I’m sending this book to all my friends and family. Rashad doesn’t just offer a diagnosis of the problems with how power works in this country; he offers clear, actionable ideas for how regular people can do something about it. I’ve been involved in activism a good part of my life, and Rashad gave me a new way of thinking about how power works. This is a must-read for anyone who wants things to change.
From Presence to Power is the handbook I wish I had when I first started organizing, and it’s the book I will keep close from this moment forward. The lessons and stories contained within, gleaned from decades of learning and experimentation, are vital for anyone trying to bring about real and lasting change. But the best part of it is that you don’t need to be an organizer to learn and apply something useful from it. It’s the book everybody needs right now.
Rashad Robinson has literally written the book on power: what it means, how we leverage it, and how we can quit making the same mistakes. He has been at the center of so many of the most crucial fights for racial, social, and economic justice over his career, and he shares hard-won lessons with unflinching honesty and deep strategic clarity.
Rashad Robinson is who you want with you in a foxhole. He’ll see all the angles and devise a winning strategy faster than anyone. It’s such a gift that this three-decade veteran of civil and human rights advocacy is sharing his methods precisely when we need them most. We all have something we want to change: in our schools, in our neighborhoods, in our country. But most of us worry that protest isn’t enough. Using Rashad’s principles for building power—and applying his engaging and incisive exercises to our own goals—we get a master class in real activism. This is the book to read for the fight ahead.
Rashad Robinson is a generationally brilliant thinker and strategist, sharing inspiring, hard-earned wisdom on how to not just survive the present challenging environment but to grab the reins and win.
A book about winning and building power is a necessary tonic for the times when Donald Trump wields such power. Rashad Robinson has locked horns with the most powerful people on the planet. He expertly dissects how we can win, and where and why we have come up short. His analysis of roles, rules, and results is an essential framework for how to forge a path to power, moving us from analysis to action—a way out of the wilderness progressives find ourselves in today. This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to achieve lasting structural change, not just momentary victories and fleeting results.
Rashad Robinson is one of the most gifted and fearless leaders we have. In his eagerly anticipated and desperately needed book, From Presence to Power, he offers a detailed plan for how we can achieve true change by moving from visibility to vitality—from being seen to being felt. This is a strategically sophisticated book that teaches us how not to simply traffic in echoes and effects, but to be effective in our aims by amassing and then pulling the levers of real power.
To transform the world for the good, we must study power. As one of the most impactful activist leaders of our time, Rashad Robinson has taken on power—corporate power, media power, racist power—and won time and again. Even in losses, he won through learning. From all his wins and learnings, Robinson lays out a clear blueprint for making antiracist change.
Rashad Robinson has been leading successful campaigns for years, and now he has distilled all that learned experience into a crisp, clear, and compelling road map for others who want to learn how to build power and win. From Presence to Power is an invaluable gift to the movement; my only complaint is that I wish I had had it when I was twenty years old!
I’ve been in movements all my life, and I know passion alone doesn’t win—power does. From Presence to Power is a powerful and necessary book that cuts through the illusion that visibility equals victory and offers a real framework for changing systems, not just reacting to them. This is the book every new organizer needs and every generation should inherit. Rashad shows us how committed people turn frustration into leverage and energy into results.
From Presence to Power is an essential text for this moment: a how-to guide for winning positive change on a new political playing field, backed by decades of experience in the work of building power for progress. If you’ve ever despaired at the accelerating harms of the world around us and wished there was something you could do, this is the book for you.
Rashad has helped shape some of the most effective fights for justice in our lifetime—and I’ve seen that work up close. This book gives people the strategy and clarity they need to stop reacting and start winning.
Rashad Robinson’s book is essential reading for anyone interested in creating meaningful and lasting social change. How fortunate are we that such a champion of justice is letting us into his mind so that we can make history and not repeat it.
I’ve spent my career fighting for working people—for higher wages, safer jobs, dignity on the clock. And I’ve learned that the campaigns that get the most attention aren’t always the ones that deliver. In From Presence to Power, Rashad names that gap with precision and shows how to close it: how to turn moments into the kind of power that actually changes the rules for workers and their families.