November 2, 2018 • 42 mins
Georgia’s Stacey Abrams is on the verge of becoming the first Black woman to be elected governor in the U.S. AFROPUNK Solution Sessions interviewed Abrams in February 2018, just as her campaign was gaining momentum. Proud to say, “we knew you when…”
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to afro Punk Solution Sessions. I'm your host
Brigittad and I'm your co host Eve diff Cookee. Afro
Punk is a safe place, a blank space to freak
out in, to construct a new reality, to live our
lives as we see fit while making sense of the
world around us. Here at afro Punk, we have the
conversations that matter to us, conversations that lead to solutions.
(00:31):
The Georgia governor's race is an important one, and Stacy
Abrams is on fire. If she wins, Abrams would go
on to be the first black female governor in America.
As of today, less than one week before this hotly
contested election, Republican Brian Kemp has narrowly led Abrams in
most recent polls of likely voters, but a new survey
(00:51):
from Opinion Savvy found Abrams with a slight edge to
So just who is Brian Kemp Abrams is publican opponent? Well,
for one thing, he is a troubling history of racist
antics in the state, and if he spent any time
at all watching television in Georgia, you probably remember his
ads own guns, no one's taken away, and don't forget
(01:15):
this jam, I got a big truck just in case
I made to round up criminal illegals and take them
home myself. Yeah, I just said that. But beyond that,
As Secretary of State, Kempus architected voting policies that keep voters,
mostly black voters, from the polls. As Rolling Stone points out,
(01:35):
Abrahams is competing against a rival who was also her referee.
What does that mean. Well, it's called exact match, and
here's how it works. According to the Associated Press, Kem's
office currently has fifty three thousand voter registrations on hold
under the state's exact match policy, which he himself helped
push through the legislature in Okay. So let's say that
(01:58):
you're in Georgia and you want to go vote. Your
voter registration has your name as Bridget Todd rather than
Bridget Marie Todd, as it reads in the Social Security
Administration database. Now that tiny mistake would mean that your
registration will be put on hold, and it can be
something as small as a missing punctuation mark in your name.
And wild George's population is only black. Of the thousand
(02:20):
voter registrations placed on hold, seventy belonged to black voters
pretty suspect right. Kemp was even caught on tape complaining
about Stacy Abrams is a vote or outreach work, saying
her push to get folks to the poll quote continues
to concern us, especially if everybody exercises their right to vote.
So when Brian Kemp says everybody, who do you think
(02:42):
he means? Now? Compare his record to Abrams as minority
leader in the Georgia House of Representatives. She's been working
to protect voters and make it easier for everybody to vote.
Let's say that you're working a tough double shift down
at your job. Well, Abrams work to offer alternative voting
days and early voting to help you get to the
easier and in She also founded a nonpartisan nonprofit, the
(03:05):
New Georgia Project, which has registered over two fifty thousand Georgians,
mostly unmarried women, young people, and people of color. Listen,
No conversation urging us to vote is complete without also
talking about the reality of those forces that make it
difficult for us to do so, which Abrams has been
talking about her entire career. Need to make sure you're registered.
(03:27):
Check out vote dot org. That's v O T e
dot org. The Acropunk team will be joining Abrams on
the ground in Georgia and the days leading up to
the election. And full disclosure, I'm campaigning for her myself
on my own. For more on Abrams, her plan for
Georgia and why she's in this race, here's our extended
interview with her. Let's start with talking about how you're
(03:52):
up while you're upbringing. First of all, um, how you
grew up, where you grew up, and how it influenced
your role in politics. Now, sure, I grew up in
southern Mississippi, in the city of Gulfport. My mom was
a college librarian and my father was a shipyard worker
at Engleship Building. The challenge in our family was even
(04:16):
though my parents both worked full time jobs my mother
had a master's degree in library science from the University
of Wisconsin, my parents still struggled to make ends meet.
We we're best classified as working class slash working poor
depending on the year and how well their paychecks did.
And so we grew up with economic challenges, always thoughtful
(04:39):
about and worried about money. But what I remember most
about my childhood is not the economic deprivation, but how
my parents reacted to it. They had three rules for us,
go to church, go to school, and take care of
each other. Uh. They wanted us to go to church
because they wanted us to have a moral framework for
(05:00):
how we engaged our community. But more than that, they
wanted us to understand that our economic situation had nothing
to do with our spirit, with who we were and
who we could become. They also raced us with a
very inclusive sense of our responsibility that even though we
practiced a Christian tradition, there was no space in our
(05:23):
faith for discrimination against others. Um. The second job was
go school. My parents took education very seriously. My mom
was one of seven kids and the only one of
her siblings to finish high school, let alone go to
college and go off to graduate school. My dad is
the first man and his family to go to college,
and for both of them, education was the root out
(05:46):
of the abject poverty they grew up in, and so
they were very intentional about all six of their children
going to college and finishing high school and going to college.
So actually all of us did. Not all of us
finished my younger brother who ended up dropping out of college,
but every other one of us finished college, and most
(06:07):
of us went on to graduate work. The third job, though,
is the most important, the one that links me to
public service, and that was my mom and dad said
take care of each other. For them, that was more
than just taking care of my siblings. It was about
how do we take care of the world around us,
which seemed sometimes a bit strange to us as kids
(06:29):
who worried about whether the lights were cut on or
got cut off, and whether there was running water in
the house. But for my parents, they wanted us to
understand that no matter how little we had, there was
someone with less, and our job was to serve that person.
Watching my parents not only talk about service, but being
(06:50):
actively engaged in it as a child and throughout my
my growing up years, I've developed a very deep sense
of responsibility and for me that directly translates to politics. Um,
we have a responsibility to eradicate poverty, to create space
(07:11):
for people to be successful, and the way we do
that requires good leadership, the right leaders who understand the
intersection of politics and policy of the public sector at large,
but also as a nonprofit sector and the business sector.
And because of the way I was brought up, I
(07:31):
was raised to integrate all of those pieces of myself,
my religious beliefs, my educational beliefs, and my commitment to service.
