Rashad Robinson spent decades confronting technology companies, media executives and political leaders before he wrote a page about any of it. His new book, “From Presence to Power: How to Take On the Fights That Matter and Win,” out July 28 from One World, an imprint of Penguin Random House, begins instead with his childhood in Riverhead, New York, according to an account published by the Daily Californian.
Robinson, described in that account as a social justice leader, strategist and author, opens the book with a memory from the early 1990s: a white assistant principal at Riverhead High School picked seven Black students, promised them $15 each, and brought them to a police station lineup for a robbery suspect, without notifying their parents. Robinson was not one of the seven, but he has said he carried the memory forward as a lesson in who gets treated as available for use, and who gets to decide.
The book’s title marks the distinction Robinson has spent his career drawing. Presence, in his framing, is visibility: a march, a trending topic, an issue’s moment of popularity. Power is the leverage to change the rules and the decisions people in authority make. “The protest is important, but it’s one tool,” Robinson has said. “We won’t have change if people aren’t turning out and engaging. But we’re not going to have change just because people are turning out and just because people are protesting.”
Robinson directed media programs at GLAAD during the fights over marriage equality, then led Color Of Change for nearly 14 years, building it into one of the country’s largest racial justice organizations. He also co-chaired the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder in 2021. Today, Robinson and his team advise foundations, nonprofits and leaders across media, politics and business on turning attention into lasting influence, work that carried him this summer to a stop in San Francisco and a taped conversation broadcast by NewsOne.
The book includes exercises at the end of several chapters, meant to help readers map the incentive structures of the institutions they are trying to change.