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

Summary

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The Breakfast Club – Interview with Rashad Robinson

Episode Date: July 29, 2026
Main Theme: Moving from “presence” (visibility and representation) to true “power” within Black America—what’s required to secure structural change rather than just superficial progress. Robinson discusses key arguments from his new book, From Presence to Power: How to Take on the Fights That Matter and Win.

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Episode Overview

Rashad Robinson, social justice leader and author, joins DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, and Charlamagne Tha God for an in-depth conversation about the distinction between Black visibility and actual power, how social media, profit motives, and political inertia undermine progress, and what real community empowerment could look like. They tackle topics from performative corporate allyship to technofeudalism, Trump-era authoritarianism, and the unglamorous grind of grassroots change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. From Presence to Power: The Core Distinction

• Presence vs. Power
  • Presence: Being seen, heard, or celebrated; social media numbers, trends, and shout-outs.
  • Power: The ability to change rules and incentives—actualized influence.
  • “Presence is visibility, awareness… Power is the ability to change the rules. And when you mistake presence for power, you can think something has happened that hasn't actually happened.” – Rashad Robinson (02:52)
• America’s Contradiction
  • Celebration and monetization of Black culture can—and often does—coexist with abuse and marginalization of Black people.
  • “America can love, celebrate and monetize black culture and hate black people at the same time.” – Rashad Robinson (03:14)

2. Robinson’s Background & Motivation

• Movement Building
  • 20 years in social justice (criminal justice, voting rights, economic justice).
  • Personal context: Grew up on Long Island; Black in a largely white community, learning early the difference between visibility and actual leverage.
• Purpose of the Book
  • To give practical tools and reflections for readers to identify and wield their own power, especially in the face of both local battles (e.g., book bans) and national issues (e.g., Congressional policy).

3. Performative Progress vs. Structural Change

• Corporate and Social Media Activism
  • Critique of corporations’ performative support (e.g., “Black Square Movement,” empty donations, unaltered policies).
  • Social platforms “designed to keep us fighting among each other” and exploit emotion for profit rather than foster real change.
  • “Going viral on platforms that we don’t own, designed by people who actually don’t want us to win in the first place, is already a setup.” – Rashad Robinson (06:26)
• Example: Black leaders and organizations being co-opted or “named” as beneficiaries without actual financial support or changes to hiring practices.

4. Pitfalls of Representation

• Mistaking Representation for Power
  • “You can mistake a Black president for thinking that we’re post racial… our celebrities trending for the idea that America loves black people as much as black culture.” – Rashad Robinson (03:11)
  • Diversity in spaces (e.g., NYPD) doesn’t guarantee better outcomes for Black communities—without structural change, it’s symbolic.
  • “Progress is a result of having power. People who have power win progress. When our opponents have power, they get progress for their side.” – Rashad Robinson (17:28)

5. Magical Thinking & Historical Blindspots

• The futility of believing “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu” or “the moral arc of history bends towards justice” without active participation.
  • “You can be both at the table and on the menu at the same time.” – Rashad Robinson (11:15)
  • “Donald Trump is a perfect example that it doesn’t just bend. It’s not automatically. Progress doesn’t automatically happen.” – Rashad Robinson (11:33)
• Example: Post-Obama White House willed itself into a belief of lasting progress despite looming rollback.

6. The Structure of Profiteering

• Profit and Power
  • Both money and hierarchy perpetuate injustice; Stephen Miller cited as a hierarch seeking privilege over direct profit.
  • “Profiteering is also about hierarchy… he wants his kids to have access to things and your kids not to.” – Rashad Robinson (12:32)
• Disruption Necessary
  • “Behind every injustice… there is someone profiting from it.” – Rashad Robinson (24:37)
  • Success means making injustice unprofitable—a strategic approach for those without financial parity.

7. The Role (and Limits) of Social Media

• Algorithms as Modern Power
  • Tech companies as the “ruling class”—algorithms shape attention, behavior, and even policy subversively.
  • Lack of regulation means civil rights laws can be bypassed via AI and datadriven decision-making.
  • Social media presence is often mistaken for leverage (“techno-feudalism”).
  • “The technology that can bring us into the future is dragging us into the past.” – Rashad Robinson (28:21)
• Dialogue vs. Negotiation
  • "Dialogue" is where the powerful stall real change; "negotiation" requires leverage and the threat of consequence.
  • “Your opponent wants to keep you in a dialogue… A negotiation is when you have leverage. When they want something from you, or want you to stop doing something, that‘s when you have actual power.” – Rashad Robinson (31:38)
• On Black Twitter, Elon Musk, and Regulation
  • Huge cultural impact, but no structural protection: “I am not interested in begging billionaires or tech giants to treat us well. We have to build more power over our elected leaders…” – Rashad Robinson (35:36)

8. Leadership & Accountability

• Don’t Wait for “Saviors”
  • Change must be democratized—don’t wait on politicians or charismatic leaders.
  • “If we are waiting for an elected leader to come and save us, it's just not going to happen.” – Rashad Robinson (22:34)
  • Lessons from the right-wing movement: transforming grassroots pressure into non-negotiable demands for politicians.