And in the same way, it makes me want to
do this job as governor where I can integrate not
only my personal beliefs, but also my skills as a
nonprofit leader, as a business leader, and as a political leader. Yeah,
(07:52):
and that brings me to the to the point I
know that you, you know, are in politics, but you've
had not just like one life, but to laws, three
laws with all the things that you've done, like your
entrepreneurship um in business and politics and the Environmental Protection Agency,
like just all these various things from one end of
the spectrum to the other. And I guess what I'm
(08:15):
wondering is like how you would what you would say
to a person who thinks that they maybe don't have
the qualifications, are don't know exactly what they're looking for
when they're looking to get into politics. Like, it doesn't
just have to be one thing. It can be more
than one thing that you have experience in that can
bring you to be sitting at the table. Oh. Absolutely,
(08:37):
there is no one pathway. In fact that I know
that because I've taken most of them. Um, I went
from you know when college, actually had to write a
paper about what I wanted to know when I graduated
because I was so undecided about my major. I majors
in physics and philosophy and theater I did. I briefly
forward it with chemistry and history, and finally the deans
(09:01):
that you've no idea what you want to study, so
just write me a paper and tell me what you
think you want to know. And I actually ended up
graduating from Spellman College with an interdisciplinary studies major, which
basically meant they let me make it up, and I
studied political science, economics, and sociology. The reason I talked
about that, though, is that I became comfortable with not
(09:23):
having a direct path to my goals, and that's hard
to do. It's hard to know that you don't have
to know everything to be successful, and when it comes
to running for office, when it comes to serving your community,
the most important thing to know is what you want
to see changed and how you want to be a
(09:43):
part of that change. You don't have to come with
every solution, but you have to come with the right questions,
and too often, especially communities of color, young people women.
We hold ourselves back until we are perfect. Problems don't
wait till you're perfect. Problems need to be solved now,
And sometimes the best solutions come from people who aren't
(10:05):
so grounded in the minutia of the moment, that have
the per personal experience, but also have the passion for
wanting to see change. And so you know, I've had
people who have complimented me on my multiple hats and
the different things I've done, and I'm privileged and blessed
to have these various opportunities. But I will tell anyone
(10:27):
who's thinking about standing for office, if you care about
your community, if there is something that drives you, and
if you are willing to do the work, then stand
up and run because we need you. Why does the
representation and diversity matter and government? There are complex challenges
(10:49):
facing our communities. Does that matter where you live? Even
in homogeneous spaces, there are differences of need, and so
within the Black community, US, in the Latino community, within
the white community. Every community of of any kind has complexity,
(11:10):
but we are a common society where our complexities touch
each other. Diversity matters because people need to know what
those challenges are. They need to understand at a visceral
level the impact of those issues. I spend a lot
of time talking about decriminalization of poverty, because unless you've
(11:33):
been poor, you do not always understand what it means
to have your license taken away because you can't pay
a traffic ticket, because the minute that happens, you can't
get to work anymore, and the job you have that's
barely helping you make ends meet disappears. If you are
a person of color who has experienced discrimination, then you
(11:57):
have the ability often to see where this from nation
wise and to then counteract it. You need diversity because
diversity provides information. It also provides ways to address issues,
and that diversity in and of itself creates a richer
and fuller response. In politics, we have seen what happens
(12:20):
when you have a homogeneous set of people making decisions.
Too many people are left out of those choices, too
many people are impacted negatively by the decisions that are made.
And it isn't until we add new voices, add new
people of color, add women, add differences based on sexual orientation,
(12:43):
that we then become aware of the impediments and the
prejudices that exist in our communities, in our in our policies,
and so I see diversity as the only way to
get too good answers, because otherwise you're trying to solve
a problem without full information, and that's both intellectually void,
but it also is immoral because you're not serving everyone,
(13:05):
and that is the responsibility of good government. Let's take
a quick break, and we're back constantly facing opposition. It's
like part and parcel of everything you do from all
those different angles. And I know that there have probably
been a lot of people saying that what you're doing
is ambitious, are doubting your viability, Um, despite you know
(13:31):
everything that you've done. UM, I'm wondering, how do you. Um,
Do you have a little voice in your head of
like self doubt or has there ever been that before
saying something saying that this never has been done before? Um?
And if so, how do you overcome that, um, that feeling?
If you do have that. I actually have a book
(13:55):
that I just finished writing. It comes out in April
from Henry Holt. It's called Minority Leader, How to Lead
from the Outside and Create Real Change, And the first
two chapters are Dare to Want More. It's about ambition,
And the second chapter is about fear and otherness, And
so I smile at the question because those are the
(14:16):
roots for me of of how I navigate. One is
that you have to be ambitious. We have to want more,
especially those of us who come from communities where we
are not expected to have more. That necessity of ambition
is how we move beyond the lowered expectations of our communities.
(14:37):
But it's also how we achieve the great things that
are our society needs. But you cannot tell someone to
be ambitious, especially someone who comes from a minority community,
without also acknowledging that there are real fears. Their fears
are failure, but there's also fear of not not just failing,
(14:57):
but when we fail, we are often seen the representations
of everybody. So it's not just Stacy didn't do something,
it's Black people didn't do something. Um. You know, that
is a question that is always with me. How am
I not only speaking for myself but as a representation
of all of the different communities that are contained within
(15:19):
who I am. But the goal is to not let
fear hold me back. It is to let it inform me.
Because if you acknowledge what you're afraid of. If you
acknowledge the legitimacy of those fears, then you can parse
out which ones are illegitimate, which ones are just noise.
And when you can push aside the noise, then you
(15:40):
can focus on, Okay, how do I then overcome the
fear that I have in this election? Viability is a
question that is raised because people have not seen it
done before. I then have to take their questions and
find answers. And so I am running a campaign that
looks very different than any statewide campaign that we can find.
(16:03):
I am investing heavily in field, meaning that we are
talking to voters on the ground, and we are doing
so at a depth and at a rate that is
unprecedented in Georgia. I'm afraid sometimes that maybe we're doing
too much, But then my response is why am I afraid?
(16:25):
I'm afraid because I haven't seen it done, and that's
never a reason not to try. And what I want
people to know about me about my campaign, about my ambition,
is that my ambition is to do big things. I
want to make sure that we have bold and ambitious
children who are educated. I want to eradicate poverty. I
(16:47):
want to make certain that people feel included in their
communities and that they have every right to be successful
and not just to survive. Those are ambitious goals. My
response ability as a leader and as a candidate, is
to let fear be a motivational tool, not let it
(17:07):
be something that anchors me and drags me backwards. Yeah.
Also along that point, are there any specific things that
you do to quell that fear, maybe like writing a list,
um writing things down, or I don't know, saying certain
things to yourself, just something you know, maybe to give
(17:29):
people of actual practice. Is there anything like that that
you have? Absolutely when it comes to addressing fear, what
I encourage people to do is write those fears down.
