To address this matter and discuss how Black culture can be assertive, a fireside chat titled “We Voted, Now What?” featuring Color of Change president Rashad Robinson and Hollywood actor and activist Kendrick Sampson.

“I think as we reckon with not just what is power, but our lack of power and all the ways in which we have to get clear about power in order to get clear about what we do next,” Robinson told the crowd. “And so when I think about power, I very much think about the ability to change the rules. And sometimes it’s the written rules and other times it’s the unwritten rules, the written rules of policy and the unwritten rules of culture.”

This led the civil rights advocate to call out the illusion of inclusion, believing there is true advancement because Black celebrities, businessmen and women and politicians in prominent positions.

“Far too often we mistake presence for power. Presence is visibility, awareness, retweets, shout outs from the stage. It’s sometimes making you feel like something has happened that hasn’t actually happened,” Robinson said. “And so when we mistake presence for power, we can sometimes think that a Black president means that we’re post-racial.”

He added, “We can sometimes think that a black celebrity stopping the internet when they announce a new album means that America loves black people as much as America loves Black culture.”

Sampson chimed in to emphasize the importance of rallying together as the start of creating solidarity, similar to the acts of social reformers, including Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Ida B. Wells, Angela Davis, and Malcolm X.

“What a lot of the things that we’ve been talking about is going back to the purpose of the Black power movement,” Sampson said. “Getting people comfortable with demanding power, standing in their power, understanding that we deserve power and how to build power very simply. Like when me and Rashad, sometimes me and Rashad don’t agree, [but] when we do agree and we got the same 24 hours in a day, and if we do our part, we can have 48 hours. That’s literally how you build power.”

Robinson followed up by defining what infrastructure looks like for those in the audience who may not have known.

“Infrastructure is the vehicles. It’s the organizations. It is the things that are possible when we come together and we build something that wasn’t there before. And so infrastructure, obviously can be relationships but infrastructure is organizations. Infrastructure is money and resource,” he explained. “Infrastructure is the ways in which we can take platforms and actually make new things possible. And so when I think about this moment that we are in, and I go back to this.”

Although there was a strong message of strengthening solidarity, the value of partnership wasn’t lost.

“We do have to build alliances and the next couple of years are gonna give us a lot of ways to build alliances. There’s a lot of things that black people have been saying about how the economy works, about how society works, about the unfairness,” Robinson said. “As these cuts and as these changes as folks begin to steal and fleece as we see the impacts of what’s gonna happen at the federal level on everyday people, how are we welcoming new people into a different understanding of what’s possible?”

Technology plays a role in everyday life and is a powerful force, which is what Sampson and Robinson hope Black people recognize moving forward.

“Tech is being used right now to divide us more than ever. And we’ve talked about it being more harmful to black people than helpful,” Sampson shared. “We need to change that. We need to shift that and understand that we can dictate the direction. We are not beholden to technology just because it exists. Technology should further connect us, not replace the relationship.”

“As I think about the role of technology and the role of the tools, both in terms of what we use to build more energy and engagement, but also the companies and the places that you are sort of in and the places where you work. How are you thinking about these questions of diversity? How are we thinking about the questions to make sure that more people look like us around those tables, but also more people that have our perspective and actually can wield the type of power necessary to make changes?” Robinson asked attendees.

He added, “Those are the questions that I believe that we have to be focused on and we actually can’t do that without numbers. And so we have to be able to build numbers, we have to find ways to welcome people into a new fight, help people understand why we’ve lost when we’ve lost elections and we haven’t won.”