9. Redirecting Energy: Internal Solidarity vs. Online Infighting

• Critiquing the Focus of Black Outrage
  • “Why do you think we’re so quick to go at each other… more people mad at ‘Reasonable Doubt’ being in Target than Elon Musk making a trillion dollars… we’re focused on the wrong things.” – Charlamagne Tha God (37:45)
  • Social media amplifies internal dissension rather than outside threats or big-picture injustice.
  • “We should be asking ourselves, what are we sharing, what are we engaging, what are we uplifting... [Platforms] are designed to profit off our pain and suffering.” – Rashad Robinson (38:16)

10. Power: Morality, Tactics, and the Path Forward

• Power isn’t Morally Neutral
  • Same tools (e.g., bots, amplification) can be used for good or ill, but awareness doesn’t guarantee rule change.
  • “A system and a structure where, like, those type of bots don’t actually work anymore… that’s what we have to work on winning.” – Rashad Robinson (40:13)
• Practical Steps in the Book
  • Exercises at each chapter’s end to help readers find personal and collective power and disrupt systems of profiteering.
  • “More people will follow when we win. That is reinforcing.” – Rashad Robinson (12:56)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Social Media Illusions:
  “Just because you’re viral and have a presence on social media doesn’t mean it’s actual power.” – Charlamagne Tha God (06:05)
• On Changing Politicians’ Behavior:
  “You go into the gym and they will change the channel to Fox News. They have created an incentive where their politicians have to follow them.” – Rashad Robinson (08:42)
• On the Risk of Magical Thinking:
  “If you're not at the table, you're on the menu—and you can be both at the table and on the menu at the same time.” – Rashad Robinson (11:16)
• On Dialogue vs. Negotiation:
  “A dialogue is just their way of placating you. A negotiation is when you have leverage.” – Rashad Robinson (31:38)
• On the Urgency of Power:
  “There are too many people in power that are not nervous about disappointing Black people.” – Rashad Robinson (36:54)

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Key Timestamps

• 02:30 – Introduction to Rashad Robinson and his core message on presence vs. power
• 05:15 – Corporations and the performativity of Black activism
• 06:26 – Social media activism’s pitfalls; what it means to go viral on platforms you don’t own
• 10:55 – Internal fragmentation and why Black-owned platforms or brands face unique community challenges
• 12:00 – Profiteering and how hierarchies reinforce injustice
• 17:55 – The difference between progress, diversity, and real, structural power
• 22:34 – Individual and collective responsibility: why waiting for “leaders” isn’t enough
• 24:09 – Money, profiteering, and why making injustice unprofitable is a strategy
• 28:21 – Tech companies as unelected power players; algorithms, AI, and the erosion of civil rights
• 31:38 – Robinson’s campaigns against Facebook; how to move from talking (dialogue) to extracting concessions (negotiation)
• 35:36 – The failure to regulate social media platforms and why regulation is essential
• 37:45 – The social media focus on infighting vs. structural critique
• 39:41 – The limits of “awareness” and why real power means changing systems, not just conversations

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Closing Takeaways

Robinson’s appearance is a call to see beyond surface-level wins and to embrace a rigorous, systematic approach to power—one rooted in changing rules, holding leaders to account, and recognizing both the perils of digital spectacle and the realities of American profiteering and policy. If Black America is to move “from presence to power,” it will require collective recalibration, strategic pressure, and a rejection of performative victories.

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Book Plug:
From Presence to Power: How to Take on the Fights That Matter and Win is available now.

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Transcript

[Sam J]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Nora Jones]

Guaranteed Human.

[DJ Envy]

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[Rashad Robinson]

I love my phone, but not my carrier.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

What do I do?

[T-Mobile Representative]

Well, there are 250 reasons to join T Mobile.

[Nick Turturro]

Like what?

[T-Mobile Representative]

You can keep your phone and your number, and T Mobile helps pay it off up to $800 per line.

[Rashad Robinson]

So I wouldn't have to buy a new phone?

[Nancy Glass]

Yep.

[T-Mobile Representative]

Plus, your plan price stays the same for 5 years on experience plans.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

Nice.

[T-Mobile Representative]

Find your reason@t mobile.com

[DJ Envy]

via virtual prepaid guard card. Typically takes 15 days after rebate. Submission price guarantee on Talk text and 5G data exclusions like Texas and fees apply. What up, y'?

[Rashad Robinson]

All?

[DJ Envy]

This is DJ Envy. Now I got a chance to host the red carpet for 50 Cent's new series, Fightland on Stars. And I spoke to 50, and he breaks down exactly what the series is about.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

It's a family crime drama. Okay, this one's gonna feel like it's a grade one better than what I did in Power.

[DJ Envy]

Really?

[Charlamagne Tha God]

I promise that.

[DJ Envy]

This one's a family crime drama mixed with boxing. Real revenge all in and out of the ring. The series premiere of Fightland drops July 31st only on Starz, with new episodes streaming weekly on Fridays.

[State Farm Narrator]

The wait was worth it. The keys to your dream home have been secured. Now comes time to fill it with memories. But first, furniture and movers. When's the house warming? Who's cooking? Or should you cater? All that planning can be stressful, but ensuring your home shouldn't be. And that's where State Farm comes in. Because State Farm agents can help you choose the coverage you need. Just call, go online, or check out the app. An agent is ready to help so you can focus on showing off your new home. If you know, you know. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

[Nora Jones]

Hold up.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

Every day I wake up.