What are you afraid of? Because one of the ways
fears is so insidious is that it never takes real form.
It just lurks in the back of our minds and
(17:49):
it's a shadow over what we do. Confronting fear requires
that we acknowledge what we're afraid of? Are we afraid
of winning? Are we afraid of losing? M I have
trade of how I'm perceived right down with that fear
is and then once you've written it down, actually make yourself,
think through where the fear comes from, what's driving it,
(18:12):
and then what's the consequence of this the fear is correct,
what's the worst thing that can happen? Because sometimes fear
is fear is powerful because we never actually take it
to its fullest extent, and we don't acknowledge that at
the end, if what we're worried about is being embarrassed,
you can survive embarrassment. If it's that you lose your job,
(18:35):
that's something slightly more problematic. But then does it mean
that that opens opportunities for new things? So confrontation of
fear is critical. But the same thing is true of ambition,
because ambition is scary, ambition is hard, and so I
also encourage people to write those things down. I have
a spreadsheet that I've had since I was in college,
(18:58):
and it lays out all of the jobs that I
want to have, and I wrote it down because some
of these are big jobs, and you cannot figure out
how to do things if you don't plan for them.
And so I write down my ambitions and then I
write down what does it take to get to that
job that I want or to achieve this thing I want.
I'm a tax, attorney, romance novelist, politician, entrepreneur. Each of
(19:24):
those things that I've done has required planning. I've recently
written my first book that is nonfiction that required planning.
There's no reason for us not to hold ambition. But
more importantly, it is exciting to have an ambition that
you can then explore because one thing you find is
(19:45):
sometimes you want a title, but you don't want the job,
or sometimes you want the job but the title doesn't matter.
And until you make yourself sit down and think through
those pieces, you don't know what you want for real.
And what I encourage people to do is to really
give yourself the space to explore who you are and
what you want and why you want it, because that's
(20:09):
the last and most important piece. Why you want something
usually determines how hard you're willing to work to have it.
If you want it because you're annoyed with someone else
and you want them to see how good you are,
that will get you a little bit. But if you're
doing it because you can't imagine doing something else, that's
what becomes your driver. That's what makes you committed, even
when the fears become too large. So if you're elected,
(20:33):
you'll be the first first black female governor in the US. Um,
what does stepping into like and facing head on such
a pioneering role feel like? Is it something I know
you've mentioned before when your first, Like you have certain
feelings about being in the first But is that is
(20:55):
that feeling that's something that's weighty, Like does it have
any challenges that people may not think about or is
it just a type of thing where it's like, I've
prepared for this, you know, Um, this is the job
that I'm here to do. Like I I am honored
and I'm humbled to be in the position that I'm in,
and I would be extraordinarily proud to become the first
(21:19):
black woman governor in the country, to become the first
woman governor in Georgia, the first black governor in Georgia.
I grew up in a family that often had wild
visions for what we could become and who never told
us that we could not be. I'm running because I
(21:41):
know that I have a clear and bold vision for
the future of Georgia, where everyone is welcome, where every
family has a chance to succeed. But I'm also doing
it because I know that I come from a tradition
of people helping each other. I talked about that because
the eatiness of this moment is not simply about the
(22:03):
first that I will represent. It's about expanding the sense
of what's possible for Georgians. Too many people don't see
themselves in reflected in leadership. They don't see themselves or
hear themselves reflected in the conversations around them. And this
is not just for Georgia. This is nationally and because
(22:25):
of that, too often we limit what our capacity is.
I do not take for granted how important my first
will be, but I also understand that that's just part
of the story, and that my success comes not in
(22:46):
becoming the first, but it lies in making certain that
others can follow and can achieve even more than I do.
Speaking of others who follow, what would you say to
a child who think that they can't be governor because
of where they're from. I grew up poor in Mississippi.
(23:08):
I'm fairly certain there's a country song or blue song
about that. The point of it being, there's nothing about
where I begin that dictates where I will end up,
and that is true for every single person. Now, there
are truly systemic challenges that cannot be ignored and should
never be made light of. Those systemic challenges come from poverty,
(23:31):
from racism, from sexism, from classism, from regionalism. They are
all ways going to be impediments that try to preserve
a certain communities access and deny access to others. Our
responsibility is to not allow those systems to defeat us.
But for a lot of folks, you can't individually buck
(23:54):
the system on your own. That's one of the responsibilities
I have. That's one of the responsibilities anyone who runs
for public office has to not only pave the way
for ourselves, but to make sure we pay that way
for others to follow. And so what I say to
folks is you may not be able to run for
governor today, but you can run for city council. You
(24:14):
can run for the school board. You can volunteer. You
can go to your city council meetings, you can go
to the state legislature. You can demand action from those
who represent you. Find the space where you can put
yourself into position and then keep pushing, but also hold
those of us who have achieved accountable for helping you
(24:35):
get there. Because this doesn't work if it's only about me.
I believe that if you see a challenge, if you
see a problem, you have to take action. Whether we're
talking about the extraordinary work done by Black Lives Matter
over the last six to seven years, whether we're talking
about the work of the Dream Defenders, or what's happening
(24:56):
right now in park Land. I'm watching young people, people
of color, young black people, young brown people, young people
across the country owning their authority and their right to
demand better. Being poor is not an excuse for people
not to listen to you. Being from a minority community
(25:21):
does not give anyone the right to deny you agency.
And we have to believe that to our core, and
we have to be willing to use our minority positions
to fight back and to push for more, because if
we don't, we won't get what we deserve. And what
we deserve is full access in our communities. What we
(25:41):
deserve is to be able to tackle the problems of
mental health issues and mass incarceration, to be able to
demand better education and stronger opportunities in our jobs. Those
are are rights, and where we begin should never tell
us that we don't have the ability to achieve those goals.
(26:03):
More from Stacey Abrams after this quick break and we're back.
Let's get right back to Stacey Abrams. It seems like
recently so many more people who may not have been
interested in running for office before are really inspired to
do it because of various reasons. And I'm sure that
a lot of people listening to the who will eventually
(26:24):
listen to this podcast UM will be some of those
people who are thinking about running, who have maybe who
have various levels of experience UM. And I think that's
something they might want to hear about, is mentorship and
people who have helped you along the way? UM? What? Who?
