What LaTosha Brown and Alicia Garza Drew Out of Rashad Robinson on ‘Freedom Table’

An episode of “Freedom Table” built around Rashad Robinson’s new book turned into a working session on how movements measure progress, according to NewsOne’s recap of the July broadcast. Alicia Garza hosted the conversation, with organizer LaTosha Brown joining Robinson for the discussion.

Robinson used the appearance to walk through the core distinction of “From Presence to Power: How to Take On the Fights That Matter and Win,” his book released July 28 through One World, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Presence, as he described it earlier this year, is visibility and attention. Power is the ability to change decisions. On “Freedom Table,” he compressed the idea into one line: “Real and lasting power is the ability to change the rules.”

The panel grounded that argument in specifics rather than theory. Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath in New Orleans became a central case study, a moment the group examined as an instance of Black presence registering nationally without translating into power over the institutions that determined the region’s recovery. From there, the conversation turned to voting rights, weighing participation against the deeper work of winning structural change, and to redistricting fights reshaping political maps across Southern states.

Brown and Garza have each spent years organizing around voting access and Black political power, giving the exchange a practitioner’s edge rather than a promotional one. Robinson has said he wrote the book for people who “watch TV, listen to your podcast, and watch the news,” rather than for organizers inside institutions alone, a framing consistent with a conversation built around three people who have spent careers doing exactly that kind of movement work.

The episode arrived amid a broader rollout for the book, which Robinson has also discussed at a Commonwealth Club appearance in San Francisco and traced back to formative years in his Long Island hometown. Readers can find the book’s accompanying exercises and tools through its companion site.