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[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, my name is Tonya Pinkins, and I'm the host of the podcast You Can't SAY THAT on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:07] Tonya Pinkins: This fall, I have a special treat for you. In honor of my debut feature film RED PILL, Marissa Lynn Daniels Studios has been hosting weekly conversations with my fellow Broadway colleagues and co-host Sierra Renee about the red pilling of America.

[0:27] Tonya Pinkins: These conversations create a safe space for us to talk about the things that are on our mind with an election and a global pandemic. So join us for the Red Pilling of America, a spotlight series every Saturday at 5 p.m. Or on the Broadway Podcast Network, You Can't SAY THAT, VPN.fm forward slash YCST.

[0:54] Tonya Pinkins: Join the conversation. We gotta speak to live. We gotta say what's news for you.

[1:13] Rashad Robinson: We started seeing a level of rise of white nationalists. People became emboldened because they saw what had happened. And this has been years in the making about a lot of our work around platform accountability on Facebook and Twitter and other places, but they became emboldened in new ways.

[1:28] Rashad Robinson: And we started, we had to hire the security director from Southern Poverty Law Center to come in and consult for us. And you know, we don't have SPLC's endowments, so it was like a big round, just like, how much is this gonna cost? And we were looking at it, but I also felt like we couldn't just be passive. My thing with Color of Change is how we acted.

[1:47] Rashad Robinson: And so as we started looking at these organizations, we started saying you could go on Richard Spencer's site and you could enter your PayPal number and you could donate money. You could go on these white nationalist sites and you could buy paraphernalia. And some of the most disgusting things you'd ever imagine, like gun holsters that had anti-Muslim or anti-Jewish sentiments on it. I mean, things that you would not think, and you could go in and you could put your Amex card in, you could put your American Express card, and you could discover Visa.

[2:20] Rashad Robinson: And so we reached out to these companies while we were also trying to build a platform. We built this platform called No Blood Money, but we kind of held it back while we tried to have conversations with payment platform sites. And you know what the sites told us? They were like, this is really bad, but you know, you've got to go to the banks.

[2:37] Rashad Robinson: And then we went to the banks, and the banks said you have to go to the credit card companies. And as we were like sort of building up a campaign, these companies knew. So these companies started seeding stories with journalists that we like didn't know what we were doing. And journalists would start calling me and saying, you know, this is not really something the credit card companies could do. And I, you know, you're gonna call out the credit card companies. We're wondering, you know, like if you guys really know what you're doing.

[3:02] Rashad Robinson: And so we're still building the site because what we know at Color of Change, so all of this is about power, right? This is all about context and power, but we didn't know how we were gonna move. And then Charlottesville happens.

[3:14] Rashad Robinson: And I remember being with my family out on Long Island. It was the summer when Charlottesville happened, you know, working some, spending some time. Um, it was around the time of our family reunion. So I try to pop in for a little while, say hi, but get out before there's like too many questions from family members. I haven't seen it in a long time.

[3:33] Rashad Robinson: And um, and Charlottesville starts happening, and my staff goes into overdrive. Folks go into the office. We work to launch the site and launch everything. As we're launching the site and as we're going live, the credit card companies no longer tell us to go to the banks. They start sending us lists of white nationalist groups that they're gonna cut off funding.

[3:54] Rashad Robinson: PayPal, they all start sending us these lists that no law has changed. Remember, nobody had to like go and pass anything in Congress, like journalists were telling me. All of a sudden, they could start cutting off the fees because they recognize that these groups that were marching actually got their money by raising it online.

[4:15] Rashad Robinson: People were literally putting in PayPal numbers to fund buses of people to go. And they cut it off. And what was um, and it became publicized that combined with our efforts to get Bill O'Reilly fired from Fox, and then Bill O'Reilly went out in the world and blamed Color of Change for it because we were responsible.

[4:35] Rashad Robinson: We ran geo-targeted ads to the corporations that were sponsoring the O'Reilly, targeting black folks and women and telling them to speak out and ask why their corporation was sponsoring a rally factor. We ran geo-targeted ads over Visa and MasterCard, asking why those companies were allowing and so staff that would go in, black staff, Jewish staff, women staff would go in and ask, and we would say, please contact your boss. And that got us in some heat.

[5:03] Rashad Robinson: Um and but over 150 companies have been, over 150 white nationalist groups have been cut off from funding on these sites. Most recently, we got Google and Google Cloud to cut the Proud Boys off from being able to use their hosted sites. Um, and this is part of how we actually ensure that corporations that say Black Lives Matter, that say they stand up for justice are not enabling these things, but it does put us in harm's way.