What have? How have people helped you? How have you
formed relationships with people along the way to help get
(26:46):
you um this far? So I would begin by saying
that I benefited from working with really smart political leaders
early on, even though I didn't necessarily think that I
was going to be in politics. For me, it really
began with the conversation of poverty, used poverty and civic engagement.
(27:10):
I was thinking about myself more as an advocate, not
as a politician. But I had the ability to work
for Mayor Maynard Jackson back in the early nineties when
he was mayor of Atlanta and I was a student
at Spellman College. I worked for Shirley Franklin as a
volunteer in her campaign when she ran and became the
first black woman mayor of Atlanta. UM I went to
(27:34):
the University of Texas. I was in grad school and
got to work with leaders in Texas who including very briefly,
I got to sit in the classroom with Barbara Jordan's
and so one thing I would say is that your
mentors can be people that you know, but your mentors
sometimes will never meet you. I read a lot of
political biographies because I want to understand the questions that
(27:56):
we have to grapple with and how people's minds work
as they think through solutions. But there's also a very
high utility to practical training. Their groups like Run for Something,
Collective Pack Higher Heights groups across the country that are
helping young people get ready to become politicians, to stand
(28:17):
for office, and to look for those groups. Indivisible groups
have popped up around the country. Find a local group
that you can join, because part of the way you
learn how to do this is by talking to other
folks who do it. I'm a Democrat, so I also
encourage you to go to your local Democratic meeting, whether
it's your county party or um A Young Democrats meeting.
(28:40):
And I understand that some of the folks listening to
this podcast are my age or old forty four. So
it's not just young people, it's anyone who for the
first time sees an opportunity. And so if you're a woman,
Emily's list does extraordinary work as his higher heights. If
you're a man, there are groups um that again going
(29:00):
to your state party, talking to newly developed organizations about
running for office. Our responsibility is to find people who
share our goals and to get trained to do it.
I will tell you that there are very few self
made people in any aspect. There are a few self
(29:20):
made politicians. Everybody had somebody who helped them, and so
you want to either be the person helping or you
want to find someone who will help you. And sometimes
that just means picking up the phone, call your state
legislator and say I'd like to come and talk to you,
unless it's somebody with whom you vehemently disagree, and then
find the person closest to you. Uh, it's in your community,
so it's a city council member, county commissioner, judge. But
(29:44):
find an elected official and asked to come and meet
with them, do an informational interview, Ask how they got
it done, what were their hardships, how did they raise money?
Sometimes mentorship is what we have to demand, and it's
a moment as opposed to a long process. But whether
(30:05):
you get it from books or find it from strangers,
or get to know political leaders or get trained, build
the build the curriculum that you need by touching the
people that are within your sightline. And then whatever you
can't find, reach out. As you can probably guess, politicians
(30:25):
love talking to folks, and so I can rarely imagine
someone who shares your political beliefs being unwilling to talk
to you. And if they are, then you should probably
think about why they're in office. But find someone who's
willing to spend some time with you. I will tell
you I've made it a mission of mine to cultivate
young leaders. I have. I ran a mentorship program, an
(30:47):
intern shipped through the caucus. We've had more than three
hundred graduates through the Georgia House Democratic Caucus Internship program,
as well as creating a group called Blue Institute, which
is now being run by my former chief of staff
and my former director of Copue Services, which are both
young people who learned how to be leaders in politics.
(31:10):
So I take this very seriously, and you know, if
somebody wants to reach out to me, I'm at Stacy
at Stacy Abrams dot com or just go to a
website Stacy Abrams dot com, and I'm happy to see
what I can do to help. That's awesome. So you
said before that people may not have liked you, but
they respected you. I would imagine that that's a pretty
(31:31):
hard point to get to. That a lot of people
wouldn't like being liked at least not being liked at
least initially. So how did you get to that point? Um?
Is it just through your years of experience or is
there some like mental like toughening that you did um
to get there. Leadership is hard because leadership requires telling
(31:53):
people you love no, and people you don't like that
much yes. And when people see that, they get really
upset because they either think you're being mean to those
who are loyal or that you're being loyal to those
who are mean. Leadership makes you have to confront the
complexity of issues, and the results of that is often
(32:15):
that people take it personally. And I don't disparage that
I feel that way myself when I say that sometimes
people don't like me. You know, I was reelected multiple
times and most of my caucus members like me, but
there are those who very clearly do not. I don't
internalize that because I know who I am, I know
(32:36):
what I've accomplished, and I know how to be critical
of myself. I know there are places where I was
not as successful as I could have been. There are
ways I could have done a better job of communicating.
There are times where I could have taken an extra
beat to think through what the consequences are for someone else.
(32:59):
Not that I would have changed my decision, that I
may have changed how I delivered that decision. But the
consequence of being able to be a leader is that
you do have to be willing not to be liked
by everyone, because often the people who are liked by
everyone aren't doing much. I would rather be successful and
(33:24):
effective than be beloved. It would be great to do
all of the above, but the leadership is hard. Um
leadership is painful, but it's also critical to understand that
as long as you're a good person who is doing
things from an authentic space, who was willing to hear
(33:44):
feedback and adjust and adapt and get better at what
you do, than that's your responsibility. One of my dearest
friends in the legislature is the Whip of the Caucus.
Her name was Carolyne Hugley. Uh. Caroline served with me
as whipped for the seven years I served as a
minority leader. She's the number two, and she had this
(34:07):
habit of asking me these rhetorical questions to kind of
point out to me when I was not being as
uh people friendly as I needed to be. So she
would say, well, these stacy, have you thought about this?
And when she said have I thought about the answer
was of course not. And so I just finally used
to say to her, just tell me what I did wrong.
But what was delightful about working with her was her
(34:30):
willingness to help make me better at being accessible. I'm
I'm an introvert. I am not highly social. I didn't
go out a lot and hang out with folks, and
that was important to people. People needed to see me
in a different context. I didn't understand that at first,
and so they imputed from my lack of social activity
(34:52):
a lack of concern for their needs. And it wasn't
until she helped me see that connection that I understood.
It didn't mean that I was going to start going
out more, but it did mean that I've found other
ways to connect with people, other ways for them to
see more than the dimension of means that they saw
on the floor of the legislature. Toughening sometimes about toughening
(35:13):
yourself and recognizing that you aren't right about how you're
doing this, and therefore you're responsible for adapting to the
people you want to lead. What what does it Thriving
Georgia look like to you? Thriving Georgia is exciting to me.