[DJ Envy]

Wake your ass up.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

The Breakfast Club, y' all finish or Y' all done?

[DJ Envy]

Morning, everybody. It's DJ Envy. Just hilarious. Charlemagne, the guy. We are the Breakfast Club. We got a special guest in the building. Yes, indeed we have Rashad Robinson. Welcome, brother.

[Rashad Robinson]

Thanks for having me. Good morning.

[DJ Envy]

How you feeling?

[Rashad Robinson]

I'm feeling good. I'm feeling good Pub day. Yes.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

This book, man. From Presence to Power, I got hip to it because I was listening to Native Land Pod with Angela Rod. Yeah. I loved what you was talking about, so it made me dive into it. I love the title, right? From Presence to Power. And you say that we black people confuse presence with power. Can you explain that?

[Rashad Robinson]

Yeah. Presence is visibility, awareness. It's all the things that gets incentivized in this moment. Everything from, you know, followership, numbers, shout outs from the stage. Power is the ability to change the rules. And when you mistake presence for power, you can think something has happened that hasn't actually happened. You can mistake a black president for thinking that, you know, we're post racial. You can mistake, you know, our celebrities trending for the idea that, you know, America loves black people as much as America loves black culture. And what we know is that America can love, celebrate and monetize black culture and hate black people at the same time.

[DJ Envy]

So for people that don't know who Rashad Robinson is, break down who you are first before you start diving into the book. Who is Rashad Robinson? Where are you from? And then let's talk about how you got into writing this book.

[Rashad Robinson]

Well, for the last 20 years, I've been building movements. I've been working across the social justice space to help win change on a wide range of issues. I grew up on eastern Long island, the last exit on Long Island Expressway, Riverhead. And my family got there through the

[DJ Envy]

Great Migration by the Hampshires out there.

[Rashad Robinson]

Yeah, but my family's, like, working class. We got there through the Great Migration, the farm fields of, like, southern Virginia to the farm fields of Long Island. And I grew up there where you have to understand power, because just to get anything done, you were black in a largely white community. And very early on, I had to navigate what it meant to live in a world that was not designed for me to win. And I've translated that into the work I do every day. And whether it's working across criminal justice or voting rights or economic justice, I've won a lot of campaigns. And we've lost. And along the way, along the way, I've sort of recognized that part of the reason why we lose is that we don't recognize the role of Power. And we mistake a lot of things that we've achieved a lot of recognition for the ability to actually shift the incentives to shift the rules. And that's what this intervention is about. That's what this book is about. And. And my hope is that with it and with the tools inside of it, that it will be applicable for everyday people who just wanna find their power in this moment. Whether you're fighting a book band in your community or whether you wanna get involved in shaping Congress.

[Sam J]

You were probably, okay, you was probably screaming at the top of your lungs during the Black Square movement, huh?

[Rashad Robinson]

I mean, you know, I led an organization at the time that did not take corporate money. And so I was watching as these corporations were naming my organization, saying, we're giving money corporations that I had been running campaigns against for years. So you knew. I knew right away that it was performative, that it wasn't real. These companies were not shifting their policies. They were not changing their rules. And at the time, launching a campaign that was called beyond the Statement, you know, are you going to change your rules about hiring formerly incarcerated people? Are you going to change your hiring practices? And over time, we saw that these companies were not serious, but many folks took the money and thought that there was change happening. And I think what we have to recognize is the things that we've done to walk into this mess that we are in are not the things that are gonna help us walk out of it.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

You know, I love the whole from presence to power concept. And I feel that often on social media, like you said, you know, I guess some people would call it Twitter activism. But just because you're viral and have a presence on social media doesn't mean it's actual power. Right? So what's the biggest mistake people make by confusing representation with actual power?

[Rashad Robinson]

Well, we end up not winning real things, or we think we've won something and we can't hold onto slips away very quickly. And so the idea of sort of going viral on platforms that we don't own, designed by people who actually don't want us to win in the first place, is already a setup. There are not rules to these platforms. Right. Our cars are not saf because the auto industry is benevolent. They are safe because there are rules and regulation that people have won over time. When you go into the supermarket and you look at that back of a label of a food product, you see a whole bunch of things on it that are a result of people fighting and winning. And so we don't even have rules on social Media about how these platforms are designed. And as someone who's fought these platforms and also tried to fight for regulation, I know that they are designed for. For us to stay on there and fight amongst each other. They are designed. When I testified in front of Congress about social media platforms, I testified next to the Facebook whistleblower who had all these papers about the ways in which they've set up the algorithms to keep you fighting.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

They monetize our emotions.

[Rashad Robinson]

They monetize it because they can place ads next to it if we stay on longer, if we share more. And so it is by design. And so, you know, you may think that you're making a little bit of money, you may think that you're going viral, but over time, they're gonna change the algorithm. The minute that we get a little bit of progress, they're gonna change the system. And so what I wanna do is I wanna help us begin thinking about how we change the environment. And that's not just about corporations. That's also about the Democratic Party. Right. I've watched the right wing change how their politicians have to operate, change the incentive structure. And so I'm not here to say we vote just because or we follow just because. I'm saying we have to change the air and the water for the politicians. And that looks like what the right wing has done. They wear their caps and they wear their jerseys. You go into the gym and they will change the channel to Fox News. They have created an incentive where their politicians have to follow them. And I think we have to do some of that as well, because we're not gonna be led by those that are currently in office.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

Is power morally neutral?

