Riverhead native and civil rights leader Rashad Robinson to NAACP luncheon: ‘Build power to change the rules’

Riverhead native Rashad Robinson delivered a rousing call to action to a packed banquet hall at the NAACP Long Island Region biennial luncheon Saturday in Woodbury.

Robinson, executive director of the million-member strong civil rights organization Color of Change, was the keynote speaker at the NAACP event, which drew a crowd of more than 1,200 to Crest Hollow Country Club.

Following a host of dignitaries to the podium — including NAACP New York State Conference president Dr. Hazel N. Dukes, N.Y. Lt. Gov. Kathleen Hochul, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, Nassau County Executive Laura Curran and Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon — Robinson called on people of color and their allies to take up the mandate of the NAACP luncheon’s theme, “Steadfast and Immovable in the Face of Injustice.”

“Steadfast and immovable in the times we are living in doesn’t mean standing still,” Robinson said. “I don’t think being immovable means we are not pushing forward. It means we are not being pushed back.”

Robinson, 39, spoke of lessons learned from his successful activism at the head of Color of Change since 2011, effectively using the economic clout of the organization’s membership to force policy and legislative changes for racial, social and economic justice.

“We have a saying at Color of Change,” Robinson said. “Don’t mistake presence for power. Presence is important, but when we think we’ve got power when we’ve just got presence we set ourselves up,” he said.

“Power is the ability to change the rules,” Robinson told the crowd. “Sometimes those are the written rules of policy and sometimes those are the unwritten rules of culture. Ending the injustices that hold us back isn’t just being aware of them…It’s about making those decision-makers who are in power have to do something about it.”

Activism by Color of Change forced big corporations to stop funding the American Legislative Exchange Council, the organization behind voter-suppression and “stand your ground” laws in dozens of states.

After Charlottesville, the organization orchestrated a social media campaign to urge executives to quit the president’s business councils. After two days during which corporations were inundated with hundreds of thousands of messages, the councils were disbanded.

Robinson spearheaded a successful campaign to force credit card companies to refuse to process payments for hate groups.

“You don’t process fees for ISIS, so you don’t process fees for white nationists and white supremacists. They’re the same,” Robinson said he told the credit card companies. “They’re terrorist organizations and if you stand up against terrorism then you stand up against terrorism when it’s white, just like you stand up against terrorism when it’s any other color.”

After Charlottesville, the credit card companies who initially told the group to “go talk to the banks or legislatures” began to see the economic wisdom in removing those organizations from their customer rolls.

“Sixty organizations have now been removed and cannot process credit card payments through Amex, Visa and Mastercard,” he said as applause erupted in the ballroom.

“That’s the difference between us yelling into the wind — posting on our Facebook pages when we’re angry or tweeting and walking away and thinking we did something — and actually going at the source of what is holding us back and stopping it in its tracks,” Robinson said, his voice rising. “If we’re going to be different this time, we have to build campaigns that are not just present but are powerful.”

Robinson said activism must change the narrative.

“So often people think of inequality and racism as unfortunate,” he said. “The response to ‘unfortunate’ is to say we have to build empathy.” But empathy, he warned, doesn’t make for lasting change. For example, he said, empathy leads to “re-entry programs instead of dealing with the fact that we are the world’s mass-incarceration leader — we have 3 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population. That will not be solved by empathy. It will be solved by changing the rules and how we do business.”

Changing the rules of power makes people uncomfortable, Robinson said. “It will force folks to have to actually give up something,” he said, which explains why progress for black people or any oppressed people has ever been popular when it is happening.

“Anybody who has a conversation bout the tactics that we take rather than the injustices we face, 20 years from now will be on the wrong side of history — and will be trying to pretend that they were with us all along,” Robinson said.

Color of Change was founded in the aftermath of a flood, Hurricane Katrina, Robinson noted. It was a life-altering disaster caused by bad decision-makers, he said.

“I literally can still see the images of black people on their roofs begging for the government to do something — and being left to die.

“Katrina illustrated all the things we already knew about geographic segregation, generational poverty, the impacts of what we’ve done to our planet, our voting system,” Robinson said.

“But at the heart of it, no one was nervous about disappointing black people. No one — the government, corporations, the media…No one. And when institutions are not nervous about disappointing your community, nothing else matters,” he warned.

“It means that you are not at the table — but you are on the menu.”

In the current era, Robinson said, “the type of response and the type of energy we’ve got to have has to be different. The type of tools we use and how we engage people has to be different.” His organization’s strategy led to Color of Change being recognized this month by Fast Company as number two on the top-10 list of innovative not-for-profit companies in 2017.

Robinson said activists must “build power to change the rules” in a movement led by the people who are oppressed and supported by others who stand with them. Victories won by the oppressed benefit all, he said.

“When black people win, we win for everyone,” Robinson said. “When black people participate at higher levels we continue to make this country better. We open up more opportunities for others. The history book, over and over, tells the story of how black liberation has opend up opportunities for immigrants, for LGBT communities and for women. That has been our history and it continues to need to be our future,” he said.

“It’s not just translating presence to power. It’s about building the type of power to make justice real,” Robinson said. “And we do this work until justice is real.”

Robinson, a 1997 Riverhead High School graduate (see: “From Riverhead to the national stage: Rashad Robinson, making a difference,” RiverheadLOCAL, June 10, 2013), lives in New York City but his work has him constantly criss-crossing the country, making frequent appearances on cable television and speaking at numerous events and rallies.

His activism dates back to his youth in his hometown, where as a high school student he led a protest against Rite-Aid Pharmacy, which had barred high school students from entering the store on their lunch break. Saturday he spoke of the support and advice he got from NAACP Eastern Long Island Branch president Lucius Ware, who was seated at a table with Robinson’s parents, Everett and Shirley, and his brother Jamar and his family.

“I literally would not be here today without the NAACP,” Robinson said. “It’s an organization whose history, intention and impact continues to set a model for leaders — not just in the racial justice arena, but leaders who are fighitng to be heard and counted and visible here in this country and around the world.”