[5:29] Rashad Robinson: It does mean that those come that those institutions, um, those groups are then targeting us in new ways. But um, I wouldn't change any of it. Like it'll it it it's different to say how horrible these groups are than for a little continue to be able to grow. It's another thing where they end up not actually being able to do their work.

[5:50] Rashad Robinson: The one quick funny story is that one of the white nationalist groups, white supremacy groups, reached out to have a conversation. And so I didn't know what to do, but of course, I was like, this is gonna be good. So they wanted to convince us that they weren't white nationalist groups, that they shouldn't be cuddled, that they were the other side of BLM.

[6:13] Rashad Robinson: Um, one told me how powerful our campaign was because if we weren't actually doing something powerful, they wouldn't have cared what we were doing. But they were at, but the guy from the group got on the phone to explain to me how he wasn't gonna be able to pay his staff, how people were gonna lose their jobs.

[6:30] Rashad Robinson: Um, and I was like, I think you're right in my next fundraising appeal. Um I think like I was like sitting, I was like, you're not gonna be able to pay your staff. You're like, you might have to close your doors. Like this, I was like, is this for real? Is this is this? But yeah, that's yeah.

[6:51] Rashad Robinson: But that was that that that story was definitely, it was surreal because you know you're sitting down, you're like wondering like what arguments are they gonna bring, but basically. We're not gonna be able to buy those hoods. We can't buy hoods. He's like, we can't, yeah. She's like, we're just expressing our first amendment right. This is dangerous, what you're doing.

[7:09] Rashad Robinson: And I was like, I he's like, you're he's like by labeling us as like, you know, is is white nationalists you're putting us in danger and I was like I don't know what to tell you like but I I really don't know what to tell you but I I want to tell you that you're only giving you only you're only writing the next email you're only gonna help me like ensure that I can maybe fund more staff to do this work.

[7:36] Rashad Robinson: So how do you keep that young face that youthful smile when you are under this kind of constant threat and danger so you know part of why I do this work is so that we are unignorable right when I when I think about what does it mean to run an organization that can face down powerful forces and get results the last thing I want to do is wake up every day and put things out in the world and not have people respond to it not have people care.

[8:08] Rashad Robinson: And so I don't know what I would be doing if I wasn't able to like engage in this moment. I might go crazy um thinking about it. I also um, you know I grew up doing activism and I remember back when I was in my early 20s getting to know the late Julian Bond um and um he would like give a lot of young activist advice and um a couple of years later when I was at GLAD I actually helped write the sort of marriage equality speech he would give when he would go around um a lot of black communities sort of building back building community between LGBT and um and so worked with him, wrote that speech where he would go through Leviticus and um ask a set of questions.

[8:54] Rashad Robinson: And he was just great, but but I also think like I have so much infrastructure and support around me that he just didn't have, that John Lewis didn't have, that Ella Baker didn't have, that Fanny Lou Hamer didn't have. And I and so I also recognize I also remind myself of what a different time I am doing this work in.

[9:21] Rashad Robinson: And also have to remind myself that. And you know, and I believe we're winning. That's what I will also say. And if there's like something that can keep you hopeful and optimistic, is constantly seeing the signs. Color of Change over the summer went from 1.7 million people that had taken action with us in the previous eight months to 7.2 million that had taken action with us.

[9:49] Rashad Robinson: We went from 150 subscribers on our SMS feed to 6.2 million subscribers on our SMS feed. And we ask people to take action. We're not just asking you to be to read a book and talk with your friends. We are engaging people and taking action. We also had a whole lot more white people to join us.

[10:11] Rashad Robinson: And we have hired our first director and associate director of ally relationships, because we were doing all these events like black women's brunches and other things in communities. And we are like, oh wow, we have to kind of build some other programs now that are for a different audience that's coming in so that we can also still have spaces that are like black women focused or black dad focused or the other focused, but then have events that are also um, and now they're all virtual, but um, except for these events we've been doing in the key um states, we've been doing what we're calling uh black joy drive-throughs.

[10:50] Rashad Robinson: Um, and they're drive-in movies. Um, and so we're showing movies that we're calling black joy movies, like uh Love and Basketball, Black Panther, like movies that are very black but not like civil rights focused, and so we can get a really broad audience, and every one of them we're over capacity, like we're having to turn people away, we're getting capacity 500 or more.

[11:15] Rashad Robinson: But while people are there, we're setting them up on the SMS so they're able to then do voter contact while they're at the drive-in movies with that while we've been so they're in communities, they're in a car with their family, their social distancing. We're then running videos in between the movies about like activism, and folks are turning out.

[11:33] Rashad Robinson: How could you not be excited and inspired that in the midst of this moment, people not only want to be in community still, but they want to engage on uh you know, making making their community better.