[Rashad Robinson]

No, power's not morally neutral. And there are all different types of power. But when I think about sort of the work to both understand power, build power, and. And then practice power, it absolutely isn't morally neutral. I mean, we watch, we look at what Donald Trump is doing right now, and that looks very different than people that we might put in office. But I think.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

But could that power in the right hands be good?

[Rashad Robinson]

Absolutely.

[T-Mobile Representative]

Yeah.

[Rashad Robinson]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

That's what we want, right?

[Rashad Robinson]

That's what we want. I mean, we want power. Like, the fact of the matter is, is that we should strive to have the type of power that changes rules, that changes the incentive structure of the criminal justice system, that changes how banks operate, that changes how things. And we've won things over time, and then we can sometimes lose them, and we can sometimes have backlash. The backlash that we're experiencing right now. Is a direct result of what we've won. We won a lot of things over the course of 2017, 2016 into 2020, and now we're experiencing backlash and.

[DJ Envy]

But do we want that power? Right? We, we, we talk about it, but do we really want it? Right. You talk, I'm tell you, we, we say we want it, right. We talk about the social media app. Right? And you just talked about the app that we're all on that we don't own, that's not designed for us. There's a brother that owns a social media app and we don't support. A lot of us. Well, we do, a lot of us do, but the community doesn't support it like we support these other apps, Facebook or Twitter, Instagram or X. Right. You look at HBCUs, we do support them, but we don't go all out for our HBCUs like they go out for all these other schools out there. When you talk about clothing brands, right? Yeah, we don't support our clothing brands like people support the Gucci's, the Fendi's, the bosses, the Levi's and all that. So we say we want it, but when it comes to somebody in our community that designs it, it takes a lot for us to follow, to support you and to support.

[Rashad Robinson]

Absolutely. I mean, and that's also by design. We live, we live in a, in a, in a society that does send us constant messages to, you know, perhaps not support one another, to fight amongst each other. Part of what I've done with this book and tried to do with this book is there's nine exercises at the end of the chapters because there's a lot of theory and there's some definitions, but I wanted everyone at the end of it to be able to do something that I talk about is find your power. So it's about finding your power in the singular. And through those, you can take the exercises and really sort of dig into sort of what do I have at my disposal, what am I not using, what am I not sort of leaning into? And then how do I find my power in the plural? How do I sort of understand my people, find my people? And I do want us to ask those questions and dig into those questions, perhaps about what am I not supporting, what am I not leaning into, how do I engage differently? I also have one of my, One of the most important chapters in the book to me is the chapter on profiteering, because I do think we do lean into this system of profiteering. And I don't talk about profiteering. Just about money. Profiteering is also about hierarchy. Stephen Miller is one of the biggest profiteers, and I don't think he's in it for the money. I think he's in it because he wants his kids to have access to things and your kids not to. And so when we talk about profiteering and we talk about sort of how these rules are designed, we do have to disrupt these rules. And I think when we do disrupt, and when we do disrupt the challenges, more people will follow, more people will engage, and that's the role. We don't need everyone for the march, the civil rights movement. Not everyone marched, not everyone engaged. We need enough of the right people focused on enough of the right things in order to actually make the type of change possible. And when we win, that is reinforcing. More people will follow, more people will engage. And I think that is part of, I think, the work of disrupting this current trend that we're in, the current challenges that we're facing if we go ahead. Speaking of that, you talk about magical thinking. Yeah. You know, can you break that down? Magical thinking is sort of the stories that we tell ourselves that are not true. Like, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu, and you can be both at the table and on the menu at the same time. The stories, like the moral arc of history bends towards justice. We actually have to bend it. Donald Trump is a perfect example that it doesn't just bend. It's not automatically. Progress doesn't automatically happen. But there are all these stories that we're almost incentivized to believe that can sometimes, you know, keep us tired or relaxed or not sort of on our front foot about what is happening in the world. And magical thinking is part of one of the reasons why I wrote this book, because after the 2016 election, I was going to all these meetings and watching people act like they did not just get surprised by a Trump victory and were acting like they knew what to do now that he was in office. And I was watching people walk into the Trump election like it was George W. Bush 3.0, designing what they were gonna do next, not thinking that we were walking into an authoritarian regime. And many of the people who lost really badly were trying to then show up as the resistance. And I. And even watching going to the Obama White House as they were sort of wrapping up, going to meetings about criminal justice, and they were celebrating things that they were just announcing. And I was like, jeff Sessions is about to become the Attorney General. How is any of this safe. And they were like, well, we've made the type of culture change. We changed things. And they actually obviously didn't. And so going to those meetings, going to meetings with Chuck Schumer and Senator Schumer and. And having him say to me and other activists, don't worry about Jeff Sessions becoming Attorney general. I can work with him. We work out together in the gym. Right. Those were the things that we were hearing. And it was just one more recognition that we needed to not just run campaigns. And over those years, I ran campaigns. I led the largest boycott in American history, taking on Facebook. I led campaigns to force credit card companies to stop processing fees for white nationalist groups. But if we. But we actually had to change some of the ways that people think about power. And the goal here is to make that intervention in ways that people can understand and people can use. And whether you're just. Just starting out, just wondering what you can do, or whether you're a seasoned activist, I think there's something in here for everyone.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

You know, you write about power instead of just progress.