It's a place where if you are a child zero
(35:35):
to three, you are in this high quality daycare where
you are learning every single day, and where the children
around you are excited and are not bounded by their
economic situation. It's a state where, if you're in case
through twelve, you go to school every day excited to learn,
(35:59):
and that you are served by educators who are happy
to be there because they are making enough money to
take care of their families and they know that when
they help a child, they know that child has all
of the wraparound services that he or she needs. It's
a post secondary system where anyone who graduates from our
high schools knows that they have a pathway to success,
(36:22):
either through apprenticeships or through technical college or associates degrees,
or to college. There's also one where you have thriving
and diverse businesses in every part of the state, where
no one has to work more than a single job
to make ends meet, and where people are excited about
what's happening in their communities, and not just for themselves,
(36:44):
but because they see that they are interconnected. And it's
one where the state itself is doing its job better,
where we have expanded Medicaid so that health care is
seen as a right and not a privilege. Where rural
communities can access the Internet just as easily as someone
who lives in the wealthiest part of Atlanta, where mass
(37:07):
incarceration is a relic, and where anyone who has committed
a crime but serve their time knows that they are
going to be welcomed back into the community and have
real opportunities for success. A successful and thriving Georgia has
eradicated poverty, has challenge the status quo where it comes
(37:28):
to discrimination, and we have embraced the LGBTQ community and
the disabled and seniors, and where people believe that this
is their Georgia. I talk about inclusion a lot because
I know that the most successful place is a place
where everyone is welcome and everyone can contribute and everyone
(37:52):
is served. Those services look different, people need different things,
but fundamentally, we will be a state where the leadership
respects the diversity of our state, wants everyone to be successful,
and is willing to do the hard work to make
sure that we all can thrive. Could you give advice
to people of color specifically looking to run for office
(38:16):
as a person of color, Do not be dissuaded by
being the first or being the only. Understand that even
if you can't see the people, there are folks around
this country who are cheering for you, who share your
values and your background and your worries, and we are
(38:37):
here to help. But I also say do it. Stand
up and run run for office, because your voice changes
the conversation. Your ability to push for change makes change happen.
You may not see it immediately, but every person who
stands for office changes the dynamic of an election, and
(39:00):
then whoever wins. If it's you who wins, you can
do the work. And if you don't win, you then
have a platform to use to force the person who
was successful to do their work. And then you just
wait and run the next time. But the other thing
I would say is run for the things that is
closest to your heart, not for the titles it's closest
(39:22):
to your head. And by that I mean if what
drives you is education, then don't run for the city council.
It's the council doesn't control education. Run for the school board.
If what matters to you is mass incarceration, find out
where in your political scheme, in the structure of your
your politics, people impact that issue, and run for that job.
(39:46):
I think sometimes we get so excited about the opportunities
we don't always think through what the job itself requires.
And so be very careful to run for the jobs
that you want to do, because this is hard work.
It's good work, it's worthwhile work, but it's hard, and
so you need to be committed to solving the problems
that affect you and the problems that animate you. But
(40:11):
most of all, do not be afraid run. Running for
office requires raising money, and often people of color, especially
women of color, are afraid to raise money because we
either don't have experience, or we don't think we know
anyone with money, or we just it feels weird to
(40:32):
ask people for money. Here's what I say. I don't
get to keep any of the money, so I don't
feel bad about asking for it. I'm not asking anyone
to invest in me. They're investing in my vision, They're
investing in my ingenuity, They're investing in the work I
plan to do. And I've become a very solid fundraiser
for that reason, because I don't see this as a
(40:52):
personal ask. Everyone can contribute, whether it's a dollar, three dollars,
ten dollars, a hundred dollars. Make certain that when you
get ready to run for office, that you are also
ready to ask people to invest in your vision. So
many of our people lose campaigns, not because we don't
have the best ideas, but because we just hope people
(41:13):
will hear about them and will spontaneously give. They're not
going to do that. President Barack Obama is the only
human in history who was able to achieve that, and
even for him, it didn't happen quite as fantastically as
people like to believe. He's been a lot of time fundraising.
(41:34):
We have to be willing to ask people to invest,
because if we aren't willing to ask them to invest,
we can't then tell more people about what we need
and what we intend to do. So get over the
worries of fundraising and get to work. Apro Punk Solutions
(41:57):
Sessions is a co production between apro Punk and Stuff Media.
Your hosts are Brigittad and Eves Jeff Code. Executive producers
are Julie Douglas, Johnson Cooper and Quality of Hill. Dylan
Fagan is supervising producer and audio engineer. Many many thanks
to Casey Pegram and Annie Reeve for their production and
editorial oversight, and many thanks to our on the ground
Atlanta crew, Ben Boland, Corey Oliver and Noel Brown. The
(42:20):
Underside of Power is performed by Algiers. Connect with us
at afropunk dot com and don't forget to vote on
November six,
You're listening to afro Punk Solution Sessions. I'm your host
Brigittad and I'm your co host Eve diff Cookee. Afro
Punk is a safe place, a blank space to freak
out in, to construct a new reality, to live our
lives as we see fit while making sense of the
world around us. Here at afro Punk, we have the
conversations that matter to us, conversations that lead to solutions.
(00:31):
The Georgia governor's race is an important one, and Stacy
Abrams is on fire. If she wins, Abrams would go
on to be the first black female governor in America.
As of today, less than one week before this hotly
contested election, Republican Brian Kemp has narrowly led Abrams in
most recent polls of likely voters, but a new survey
(00:51):
from Opinion Savvy found Abrams with a slight edge to
So just who is Brian Kemp Abrams is publican opponent? Well,
for one thing, he is a troubling history of racist
antics in the state, and if he spent any time
at all watching television in Georgia, you probably remember his
ads own guns, no one's taken away, and don't forget
(01:15):
this jam, I got a big truck just in case
I made to round up criminal illegals and take them
home myself. Yeah, I just said that. But beyond that,
As Secretary of State, Kempus architected voting policies that keep voters,
mostly black voters, from the polls. As Rolling Stone points out,
(01:35):
Abrahams is competing against a rival who was also her referee.
What does that mean. Well, it's called exact match, and
here's how it works. According to the Associated Press, Kem's
office currently has fifty three thousand voter registrations on hold
under the state's exact match policy, which he himself helped
push through the legislature in Okay. So let's say that
(01:58):
you're in Georgia and you want to go vote. Your
voter registration has your name as Bridget Todd rather than
Bridget Marie Todd, as it reads in the Social Security
Administration database. Now that tiny mistake would mean that your
registration will be put on hold, and it can be
something as small as a missing punctuation mark in your name.