[11:47] Rashad Robinson: What can we do? What can we, the people who are listening to this? Because this will broadcast also on the Broadway Podcast Network, besides today. We've only got what many days left till election. So there's a couple of things, right? So there's Color of Change, and there's the Color of Change PAC, which is our political arm, and those two things are separate, but both of them are places where I would urge people to go.

[12:11] Rashad Robinson: You know, the thing that I always say people um need to do is one at Color of Change, we always need doers, donors, and door openers. I always quote it 3Ds. Those are the three things that I constantly need when I go out in the world because those three things help us.

[12:26] Rashad Robinson: Um, the second thing I would say is that you all are individual nodes in your communities and your spaces. And we are under assault in terms of the misinformation and disinformation that's out there. And there's two different things. There's a misinformation that will say, like, you can vote up until December, or don't show up to the polls if you owe back taxes, or things that we've always faced down. Then there's the disinformation that's both domestic and foreign, that is at a scale that we've never seen before. And the reason why I talk about some of it as disinformation is because some of it has levels of truth in it that we have to, and it's right now being deeply targeted at black men.

And we're running a whole series, we have a seven-figure ad buy in key states right now that's really focused on black men, trying to deal with the fact that like, you know, the 94 crime bill was bad for our community. And I can't go out and say, no, it wasn't really that bad, or no, like Biden didn't have anything to do with it. But saying that Trump is better is actually not the way to go. Or just saying you should stay home more importantly, if we want to really stay in the sort of like nonpartisan space, people are being fed disinformation that's saying their vote is more powerful than just staying home. And I want to just say like that is very important. And we're fighting that disinformation.

We have thousands of our members that are on social media on these platforms, pushing back, going into the comment spaces. Like we've trained people, we built this video platform where people go straight to video and then we buy ads with their videos across the zip code tracks that they live in. So if you live in Kalamazoo, or if you live in Detroit, or if you live in Tallahassee, you'll see on your Google or Facebook the videos from people in that actually sound like they come from or are part of those communities. And we've been building that and we really tested it out around the census and are now rolling it out in a much bigger way now. And so all of that is like super, super exciting.

[14:28] Rashad Robinson: The final thing I would just say, because it's all of that stuff that's around this. And then even if we get the results that are more progressive and move us in the right direction, that doesn't mean that systemic injustice goes away. And in fact, we can make things in some ways more challenging if we don't do the work of accountability. Because elections alone don't create results. Elections alone give us the people that we have to go up against and that we have to push. And this is about picking the people that we feel we can push. And so the thing I would also say to folks is that as we talk about this moment, like there's a couple of things I always ask people to do is that we should make sure that we say what we mean.

And when we talk about systemic injustice, lots of times we spend our time trying to fix the people that have been hurt and harmed rather than fixing the systems that have hurt and harmed them. And so we will say things like women are less likely to get hired in corporate America instead of corporate America excludes women. We will say black people are less likely to get loans from the bank instead of banks are less likely to give loans to black people. Now that may sound like just some language that I'm just throwing around but the thing that's really important here is that when you say when you say black people are less likely to get loans from the bank instead of banks are less likely to give loans to black people, you spend your time with financial literacy programs for black people instead of actually ensuring that the banks are held accountable for excluding, redlining, targeting, exploiting.

If you start with women being less likely to get into corporate America, people ask what's wrong with women, and they spend all their time in pipeline programs and mentorship programs instead of actually dealing with misogyny and racism that keeps women and women of color out of the positions that they actually belong in.

[16:21] Rashad Robinson: Because we talk about communities that have been exploited, targeted, and left out as vulnerable. And vulnerability is a personal trait. Like I am personally vulnerable when I go on social media and I see like an ex-boyfriend that's way too happy with his life. And I'm like, that's vulnerability. That's like me, my therapist, we need to work through that. That's like I didn't work on myself. If we talk about communities as vulnerable, then we like spend our time trying to fix them and their families rather than fixing those systems. And so I say all that to all of us is like there's also the work every single day as people in our communities of how we talk about the issues. Yes, we want to care, but in order to turn caring into action, we have to talk about the issues in ways where we put the active voice on the system and the passive voice on the people that have been hurt, so that we focus on fixing systems and not spending our time fixing people.

And so that's also what I just need more people doing is like talking about the problem so we lead ourselves to the right solution. And when we lead ourselves to the right solution, when if you have so many more people that have woken up and care about these issues, I can actually move them not to more mentorship programs, even though mentorship programs are really good and important, but also to recognize why do we need mentorship programs in the first place? And what can we do to remove the barriers that have created the injustices that we are solving for through charity that we should really be solving for through justice?

