he feels about Mendela or Desmond Tutu or anyone else,
29:34
Speaker 6: which only makes you think, no, what he actually thinks
29:37
Speaker 6: about them, because any white South African would probably tell
29:40
Speaker 6: a black person I was with Mendela, and so you
29:44
Speaker 6: know that this person, he's talking about how he wants
29:46
Speaker 6: to make Twitter fun again, he's talking about how he
29:49
Speaker 6: wants to make it a public square. And all of
29:52
Speaker 6: that for me was coded language from this sort of
29:55
Speaker 6: South African. Had we won regulation, had we won rules,
30:00
Speaker 6: government rules, structural rules, all of that would have looked
30:03
Speaker 6: much different. And so I am not interested in sort
30:07
Speaker 6: of begging billionaires or begging tech giants to treat us well.
30:11
Speaker 6: I think we actually have to build more power over
30:14
Speaker 6: our elected leaders and our elected officials create a world
30:17
Speaker 6: of consequence if they don't do it, because I do
30:20
Speaker 6: know that had we been able to create more consequence
30:25
Speaker 6: for the elected officials that did not get US regulation,
30:28
Speaker 6: we would have gotten regulation and rules. And part of
30:30
Speaker 6: what I recognize in all of this is that we
30:33
Speaker 6: have to operate differently if we want different things, like.
30:37
Speaker 5: What you talked about on Native Land Tool, you talk
30:40
Speaker 5: about how we exert our energy towards the wrong thing. Yeah,
30:43
Speaker 5: because I agree with that. It's just like I'm tired
30:45
Speaker 5: of y'all podcast monologue. TI do you scream it from
30:48
Speaker 5: the car?
30:49
Speaker 1: Okay? Like about stuff that don't even really matter.
30:53
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean behind every once again, behind every injustice
30:58
Speaker 6: is someone or something profiting from it. And if we're
31:00
Speaker 6: not willing to talk about that, if we're not willing
31:03
Speaker 6: to make it uncomfortable. You know, when I talk about
31:06
Speaker 6: Hurricane Katrina and I talk about the levees breaking, at
31:10
Speaker 6: the heart of it, no one was nervous about disappointing
31:13
Speaker 6: Black people. And if no one is nervous about disappointing
31:17
Speaker 6: your community, it doesn't matter what facts and figures you have.
31:20
Speaker 6: It doesn't matter who gives a great speech, it doesn't
31:23
Speaker 6: matter what tech knowledgy you have. And so part of
31:26
Speaker 6: all of this is creating the right level of energy
31:29
Speaker 6: where folks in power are nervous about disappointing us, and
31:33
Speaker 6: that means that we have to do something different because
31:35
Speaker 6: there are too many people in power that are not
31:37
Speaker 6: nervous about disappointing black people and as long as they're
31:40
Speaker 6: not nervous about disappointing us, we can be loud, but
31:43
Speaker 6: we're not going to necessarily get results.
31:45
Speaker 1: I agree with that, And why do you think we're
31:48
Speaker 1: so quick to go at each other. But meanwhile, you like,
31:52
Speaker 1: in the same week that Elon Musk.
31:54
Speaker 5: Made a trillion dollars, it was that conversation about reasonable
31:59
Speaker 5: doubt being in talk and I saw more people with
32:02
Speaker 5: made smoke for the reasonable that then Elon making a train.
32:05
Speaker 1: Stuff like that blows my mind. It's like we're focused
32:08
Speaker 1: on the wrong things.
32:09
Speaker 3: It's it is it is rather attack ourselves.
32:12
Speaker 4: A lot of time, I feel like you didn't go
32:14
Speaker 4: against the.
32:15
Speaker 6: System, and we and we don't even make the right attacks, right.
32:19
Speaker 6: You know, there are some times where we where we
32:21
Speaker 6: should either call our folks in or call our folks out,
32:25
Speaker 6: and I think that that is.
32:27
Speaker 3: Healthy in any community.
32:29
Speaker 6: But lots of times it's it's it's it's performing on
32:34
Speaker 6: these platforms and and only helping those that actually don't
32:39
Speaker 6: care about us uh and and actually have an agenda
32:44
Speaker 6: to keep us down. It only helps them make more money.
32:48
Speaker 6: And so you know, I can sometimes watch on social
32:51
Speaker 6: media and see folks, you know, sharing mugshots of black
32:55
Speaker 6: people without any context or or you know, and I
33:00
Speaker 6: always ask myself, those are going to travel a lot
33:04
Speaker 6: quicker than any good story about us. So we should
33:09
Speaker 6: be asking ourselves what are we sharing, what are we engaging,
33:12
Speaker 6: what are we uplifting? How are we using our time,
33:15
Speaker 6: and how we using our time effectively on these platforms
33:19
Speaker 6: that are once again are designed to profit off of
33:23
Speaker 6: our pain and are designed to profit off our suffering.
33:26
Speaker 6: It doesn't mean that I'm telling everyone to get off
33:29
Speaker 6: the platforms. What I am telling us is to think
33:31
Speaker 6: about how we're using them and who's profiting on the
33:34
Speaker 6: other side.
33:36
Speaker 7: Right.
33:37
Speaker 1: Wow, from presidence to power, I could sit here with
33:41
Speaker 1: a million more questions.
33:41
Speaker 7: Yeah.
33:42
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
33:43
Speaker 2: The last thing I was going to ask you, I was,
33:45
Speaker 2: you know, is power using those bots for negativity?
33:49
Speaker 4: Like you just said, they did a campaign against you?
33:51
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, we've seen campaigns against the Breakfast Club Charlemagne myself.
33:54
Speaker 2: Is that a power that they use that maybe we
33:57
Speaker 2: should be using. I mean, it's a tax for the
34:00
Speaker 2: bad instead of for the evil, but really displaying the
34:04
Speaker 2: things that they're doing that are not in the way
34:06
Speaker 2: of the people.
34:08
Speaker 6: I think that that can create a lot of awareness,
34:10
Speaker 6: but it's not going to actually change anything.
34:13
Speaker 3: It's not power.
34:14
Speaker 6: And I think, like you know, part of this is
34:18
Speaker 6: like creating a system in a structure where like those
34:22
Speaker 6: type of bots don't actually work anymore.
34:26
Speaker 3: And I think that that's what we have to work
34:27
Speaker 3: on winning.
34:28
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll pick up his book if you're out and
34:30
Speaker 2: about today. Rashad Robinson, thank you for joining us this morning.
34:34
Speaker 2: That matter and win and thank you for joining us.
34:37
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
34:38
Speaker 4: It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning
34:43
Speaker 1: Up, the Breakfast Club.