And wild George's population is only black. Of the thousand
(02:20):
voter registrations placed on hold, seventy belonged to black voters
pretty suspect right. Kemp was even caught on tape complaining
about Stacy Abrams is a vote or outreach work, saying
her push to get folks to the poll quote continues
to concern us, especially if everybody exercises their right to vote.
So when Brian Kemp says everybody, who do you think
(02:42):
he means? Now? Compare his record to Abrams as minority
leader in the Georgia House of Representatives. She's been working
to protect voters and make it easier for everybody to vote.
Let's say that you're working a tough double shift down
at your job. Well, Abrams work to offer alternative voting
days and early voting to help you get to the
easier and in She also founded a nonpartisan nonprofit, the
(03:05):
New Georgia Project, which has registered over two fifty thousand Georgians,
mostly unmarried women, young people, and people of color. Listen,
No conversation urging us to vote is complete without also
talking about the reality of those forces that make it
difficult for us to do so, which Abrams has been
talking about her entire career. Need to make sure you're registered.
(03:27):
Check out vote dot org. That's v O T e
dot org. The Acropunk team will be joining Abrams on
the ground in Georgia and the days leading up to
the election. And full disclosure, I'm campaigning for her myself
on my own. For more on Abrams, her plan for
Georgia and why she's in this race, here's our extended
interview with her. Let's start with talking about how you're
(03:52):
up while you're upbringing. First of all, um, how you
grew up, where you grew up, and how it influenced
your role in politics. Now, sure, I grew up in
southern Mississippi, in the city of Gulfport. My mom was
a college librarian and my father was a shipyard worker
at Engleship Building. The challenge in our family was even
(04:16):
though my parents both worked full time jobs my mother
had a master's degree in library science from the University
of Wisconsin, my parents still struggled to make ends meet.
We we're best classified as working class slash working poor
depending on the year and how well their paychecks did.
And so we grew up with economic challenges, always thoughtful
(04:39):
about and worried about money. But what I remember most
about my childhood is not the economic deprivation, but how
my parents reacted to it. They had three rules for us,
go to church, go to school, and take care of
each other. Uh. They wanted us to go to church
because they wanted us to have a moral framework for
(05:00):
how we engaged our community. But more than that, they
wanted us to understand that our economic situation had nothing
to do with our spirit, with who we were and
who we could become. They also raced us with a
very inclusive sense of our responsibility that even though we
practiced a Christian tradition, there was no space in our
(05:23):
faith for discrimination against others. Um. The second job was
go school. My parents took education very seriously. My mom
was one of seven kids and the only one of
her siblings to finish high school, let alone go to
college and go off to graduate school. My dad is
the first man and his family to go to college,
and for both of them, education was the root out
(05:46):
of the abject poverty they grew up in, and so
they were very intentional about all six of their children
going to college and finishing high school and going to college.
So actually all of us did. Not all of us
finished my younger brother who ended up dropping out of college,
but every other one of us finished college, and most
(06:07):
of us went on to graduate work. The third job, though,
is the most important, the one that links me to
public service, and that was my mom and dad said
take care of each other. For them, that was more
than just taking care of my siblings. It was about
how do we take care of the world around us,
which seemed sometimes a bit strange to us as kids
(06:29):
who worried about whether the lights were cut on or
got cut off, and whether there was running water in
the house. But for my parents, they wanted us to
understand that no matter how little we had, there was
someone with less, and our job was to serve that person.
Watching my parents not only talk about service, but being
(06:50):
actively engaged in it as a child and throughout my
my growing up years, I've developed a very deep sense
of responsibility and for me that directly translates to politics. Um,
we have a responsibility to eradicate poverty, to create space
(07:11):
for people to be successful, and the way we do
that requires good leadership, the right leaders who understand the
intersection of politics and policy of the public sector at large,
but also as a nonprofit sector and the business sector.
And because of the way I was brought up, I
(07:31):
was raised to integrate all of those pieces of myself,
my religious beliefs, my educational beliefs, and my commitment to service.
And in the same way, it makes me want to
do this job as governor where I can integrate not
only my personal beliefs, but also my skills as a
nonprofit leader, as a business leader, and as a political leader. Yeah,
(07:52):
and that brings me to the to the point I
know that you, you know, are in politics, but you've
had not just like one life, but to laws, three
laws with all the things that you've done, like your
entrepreneurship um in business and politics and the Environmental Protection Agency,
like just all these various things from one end of
the spectrum to the other. And I guess what I'm
(08:15):
wondering is like how you would what you would say
to a person who thinks that they maybe don't have
the qualifications, are don't know exactly what they're looking for
when they're looking to get into politics. Like, it doesn't
just have to be one thing. It can be more
than one thing that you have experience in that can
bring you to be sitting at the table. Oh. Absolutely,
(08:37):
there is no one pathway. In fact that I know
that because I've taken most of them. Um, I went
from you know when college, actually had to write a
paper about what I wanted to know when I graduated
because I was so undecided about my major. I majors
in physics and philosophy and theater I did. I briefly
forward it with chemistry and history, and finally the deans
(09:01):
that you've no idea what you want to study, so
just write me a paper and tell me what you
think you want to know. And I actually ended up
graduating from Spellman College with an interdisciplinary studies major, which
basically meant they let me make it up, and I
studied political science, economics, and sociology. The reason I talked
about that, though, is that I became comfortable with not
(09:23):
having a direct path to my goals, and that's hard
to do. It's hard to know that you don't have
to know everything to be successful, and when it comes
to running for office, when it comes to serving your community,
the most important thing to know is what you want
to see changed and how you want to be a
(09:43):
part of that change. You don't have to come with
every solution, but you have to come with the right questions,
and too often, especially communities of color, young people women.
