I have some very exciting news: my book, From Presence to Power: How to Take On the Fights That Matter—And Win, will be released on July 28th.

I wrote this book for a simple reason. In order for our movements to win, we need to raise our strategy game. That means we need shared language, sharper tools, and more strategic frameworks for thinking about power—and a deeper analysis of what we’re getting right and wrong. This book is my chance to put those resources in the hands of people working at all levels of social change.

Some of these are tools and frameworks I’ve been using for a long time. Others crystallized through the process of writing this book, as I reflected on lessons learned from hard-won (and hard-lost) fights—from the progressive prosecutor movement to challenging Big Tech.

Before I share more about the content of the book, I want to enlist you in my effort to get these ideas into more people’s hands. Right now, there are three things you can do to help bring these ideas to people who will use them:

1. Please pre-order the book. Pre-orders are the main way a book gets on bestseller lists, and bestseller lists are one way ideas reach people beyond insiders. You can buy the book on Bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, or other booksellers.
   ​
2. Call your local library and independent book store and ask them to carry it. A few calls like this can make a big difference in terms of gaining exposure at the local level.
   ​
3. If you are connected to an organization that can do a book buy or host me to speak, please feel free to reach out. Book buys (whether connected to a conference or other event, a keynote I could deliver, or a fundraiser premium) put the book into much wider circulation.

If you know me at all, the name of the book won't surprise you...most of you have probably heard me talk about the difference between presence versus power in some form.

But there's also stuff in here that I haven't really talked about publicly before. Ideas I've been developing for years that finally have room to breathe. There's a lot about infrastructure (I mean real infrastructure, not the buzzword version) and about why it's the thing that determines whether movements hold their gains or lose them. I got to write about Bayard Rustin as an infrastructure hero, which I've wanted to do for a long time. And I got to be honest about what it's actually been like to lead during this era. The strategy, yes, but the cost, the doubt, the moments when the playbook stops working and you have to figure out what comes next.

The book includes ten core ideas about strategy and nine exercises that make it useful for everyday people and leaders, which come from real battles that I (and so many of you) have been part of of. I tell the story of how we helped take on ALEC and other corporate campaigns. I write about Hollywood, about my childhood growing up obsessed with media. I write about being at the center of real decisions at GLAAD, and then going after something much harder through Color Of Change. I talk about tech, and what it's actually like to go up against companies that have more money and more lobbyists than you'll ever have, and how, despite that, we managed to take on people like Mark Zuckerberg and win.

From Presence to Power is, honestly, the book I wish I had when I was starting out. It’s the book I wish I could have reached for when I became a leader and the answers stopped being obvious. It's for the people running organizations and campaigns right now.

But it's also for the people who aren't leading yet. The people who show up to protest, sign petitions, have those signs in their yards that say “Love is love, we believe in science, no one is illegal, and Black Lives Matter” in their yards, who listen to NPR and yell back at the news, wondering why we aren't winning more when they know we are on the right side of history.

We can win. But I wrote this book to remind people that it's not enough to be right. Winning requires strategy, power, and really understanding what change requires.

The lessons in here aren't abstract. They come out of behind-the-scenes stories and they're meant to be useful. Not "here are some things to think about" but "here is how this works and here is what to do with it."

---

The Right has built an entire infrastructure for promoting books and other media and elevating the ideas that serve their movement. That infrastructure allows their ideas to translate in new ways and activate new behaviors.

But we don't have that. What we have is each other.

So again, here are the three things you can do today.

1. Pre-order the book.
2. Call your local library and independent book store and ask them to carry it.
3. Reach out if you would like to have me speak or are interested in a bulk book buy.

There are other ways you can help as well:

• Think of three people who are trying to figure out what to do right now and tell them about it. Or even pre-order them a copy.
• Post about it. I'll have a social kit coming out soon that I’ll share.
• Write a review on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, wherever. Reviews are another big signal. They matter a lot, and they don't take much time to write.

And consider this a warning....this is the first of a couple of newsletters about the book before launch. I promise I'm not turning How We Win into a book infomercial. But this is personal to me — because this work is personal, because winning against our opponents is personal — and I'd rather share it with you all honestly than try to sell you on it. Thank you, as always. I hope you read it. I'm so grateful to so many of you for supporting me during this process, and I'm grateful to be in this fight with you.

— Rashad