[Rashad Robinson]

Yeah.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

What's the difference?

[Rashad Robinson]

Well, power allows us to actually win progress. Power is being able to dictate what happens, being able to force decision makers to do things that they don't want to do. I open the book up with Hurricane Katrina, which I think is really important because it really does show the difference between presence in power. Right. Kanye west had probably the most visible sentence in that sort of moment of, George Bush doesn't care about black people. And there was no movement or infrastructure to take those sort of very visible words and translate it to anything else. But while all that was happening, Mike Pence, then a congressman, not vice president yet 20 years before Project 2025, was at the Heritage foundation, which created Project 2025. He was in late night meetings where after the levees broke, they divided up New Orleans, they privatized it, and they put in motion the work to make it impossible for so many people to come back and so many people to recover. So while we were very present on telethons, folks giving charity, they were working for structural change and actually changing the rules. And so the difference between presence and power is oftentimes the difference between having charity versus structural change. It's the difference between being able to be heard versus being heeded.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

So presence and progress can really never equate to actual power.

[Rashad Robinson]

I mean, progress is a result of having power. People who have power win progress. And we see when our opponents have. Have power, they get progress for their side.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

But I feel like progress is when somebody, you know, people be like, oh, we got, we got the first black.

[Rashad Robinson]

Oh, that's representation.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

That's representation. Okay, okay, okay. But people call that progress.

[Rashad Robinson]

People, people do call that progress. And I, and I think that like, you know, the New York Police Department can be as diverse as ever. That doesn't necessarily mean black people having a better experience. I don't think that things will change without diversity, but diversity alone will not change things. And when we mistake diversity for actual structural change, that's once again sort of mistaking presence for power.

[Sam J]

Do you think in 2026, with all of the performative stuff that you see in activism, we actually have the leaders that will make the real change you're talking about and not just get stuck in a performative, like in a real way?

[Rashad Robinson]

Yeah. I think part of what we have to recognize is that we need more people on the playing field. This cannot be about expecting some leader, individual leader, an elected leader to show up, or what I hope is that more people recognize.

[DJ Envy]

Yo, I was checking out the Sprite Living track list the other day and immediately started arguing with myself. It was wild. Because records like California Love still Not a Player and Back Then are so much more than words in a song. They're moments, their memories, they're snapshots of where hip hop was and where it's going. That's what Sprite gets. They spent over 40 years celebrating artists who define the culture, and now they're turning the conversation over to the fans. And if you're like me, the real fun is getting into the why. Why does this song matter? Why did this line hit? Why did it change hip hop forever? Now, I can't promise you any answers, but with Sprite you'll have a good time figuring it out. Check out the full Sprite Living track list and break down the stories behind your favorite bars@livingtracklist. Genius.com this is the Sprite Living Track List. Obey your thirst.

[Nancy Glass]

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season three podcast. This is a story about a horrendous situation that destroyed two families. It started more than seven years ago when Cindy and Kenny were two 40 somethings who had just gotten engaged. Days later, they walked into a scorched earth war they never saw coming.

[DJ Envy]

Turn around and place your hands behind your back.

[Nick Turturro]

The cops came to my house and

[Rashad Robinson]

threw me in jail.

[Nancy Glass]

And to Cindy's surprise, her fiance Kenny was charged with abusing one of her children.

[Rashad Robinson]

I never once doubted Kenny and I always doubted the accusation on season three

[Nancy Glass]

of Burden of Guilt, you'll hear a story about the lengths someone will go to in order to get what they want.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

This case has got to be one

[Rashad Robinson]

of the most despicable.

[Nancy Glass]

Listen to season three, a burden of guilt on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nora Jones]

Hey, I'm Nora Jones and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing along is Back. I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting. Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians. Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Levy, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy. Really too many to name. And this season I've sat down with Joshua Hamee, Sarah McLachlan, John Legend, and more. Check out my new episode with Finneas.

[Rashad Robinson]

So I went home and I asked Billie if she wanted to sing it. She immediately made it her own thing. No fair. You really know how to make me

[Sam J]

cry when you give me those.

[Nora Jones]

So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[T-Mobile Representative]

In 2015, teenager Joy Morgan discovered strangely compelling YouTube sermons from the religious group Israel United in Christ, or iuic. Her initial curiosity developed into devotion. She distanced herself from friends and family, embraced a new identity, immersed herself in the IUIC and believed she'd found the truth.

[Rashad Robinson]

IUIC is the best family that I've ever had.

[T-Mobile Representative]

In fact, she had found what many called a cult. And On Boxing Day 2018, joy disappeared forever. In the new six part investigative podcast, the Missing Sister, Charlie Brinkhurst, Cuff and Freeturn explored Joy's story, the family she left, and the religious group she found.

[Rashad Robinson]

You know, when you get that feeling

[DJ Envy]

where you just, I don't want to be here. I want to get out. Okay? I want to go home now.

