@spotlight

Lawrence Ross Is Defining The Woke Marketplace

article image placeholderLawrence Ross
But what's really compelling about talking to him right now is he's in the middle of a launch of an app called 365 Ally, and it describes itself as a woke marketplace. Lawrence, welcome to Spotlight. I have a million questions. I want you to really give us the whole lowdown on what the goal of 365 Ally is, but I want to start off this conversation first of all, by checking in with you. How are you? What's going on? Where are you?

Professor, entrepreneur, thought leader - Lawrence is visiting campuses to build a new economy. In Conversation here #swellinterview

10
@alpha1906
Lawrence Ross
@alpha1906 · 2:32
And the idea is that when you intentionally try to make those types of purchases, what you're doing is that you're trying to break down some of the economic silos that we have that are centered around race
10
@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 0:58

Creating the app/ user experience

Lawrence, great to hear your voice. I'm going to nerd out here for 2 seconds about you and Scion and your collaboration to create the app in terms of knowing the diversity of the users you want to hit. How did you go about creating the design, the flow? How did you prioritize the user experience in terms of what you ultimately wanted to get from people? And specifically the idea of a woke marketplace where you enable you don't just talk
@alpha1906
Lawrence Ross
@alpha1906 · 4:00
We're selling everything from jewelry to candles, and it's going to expand sooner or later, but they're recognizing the power of the app and the app kind of really combines a number of different things in terms of functionality to use name brand apps. It's kind of like a combination of your offer up Yelp group on all together Craigslist, because you can be an individual who has something local that you want to sell
2
@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:30

Theory vs practice

And we're living in a time right now where we have no time to waste. So the idea of breaking down these economic silos by saying, hey, this is intentional. This is not nuanced. These are people of color. These are people with disabilities. These are marginal life communities who are desperately in need of the flow of money. This is the time to do it. And I just applaud the focus and the resolution. You have to do something that everyone can get behind because everybody shops
@alpha1906
Lawrence Ross
@alpha1906 · 3:10
And what we're looking for people in terms of on a College campus or people who want to deal with the economic disparities based upon race is to actually take action. And action means yes, you have to spend money. You literally have to spend money in order to find goods in order to get the goods that not only do you want in your household or for yourself, but you have to spend money that's going to improve other communities
@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:19

Breaking down economic silos to break social silos

Do you believe that there is a potential in your grand scheme, your vision of 365 Ally and the work you do and the books you write that there's a potential to have inroads into economic silos that can directly change the impact that social silos have created. The Echo Chambers. If you had a draw diagram of economic silos being broken down by these intentional spaces, do you see a direct link from that experience to breaking down the silos in terms of Echo Chambers?
@alpha1906
Lawrence Ross
@alpha1906 · 4:13
And so, therefore, they should list, because all the things that kind of trap people within social silos where they don't have interactions with a particular consumer base can get them thinking that they don't particularly have anything appealing to that consumer base because they're just not there. I can't wait
2
@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:34

WOKE

So we're going to continue this. But I want to give you one question while I'm driving, which is about the word woke. I'm dying to have your riff on this because when I went to the website and it said the Woke marketplace, I thought to myself, what a weighted word these days. And people have already sort of done memes about making fun of it. And I just would like because this is a big project for you
@alpha1906
Lawrence Ross
@alpha1906 · 2:02
This idea that we can't believe that people are being canceled left and right when in reality, basically, what we're really saying is that for too long, often we have people who were able to say really terrible things or to be able to do really terrible things. And it was a monologue. They're just objecting to the fact that now it's a dialogue. And so the same thing happens when it comes to Woke and why I use it in terms of the Woke marketplace
2
@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:20

After the cancel

But also you're an activist and you're creating space. I just visited you at the Metaphor Cafe, and I'm so blown away by the potential of all of that to really change lives globally, not just in Los Angeles, but the idea of giving people the tools to communicate. At what point do you believe somebody needs to not talk and not create and listen when they've gotten into trouble? So in other words, somebody says something does something creates something. It's offensive
2
Swell user mugshot
0:000:00