When activist Rashad Robinson took the helm of Color of Change, the nation's largest online racial justice organization, in 2011, he wanted to figure out how to drive campaigns on the internet that would spur systemic and real-world change. By the summer of 2016, when he met with writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus to be interviewed for a profile in WIRED, he was well on his way. By that time, he'd grown the organization's staff from half a dozen people to 40, and its budget by more than a factor of 10. There was an undeniable sense of forward momentum. And America's digital and political spheres were about to go haywire (seemingly) overnight.
This profile of Robinson was published in October 2016, as part of a special issue guest-curated by Barack Obama during the waning days of his presidency. In it, Lewis-Kraus wrote about how Robinson wanted to communicate to young, politically charged Americans that "social-media strategy could be about more than simple, incendiary cultivation of rage and shame." And yet, the next president was about to ride that wave all the way into the Oval Office.
In a way, then, this feature is a time capsule, a portrait of a landscape that feels almost inaccessibly distant in 2023. Obama's guest editor essay ran under the headline "Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive," a title that feels grimly ironic and pretty out-of-touch with the benefit of hindsight. But what I'm struck by, rereading Lewis-Kraus' profile, is how much of what Robinson had to say does feel relevant, especially as the country barrels toward its next presidential election. I would imagine, for instance, that many activists and changemakers are still fixated on the central question he poses: how to tackle "the problem of the systemic in the age of the personal."
I'm curious, though: What, if any, aspects of the story seem pertinent to you in the run-up to 2024, or just in post-Trump and post-2020 America? Let me know in the comments below the story.
See you next week!
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