My final note was to Obama. We had this debate, over the years, about whether individuals or social movements shape history—the kind of casual, esoteric conversation that filled in downtime in cars, helicopters, airplanes, or the quiet of the Oval Office. I had been on the side of social movements, dating back to the early days of the Arab Spring. “I was wrong,” I told him in my message. “You’ve made a difference in the lives of billions of people.”