We hold ourselves back until we are perfect. Problems don't
wait till you're perfect. Problems need to be solved now,
And sometimes the best solutions come from people who aren't
(10:05):
so grounded in the minutia of the moment, that have
the per personal experience, but also have the passion for
wanting to see change. And so you know, I've had
people who have complimented me on my multiple hats and
the different things I've done, and I'm privileged and blessed
to have these various opportunities. But I will tell anyone
(10:27):
who's thinking about standing for office, if you care about
your community, if there is something that drives you, and
if you are willing to do the work, then stand
up and run because we need you. Why does the
representation and diversity matter and government? There are complex challenges
(10:49):
facing our communities. Does that matter where you live? Even
in homogeneous spaces, there are differences of need, and so
within the Black community, US, in the Latino community, within
the white community. Every community of of any kind has complexity,
(11:10):
but we are a common society where our complexities touch
each other. Diversity matters because people need to know what
those challenges are. They need to understand at a visceral
level the impact of those issues. I spend a lot
of time talking about decriminalization of poverty, because unless you've
(11:33):
been poor, you do not always understand what it means
to have your license taken away because you can't pay
a traffic ticket, because the minute that happens, you can't
get to work anymore, and the job you have that's
barely helping you make ends meet disappears. If you are
a person of color who has experienced discrimination, then you
(11:57):
have the ability often to see where this from nation
wise and to then counteract it. You need diversity because
diversity provides information. It also provides ways to address issues,
and that diversity in and of itself creates a richer
and fuller response. In politics, we have seen what happens
(12:20):
when you have a homogeneous set of people making decisions.
Too many people are left out of those choices, too
many people are impacted negatively by the decisions that are made.
And it isn't until we add new voices, add new
people of color, add women, add differences based on sexual orientation,
(12:43):
that we then become aware of the impediments and the
prejudices that exist in our communities, in our in our policies,
and so I see diversity as the only way to
get too good answers, because otherwise you're trying to solve
a problem without full information, and that's both intellectually void,
but it also is immoral because you're not serving everyone,
(13:05):
and that is the responsibility of good government. Let's take
a quick break, and we're back constantly facing opposition. It's
like part and parcel of everything you do from all
those different angles. And I know that there have probably
been a lot of people saying that what you're doing
is ambitious, are doubting your viability, Um, despite you know
(13:31):
everything that you've done. UM, I'm wondering, how do you. Um,
Do you have a little voice in your head of
like self doubt or has there ever been that before
saying something saying that this never has been done before? Um?
And if so, how do you overcome that, um, that feeling?
If you do have that. I actually have a book
(13:55):
that I just finished writing. It comes out in April
from Henry Holt. It's called Minority Leader, How to Lead
from the Outside and Create Real Change, And the first
two chapters are Dare to Want More. It's about ambition,
And the second chapter is about fear and otherness, And
so I smile at the question because those are the
(14:16):
roots for me of of how I navigate. One is
that you have to be ambitious. We have to want more,
especially those of us who come from communities where we
are not expected to have more. That necessity of ambition
is how we move beyond the lowered expectations of our communities.
(14:37):
But it's also how we achieve the great things that
are our society needs. But you cannot tell someone to
be ambitious, especially someone who comes from a minority community,
without also acknowledging that there are real fears. Their fears
are failure, but there's also fear of not not just failing,
(14:57):
but when we fail, we are often seen the representations
of everybody. So it's not just Stacy didn't do something,
it's Black people didn't do something. Um. You know, that
is a question that is always with me. How am
I not only speaking for myself but as a representation
of all of the different communities that are contained within
(15:19):
who I am. But the goal is to not let
fear hold me back. It is to let it inform me.
Because if you acknowledge what you're afraid of. If you
acknowledge the legitimacy of those fears, then you can parse
out which ones are illegitimate, which ones are just noise.
And when you can push aside the noise, then you
(15:40):
can focus on, Okay, how do I then overcome the
fear that I have in this election? Viability is a
question that is raised because people have not seen it
done before. I then have to take their questions and
find answers. And so I am running a campaign that
looks very different than any statewide campaign that we can find.
(16:03):
I am investing heavily in field, meaning that we are
talking to voters on the ground, and we are doing
so at a depth and at a rate that is
unprecedented in Georgia. I'm afraid sometimes that maybe we're doing
too much, But then my response is why am I afraid?
(16:25):
I'm afraid because I haven't seen it done, and that's
never a reason not to try. And what I want
people to know about me about my campaign, about my ambition,
is that my ambition is to do big things. I
want to make sure that we have bold and ambitious
children who are educated. I want to eradicate poverty. I
(16:47):
want to make certain that people feel included in their
communities and that they have every right to be successful
and not just to survive. Those are ambitious goals. My
response ability as a leader and as a candidate, is
to let fear be a motivational tool, not let it
(17:07):
be something that anchors me and drags me backwards. Yeah.
Also along that point, are there any specific things that
you do to quell that fear, maybe like writing a list,
um writing things down, or I don't know, saying certain
things to yourself, just something you know, maybe to give
(17:29):
people of actual practice. Is there anything like that that
you have? Absolutely when it comes to addressing fear, what
I encourage people to do is write those fears down.
What are you afraid of? Because one of the ways
fears is so insidious is that it never takes real form.
It just lurks in the back of our minds and
(17:49):
it's a shadow over what we do. Confronting fear requires
that we acknowledge what we're afraid of? Are we afraid
of winning? Are we afraid of losing? M I have
trade of how I'm perceived right down with that fear
is and then once you've written it down, actually make yourself,
think through where the fear comes from, what's driving it,
(18:12):
and then what's the consequence of this the fear is correct,
what's the worst thing that can happen? Because sometimes fear
is fear is powerful because we never actually take it
to its fullest extent, and we don't acknowledge that at
the end, if what we're worried about is being embarrassed,
you can survive embarrassment. If it's that you lose your job,
(18:35):
that's something slightly more problematic. But then does it mean
that that opens opportunities for new things? So confrontation of
fear is critical. But the same thing is true of ambition,
because ambition is scary, ambition is hard, and so I
also encourage people to write those things down. I have
a spreadsheet that I've had since I was in college,
(18:58):
and it lays out all of the jobs that I
want to have, and I wrote it down because some
of these are big jobs, and you cannot figure out
how to do things if you don't plan for them.
And so I write down my ambitions and then I
write down what does it take to get to that
job that I want or to achieve this thing I want.
I'm a tax, attorney, romance novelist, politician, entrepreneur. Each of
(19:24):
those things that I've done has required planning. I've recently
written my first book that is nonfiction that required planning.
There's no reason for us not to hold ambition. But
more importantly, it is exciting to have an ambition that
you can then explore because one thing you find is
(19:45):
sometimes you want a title, but you don't want the job,
or sometimes you want the job but the title doesn't matter.
And until you make yourself sit down and think through
those pieces, you don't know what you want for real.
And what I encourage people to do is to really
give yourself the space to explore who you are and
what you want and why you want it, because that's
(20:09):
the last and most important piece. Why you want something
usually determines how hard you're willing to work to have it.
