Color of Change President on how the organization is pushing for systemic policy reform

Rashad Robinson, President of Color of Change, joined The Final Round on Yahoo Finance to discuss the nationwide protests in response to the death of George Floyd and the phone call he and other civil rights leaders had with Mark Zuckerberg.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Welcome back to "The Final Round." Protests are spreading beyond big cities and into many small and mid-sized communities, as Americans protest police brutality and inequality here in America. And for more on this, I want to bring in our next guest, Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change. Rashad, it's great to have you on the show. Thanks so much for taking the time this afternoon.

The nation has erupted in a way that younger generations haven't seen before in their lifetime. And I asked this to NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson yesterday. And I want to ask a similar question to you. And it's how do we make sure that this is a turning point for real change here in America? How do we make sure that we don't forget about what we've seen play out across the country over the last seven days?

RASHAD ROBINSON: Well, that's going to be all of our responsibility. But some of the things that we're doing at Color of Change are really trying to translate all of the presence of this energy into actual systemic things that we can change. Now, we know that some of these things are about the written rules of policy. And I'll talk about that in a second.

But it's also about the written rules of culture about all the ways in which we treat one another and which systems, corporations, others-- how they respond and engage. But on the policy front, you know, Color of Change-- at Color of Change that are-- we've outlined nine systemic policy reforms that need to happen at the local and national level to deal specifically with policing that we know has been such a huge problem. And most policing happens at the local level.

But far too often, we get very close to police reform. And then we are sort of stalled by all the forces that far too often stand in the way. And so as I talk to politicians, I'm not so much interested in the list of policies that they're for, the what. I'm really interested in the how. How are they going to build the energy to overcome the forces?

Right now, we've seen in places where our chokeholds, for instance, have gotten banned. And then we watch as leaders of police unions teach chokeholds outside of this sort of training ground and are protected by the union. We've watched police officers get fired, like the police officer who killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, only to watch him get rehired in another jurisdiction.

And so we also recognize that racism and racial injustice is like water that pours over the floor with holes in it. It will always find the cracks. And we have to shore up the cracks. We have to be persistent and diligent on in shoring that up. We've been working at Color of Change for a number of years at a project at winningjustice.org.

Winningjustice.org is our prosecutor protection plat-- it's our prosecutor justice platform. And we've been working all around the country for the last couple of years and really challenging and pushing prosecutors. There's 2,400 prosecutors all around the country.

And so if you're at home right now looking at these protests, thinking, wow, it's really bad what happened in Georgia to Armad Arbery. It's really horrible what happened in Tennessee to Breonna Taylor. It's devastating what we're seeing happening in Minneapolis and around the country.

What you should know is that you likely live in a community where you have a district attorney that will not hold police accountable for violence. You have a district attorney that is running up mass incarceration. The United States has 4% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population. We are here in this moment because we all live in those communities. And this winning justice platform is a place for you to go.

AKIKO FUJITA: Rashad, I want to give you an opportunity to talk about the conversation you had yesterday with Facebook. You've made it very clear you were disappointed with where Facebook stands and not removing some of these comments that President Trump has posted to incite violence essentially. What did you want to hear from Facebook? Can you give us a little more insight on that conversation?

RASHAD ROBINSON: Absolutely. And just the quick background on that is that we have been back and forth with Facebook for years. I've had dinner at Mark Zuckerberg's house to talk about policies. I've had regular conversations with Sheryl Sandberg.

And so we weren't meeting for the first time. This wasn't simply about a set of policies that we're-- this wasn't about him removing content alone. This was about actually him enforcing policies that we fought for them to put on the books-- policies around content that focuses on voter suppression-- policies that focus on harassment and inciting violence.

These are the policies. And if you look at the four corners of the policies that we've actually helped them produce, they are not actually enforcing them when it comes to the president of United States, which sets an incredibly bad precedent because he is just so incredibly powerful with such a big reach.

When we talked to Mark Zuckerberg, the problem is, is that I find over and over again that he has as much understanding for the sort of history and the challenges with discrimination in civil rights as I probably have about building a technology platform in the back end of coding. He simply doesn't understand.

And the problem is, is like a lot of Silicon Valley companies, he doesn't have the right leadership around him that have that history and understanding. And so we get responses to these questions that are really challenging. And we are in a life and death situation, not just for the safety of people on the ground, but for the very ability for people to express their will for a better future at the polls.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, it certainly is. And Rashad, I wish we had more time because this is such an important conversation. I know we want to see you more about what role social media should play and can play in the type of situation that we are in right now, and what they can do in order to better facilitate what is going on. So we hope to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us today. We really appreciate it.

RASHAD ROBINSON: Thanks for having me.