[T-Mobile Representative]

It's a story about truth, lies, a young woman yearning to belong, and a family still waiting for answers. All episodes available now. To binge listen to the missing sister on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, their role

[Rashad Robinson]

to play and their role in pushing back. And more people have the tools to, you know, understand the difference between what's real and what's fake. And, and my goal is to try to unlock that for folks because I think if we're waiting for an elected leader to come and save us. You know, it's just not going to happen. And what I've seen on the right is that over the last 10, 15 years, they have forced their elected leaders to have to change. They've taken people out, made people actually have to change. And what we've watched is politicians who were once considered perhaps institutionalists, like, they would follow the rules, have to bend and change, you know, things that were once kind of sacred, insider rules. They've changed and they've shaped. But they've shaped it as a result of the people on their side expecting something different. And so I think for us, particularly for black people, we have to demand something different from our elected leaders. And I'm not just talking. I'm talking about the leaders that look like us and the leaders that don't look like us. But if you come to our community and ask for our vote, we have to expect you to do something different, and we have to expect you to engage differently. And I think that that is going to be part of the work moving forward if we're going to get anything different out of our politicians.

[DJ Envy]

Now, how does money play into all of this?

[Rashad Robinson]

Well, money does play. I mean, this is profiteering, I think, is so incredibly central.

[DJ Envy]

People would say that when you talk about power, it's usually financial. The more finances you have, the more power you have. That's what people would say, right?

[Rashad Robinson]

Absolutely. Well, money. Money is absolutely connected. But we have a history of winning things even when we've been outspent. We have a history of disrupting systems, even when we don't have money. And I think money is a piece of this. But I don't think that overnight we're going to have as much money as the other side. We're not going to outspend them. So we're going to have to be smarter. We're going to have to be more strategic. And I think that that is about finding and picking the right fights. It's about making profiteering unprofitable. Right. Injustice has to be unprofitable. Behind every injustice, behind every sort of thing that we face, whether it's the mass incarceration, whether it's what the banks do to us, there is someone profiting from it.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

That's right.

[DJ Envy]

Now, how do you feel about when you look at, let's say, Donald Trump, how he uses his power right now? He uses his in a negative way, but he uses his power 100%. I feel like regardless who's in office, we never use our power the way he uses his he's gonna take care of home, he's gonna take care of ours. I feel like we have to beg for that. Beg for somebody to say, this isn't right. Beg. Because I think we. A lot of times look at. That's not right. What are they gonna think when he just. First date signing and throwing pins in the stands?

[Rashad Robinson]

We have a lot. We play by an old set of rules that were not designed for us to win. And I think Donald Trump has proven that you can disrupt those rules. I remember back during the Obama administration, I was working with a group of formerly incarcerated leaders, and we were working to ban the box, the box that you have to check for employment that says, were you incarcerated or not? And if you check the box that you've been incarcerated, you don't get the job. If you lie, you get the job. And then a month later, they find out. And so these leaders, we built this campaign. We had tens of thousands of people sign petitions. We show up to the White House. We are out in front of the White House with the petitions. And we did not have a meeting at the White House. But they called and they said, we want you guys to come in. And then they said, we want you, Rashad, to come in. And I was like, well, I'm not the leader of this effort. I'm just the person that helped build the technology and the petition. But these folks have been working on this campaign for years. Well, we can't clear them to come into the White House because they are formally incarcerated. And I said, well, I won't go into the meeting. And they said, well, we are going to. We'll tell people that you decided not to go into a meeting at the White House. I said, well, I will be on the Amtrak back to New York this afternoon one way or the other. And they found a way with all the rules that they said they couldn't. They found a way to invite the leaders in. Folks like Norris Henderson and others went into that meeting. They told stories to Valerie Jarrett and others around what it meant to be denied the ability to take care of their families. They told very clear, compelling stories. I was not in the room. I was on the train like I said I was gonna be. And in 48 hours later, they put an executive order out to deal with that issue at the federal level. But had we just played by the rules, had I went in that meeting, there's no way in the world I would have told as compelling of a story. It would have been a performative act of a professional act. Activists going in instead. So over and over again, what I've learned is that you don't take the first offer. You push back. If you want to change the rules, then you have to make a different type of demand. And I do think that if we are going to not just be present, but be powerful, then we have to sort of recognize that rules are oftentimes designed for us to lose. And part of it is that we have to change those rules.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

You know, algorithms, right? They shape attention. Now, are social media companies the most powerful, I want to say political institution, but just institution in America that nobody voted for?

[Rashad Robinson]

I mean, the technology that can bring us into the future is dragging us into the past. I look at all of the ways in which the technology you think about, AI and algorithms that can decide whether or not you get to rent an apartment, can decide whether or not you get a callback for a job. And these, by design, can get around all the civil rights laws that we've fought for. The lack of regulation on these platforms has to absolutely change. And this is a problem that we face by both Democrats and Republicans. I have been in the room when Democrats could have moved legislation forward, and they didn't. And we are in a time right now where we did not get regulation during the sort of rise of the social media age, right? And people said, oh, it helped get Obama elected. It gave us Arab Spring. It gave us all these moments. And then we saw the ways in which the technology was used in the 2016 election. We saw foreign interference. We saw all the ways that we've talked about earlier around how the algorithms incentivize people to sort of be their worst selves.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

The cloud capital is conflict.