[18:01] Rashad Robinson: Get some water because you've been talking, talking, talking. So you brought up the black men. You know, my brother is a Trump voter. Uh, and he's in jail, but he's a Trump voter, and we saw 50 Cent Trump voter. What is the appeal of Trump? Is this some swag? Is it some gangster thing? What is the Trump appeal? You're a black man. What is his appeal to the black man?

[18:25] Rashad Robinson: So it is definitely swag. He is um look, um, black folks know that like the Democratic Party hasn't always been great. And Trump is like a lot of people's boss, right? And he may actually be like the boss that has that you know is racist, but has probably promoted you, maybe. Um, and he sounds like the white man that a lot of black people know. And they can trust that they like that this might be the white man that I actually know. He also, because, and this is part of how enabling works, you know. When I first got to Color of Change about this, it's about nine years ago, I started this campaign against this TV show, where um the star was going around saying a lot of racist things. And we launched this campaign, and a lot of both progressives and even some of the funders, and this color change was much smaller.

I was taking over an organization that was like five staff. We have like a hundred and fifty staff now. So it's like a completely different organization from when I took it over nine years ago. And so it was like a lot of people like, why are you focusing on this guy? He's like, he's like a not um a worth your time. He's a joke, and you're like spending valuable resources. And we were trying to get this show, we were trying to get sponsors of the show to back away. And that show was the Celebrity Apprentice. The star was Donald Trump. And the issue was the fact that he was traveling around the country advancing a racist um conspiracy theory about the president while every week having a platform.

And I mean, I have still have the emails. I'm writing a book for Random House. Some of those things will be interspersed. And um, and one of the things um about it was like their lack of recognition of cultural power. And that's why I'm so that's why I'll always come when culture makers, people who are in the cultural space invite me because culture is so power and such a powerful indicator, right? That these corporations would enable this platform for him, that he could be on prime time, both be representing himself as a capable business person. Imagine if he had if a black person or a woman of any color had had that many business failings, right? And could have a TV show where they were then positioned as a successful business person.

Once people would have done all sorts of exposes that would have taken that person down. And they would have not lasted season over season, but he got to have that show, season over season because of how racism works, how capitalism works, how misogyny works, how all of these systems sort of intertwine. And he had it for years, and America saw it. And he got to position himself that way, and he got to build a brand that way that he delivers, right? And so, and then you have the Democrats, which can sometimes feel like the team that plays the Harlem Globetrotters, not the Harlem Globetrotters. And um, and that, and then, and so who you do, you want to be on the team that doesn't feel like a winning team?

And I'm just saying this, I'm not explaining this, I'm not defending people voting for Donald Trump. I'm simply just saying how we end up getting there, that you end up with someone that feels like a winner, even if they aren't a winner.

[22:01] Rashad Robinson: And um, and then people get on board, and that's also why when I try to talk about voting out in the community, I don't start from a place where, like, will black people vote or won't they vote? Or even when I talk to black men who might be peeling off, I do remind everyone that black men are still out of all of the sort of groups, the racial groups of men, the most likely to vote against Donald Trump, even with the peel-off. They're way more likely to vote against Donald Trump than any other group of men. They're just not as good as black women on this issue. That's all, right? But no group of people is. I feel like I even talk about it from a voting perspective. Sometimes folks were like, What will the black, you know, numbers look like on voting?

I'm like, well, first, let's start from the perspective, not of the deficit of black voting, but let's start from the fact that black people are actually the protagonist in the American story of voting. A protagonist is someone that has to overcome a lot of barriers, a lot of obstacles, has to fight violence sometimes and all sorts of threats in order to win. And that's what black people have done in every phase of their sort of our fight to vote, our fight to participate. Let's talk about black folks as the protagonist in the story. And I believe that can open us up to actually get more people engaged rather than starting from a place. Do you want to be on the team that's a protagonist, or are you showing up to stop something bad from happening?

I want to get people focused on, and that's why in this moment of like so much uh pain from COVID to the uprisings, and you ask me, like, how do you show up? I'm like, I always want to show up with joy. And black joy is not the absence of pain, but it's the presence of aspiration, not just what we are fighting against, but what we are fighting for. And so, you know, sometimes that's hard certain mornings, but I also just constantly remind myself that there is an opportunity to win. And we can't win if we are sort of um spending all of our time focusing on not losing.

[24:21] Tonya Pinkins: Woo! This is Tonya Pinkins. We are listening to just Rashad Robinson, who is on fire with inspiration. This is the red pilling of America on the Marissa Lynn Daniels Studios every Saturday at 5 p.m. This was part one. Don't miss part two of my conversation with Rashad Robinson of Color of Change.