[Rashad Robinson]

It's conflict. And, right. Sometimes people will respond, oh, this is about freedom of speech. But the tech companies are deciding what gets amplified. This is not freedom of speech. This is about what they decide to. To push forward. And so during sort of the height of some of that work, back in 2017 through sort of 2020, 21, you know, I was running campaigns against Facebook, trying to take them on and some of the other platforms, and we were winning some stuff along the way. We got some victories. We called for a civil rights audit. We got a civil rights audit at Facebook. And you know, what was really interesting is while that happened, while we were sort of in these conversations, the New York Times sort of found out that Facebook had hired this PR firm to attack me and the organization. And they were placing stories about, you know, to try to undermine what we were doing, even though they were saying that they were coming to the table in good faith. That forced Facebook to actually have to deal with us differently. And so I ended up moving from talking to like, senior level folks to having to go directly to being conversation with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg on a regular basis. I remember the first time I went out to Menlo park to their offices, they wanted me to sign an NDA. And I was like, no, like you all were attacking us. So they gave me a big badge to say that said no NDA on it and wore no NDA. But I talk about in the book that I learned very clearly the difference between being in a dialogue and a negotiation. Your opponent wants to keep you in a dialogue. They want to keep you talking. They want to say, we were talking to those black folks. How often do you. Do you see that? We had a meeting. It was a constructive meeting. A dialogue is just their way of placating you. It's their way of being present. A negotiation is when you have leverage. When they either want something from you or want you to stop doing something, that's when you have actual power. You may not win everything in a negotiation, but that's when you are on the path to change. And I think for all of us, we have to look at our leaders and our organizations who are representing us. Are they in constant dialogue or are they in negotiation? Are we getting $100,000 check from an organization that's spending $100 million to keep us down? Those are the type of questions that allow us to recognize, is something moving us in the right direction or is something holding us back? And I think far too often we are mistaking dialogues, conversations with those that are not on our side for actual negotiations where we have the leverage to change rules that will make a difference.

[Sam J]

What do you think black people's limits are when it comes to disrupting profiteering? I actually that. Because, like, I know they use it for like war and like prison systems. Right. But whenever you find out about a black person or any type of company involved with anything black, being an owner or any profitable person from like a prison or jail or whatever, people get really, really upset. But then there's a conversation of like, in order for us to fix it, we have to be a part of it. What's our role in disrupting if we, our. Our own people don't want us to be in those conversations?

[Rashad Robinson]

Yeah, I mean, I, I think that. I think when you expose profiteering, and I've had a lot of experience with this, when you Expose it. You give people the facts and the background information. Folks are ready to take action with you. I've led campaigns sometimes against black institutions where profiteering became very clear. And people are like, you know, this organization is taking money from private prisons. But we do have to make it clear. We have to lay it out for folks. We have to make it plain and help people understand what's at stake. And so I think that's part of the work. And my experience is that the community will follow us if we give them very clear things and very clear ways to engage.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

I know I keep going back to social media, but. Yes, is because I feel like that's where we have a large presence.

[DJ Envy]

Yeah.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

That we think is power, but it's actually not. So I've been reading a lot about techno feudalism. Yeah, right.

[Nancy Glass]

Yeah.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

And how the new ruling class is these algo bosses, the Musk and the Zuckerbergs and the Sam Altmans. And we know how they're using social media to misinform and disrupt and consolidate power, but yet we're still on those platforms. And a lot of times when I talk to people about why they're still on those platforms, they say they feel like that's where they can get their messaging out. Right. Can the same tools used to oppress also be used to advance justice and get us power?

[Rashad Robinson]

It depends on how we use it. Right. You know, television and movies were not designed for our liberation, but there are ways in which certain types of content advance things. I mean, you think about Birth of a Nation, which was one of the first movies. 1915, and. Right. And so you have. There's a history on all these platforms. So I think it's not being fooled to think that by these. By that the design of these platforms alone is gonna produce sort of justice. It's recognizing how we're using them and how. And how they are using us. And, you know, I met with Elon Musk right after he bought than Twitter, and, you know, there was all this talk. Right. Black Twitter. You know, we had helped to make this company profitable. And all along the way, we had been winning changes at the platform, content, moderation, other things that were heading into the 2022 election. And then I had to sit in this meeting with this, you know, you know, white South African who I think I've never heard him talk about what he feels about Mandela or Desmond Tutu or anyone else, which only makes you think.

[State Farm Narrator]

No.

[Rashad Robinson]

What he actually thinks about. Because any white South African would probably tell a black person I was with Mandela. And so you know that this person, he's talking about how he wants to make Twitter fun again. He's talking about how he wants to make it a public square. And all of that, for me, was coded language from this sort of South African. Had we won regulation, had we won rules, government rules, structural rules, all of that would have looked much different. And so I am not interested in sort of begging billionaires or begging tech giants to treat us well. I think we actually have to build more power over our elected leaders and our elected officials, create a world of consequence if they don't do it. Because I do know that had we been able to create more consequence for the elected officials that did not get us regulation, we would have gotten regulation and rules. And part of what I recognize in all of this is that we have to operate differently if we want different things.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

I like what you talked about on On Native Land too. You talked about how we exert our energy towards the wrong things. Yeah, because I agree with that. It's just like, I'm tired of y' all podcast monologues. I'm tired of you screaming from the car. Okay, like, about. About stuff that don't even really matter. Yeah.

[Rashad Robinson]

I mean, behind every. Once again, behind every injustice is someone or something profiting from it. And if we're not willing to talk about that, if we're not willing to make it uncomfortable, you know, when I talk about Hurricane Katrina and I talk about the levees breaking at the heart of it, no one was nervous about disappointing black people. And if no one is nervous about disappointing your community, it doesn't matter what facts and figures you have. It doesn't matter who gives a great speech. It doesn't matter what tech knowledge you have. And so part of all of this is creating the right level of energy where folks in power are nervous about disappointing us. And that means that we have to do something different, because there are too many people in power that are not nervous about disappointing black people. And as long as they're not nervous about disappointing us, we can be loud, but we're not gonna necessarily get results.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

I agree with that. And why do you think we're so quick to go at each other? But meanwhile, you. Like in the same week that Elon Musk made a trillion dollars, it was that conversation about reasonable doubt being in Target. And I saw more people with mad smoke for the reasonable doubt than Elon making a trillion dollars. Stuff like that blows my mind. It's like we're focused on the wrong things.

[Rashad Robinson]

It's it is. It is.

[DJ Envy]

We'd rather attack ourselves a lot of time, I feel like, than go against the system. And we.

[Rashad Robinson]

And we don't even make the right attacks. Right. You know, there are some times where we. Where we should either call our folks in or call our folks out. And I think that that is healthy in any community. But lots of times it's performing on these platforms and only helping those that actually don't care about us and actually have an agenda to keep us down. It only helps them make more money. And so, you know, I could sometimes watch on social media and see folks, you know, sharing mugshots of black people without any context or, you know, and I always ask myself, those are going to travel a lot quicker than any good story about us. So we should be asking ourselves, what are we sharing? What are we engaging? What are we uplifting? How are we using our time? And how are we using our time effectively on these platforms that once again, are designed to profit off of our pain and are designed to profit off our suffering? It doesn't mean that I'm telling everyone to get off the platforms. What I am telling us is to think about how we're using them and who's profiting on the other side.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

That's right. Wow. From presence to power. I mean, I could sit here with a million more questions.

[DJ Envy]

Yeah, absolutely. The last thing I was gonna ask you, I was, you know, is power using those bots for negativity? Like you just said, they did a campaign against you, right? Yeah, We've seen campaigns against the Breakfast Club, Charlamagne, myself. Is that a power that they use that maybe we should be using?

[Rashad Robinson]

I mean, it's a tactic instead of

[DJ Envy]

for the bad instead of for the evil, but really displaying the things that they're doing that are not in the way of the people.

[Rashad Robinson]

I think that that can create a lot of awareness, but it's not gonna actually change anymore.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

It's not power.

[Rashad Robinson]

I agree with you. It's not power. And I think, like, you know, part of this is, like, creating a system and a structure where, like, those type of bots don't actually work anymore. And I think that that's what we have to work on, winning.

[DJ Envy]

Okay.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

Yeah.

[DJ Envy]

Well, Pekaba's book, if you're out and about today. Rashad Robinson, thank you for joining us.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

How to Take on the Fights that Matter and Win.

[DJ Envy]

And thank you for joining us, bro.

[Rashad Robinson]

Thank you for having me.

[DJ Envy]

It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

Every day I wake up.

[DJ Envy]

Wake your ass up.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

The Breakfast club.

[DJ Envy]

Before we go, I gotta leave y' all with a question. What's a hip hop lyric that changed the way you saw music? Because that's really what the Sprite Living Track List is about. It's not about crowning winners. It's starting conversations. 50 tracks, generations of artists, endless debates. And Sprite didn't just put lyrics on cans. Nah, they went deeper, bringing together hip hop experts and tastemakers to help unpack the stories and impact behind every track. Check out the full Sprite Living track list and break down the stories behind your favorite bars@livingtracklist. Genius.com this is the Sprite Living Track List. Obey your thirst.

[Nancy Glass]

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt season three podcast. This is a story about a horrendous situation that destroyed two families. It's a scorched earth war that shows just how far someone will go to get what they want.

[Rashad Robinson]

Cindy said, I had to choose between the truth and my family. And I had to choose the truth.

[Nancy Glass]

Listen to season three, a burden of guilt on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nick Turturro]

What's up, fam?

[Rashad Robinson]

I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'?

[Charlamagne Tha God]

All?

[Sam J]

It's your girl, Sam J.

[Rashad Robinson]

And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches

[Sam J]

Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart women's sports.

[Rashad Robinson]

We're breaking down the biggest headlines. Naomi Osaka showing out shout outs to you, Naomi. The viral moments.

[Sam J]

I've been obsessed with Chrisean Rock's boxing journey. She looks good. Her combos are swift.

[Rashad Robinson]

And the stories everyone's talking about across

[Sam J]

women's sports because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to Everyone watches women's Sports on

[Rashad Robinson]

the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nick Turturro]

I'm Nick Turturro. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, the Longest Yard, or Spike Lee's blackkklansman. And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, I deliver pizza to a new guest. I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins.

[Rashad Robinson]

What are you doing?

[DJ Envy]

My belt.

[Nick Turturro]

To Bill Burr.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am.

[Nick Turturro]

And now we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Turturro. It's called Happiness, Delivering Happiness and many, many more. Open your free I Heart radio app search Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro. And listen now.

[Sam J]

This is an I Heart podcast, guaranteed human.