If you want it because you're annoyed with someone else
and you want them to see how good you are,
that will get you a little bit. But if you're
doing it because you can't imagine doing something else, that's
what becomes your driver. That's what makes you committed, even
when the fears become too large. So if you're elected,
(20:33):
you'll be the first first black female governor in the US. Um,
what does stepping into like and facing head on such
a pioneering role feel like? Is it something I know
you've mentioned before when your first, Like you have certain
feelings about being in the first But is that is
(20:55):
that feeling that's something that's weighty, Like does it have
any challenges that people may not think about or is
it just a type of thing where it's like, I've
prepared for this, you know, Um, this is the job
that I'm here to do. Like I I am honored
and I'm humbled to be in the position that I'm in,
and I would be extraordinarily proud to become the first
(21:19):
black woman governor in the country, to become the first
woman governor in Georgia, the first black governor in Georgia.
I grew up in a family that often had wild
visions for what we could become and who never told
us that we could not be. I'm running because I
(21:41):
know that I have a clear and bold vision for
the future of Georgia, where everyone is welcome, where every
family has a chance to succeed. But I'm also doing
it because I know that I come from a tradition
of people helping each other. I talked about that because
the eatiness of this moment is not simply about the
(22:03):
first that I will represent. It's about expanding the sense
of what's possible for Georgians. Too many people don't see
themselves in reflected in leadership. They don't see themselves or
hear themselves reflected in the conversations around them. And this
is not just for Georgia. This is nationally and because
(22:25):
of that, too often we limit what our capacity is.
I do not take for granted how important my first
will be, but I also understand that that's just part
of the story, and that my success comes not in
(22:46):
becoming the first, but it lies in making certain that
others can follow and can achieve even more than I do.
Speaking of others who follow, what would you say to
a child who think that they can't be governor because
of where they're from. I grew up poor in Mississippi.
(23:08):
I'm fairly certain there's a country song or blue song
about that. The point of it being, there's nothing about
where I begin that dictates where I will end up,
and that is true for every single person. Now, there
are truly systemic challenges that cannot be ignored and should
never be made light of. Those systemic challenges come from poverty,
(23:31):
from racism, from sexism, from classism, from regionalism. They are
all ways going to be impediments that try to preserve
a certain communities access and deny access to others. Our
responsibility is to not allow those systems to defeat us.
But for a lot of folks, you can't individually buck
(23:54):
the system on your own. That's one of the responsibilities
I have. That's one of the responsibilities anyone who runs
for public office has to not only pave the way
for ourselves, but to make sure we pay that way
for others to follow. And so what I say to
folks is you may not be able to run for
governor today, but you can run for city council. You
(24:14):
can run for the school board. You can volunteer. You
can go to your city council meetings, you can go
to the state legislature. You can demand action from those
who represent you. Find the space where you can put
yourself into position and then keep pushing, but also hold
those of us who have achieved accountable for helping you
(24:35):
get there. Because this doesn't work if it's only about me.
I believe that if you see a challenge, if you
see a problem, you have to take action. Whether we're
talking about the extraordinary work done by Black Lives Matter
over the last six to seven years, whether we're talking
about the work of the Dream Defenders, or what's happening
(24:56):
right now in park Land. I'm watching young people, people
of color, young black people, young brown people, young people
across the country owning their authority and their right to
demand better. Being poor is not an excuse for people
not to listen to you. Being from a minority community
(25:21):
does not give anyone the right to deny you agency.
And we have to believe that to our core, and
we have to be willing to use our minority positions
to fight back and to push for more, because if
we don't, we won't get what we deserve. And what
we deserve is full access in our communities. What we
(25:41):
deserve is to be able to tackle the problems of
mental health issues and mass incarceration, to be able to
demand better education and stronger opportunities in our jobs. Those
are are rights, and where we begin should never tell
us that we don't have the ability to achieve those goals.
(26:03):
More from Stacey Abrams after this quick break and we're back.
Let's get right back to Stacey Abrams. It seems like
recently so many more people who may not have been
interested in running for office before are really inspired to
do it because of various reasons. And I'm sure that
a lot of people listening to the who will eventually
(26:24):
listen to this podcast UM will be some of those
people who are thinking about running, who have maybe who
have various levels of experience UM. And I think that's
something they might want to hear about, is mentorship and
people who have helped you along the way? UM? What? Who?
What have? How have people helped you? How have you
formed relationships with people along the way to help get
(26:46):
you um this far? So I would begin by saying
that I benefited from working with really smart political leaders
early on, even though I didn't necessarily think that I
was going to be in politics. For me, it really
began with the conversation of poverty, used poverty and civic engagement.
(27:10):
I was thinking about myself more as an advocate, not
as a politician. But I had the ability to work
for Mayor Maynard Jackson back in the early nineties when
he was mayor of Atlanta and I was a student
at Spellman College. I worked for Shirley Franklin as a
volunteer in her campaign when she ran and became the
first black woman mayor of Atlanta. UM I went to
(27:34):
the University of Texas. I was in grad school and
got to work with leaders in Texas who including very briefly,
I got to sit in the classroom with Barbara Jordan's
and so one thing I would say is that your
mentors can be people that you know, but your mentors
sometimes will never meet you. I read a lot of
political biographies because I want to understand the questions that
(27:56):
we have to grapple with and how people's minds work
as they think through solutions. But there's also a very
high utility to practical training. Their groups like Run for Something,
Collective Pack Higher Heights groups across the country that are
helping young people get ready to become politicians, to stand
(28:17):
for office, and to look for those groups. Indivisible groups
have popped up around the country. Find a local group
that you can join, because part of the way you
learn how to do this is by talking to other
folks who do it. I'm a Democrat, so I also
encourage you to go to your local Democratic meeting, whether
it's your county party or um A Young Democrats meeting.
(28:40):
And I understand that some of the folks listening to
this podcast are my age or old forty four. So
it's not just young people, it's anyone who for the
first time sees an opportunity. And so if you're a woman,
Emily's list does extraordinary work as his higher heights. If
you're a man, there are groups um that again going
(29:00):
to your state party, talking to newly developed organizations about
running for office. Our responsibility is to find people who
share our goals and to get trained to do it.
I will tell you that there are very few self
made people in any aspect. There are a few self
(29:20):
made politicians. Everybody had somebody who helped them, and so
you want to either be the person helping or you
want to find someone who will help you. And sometimes
that just means picking up the phone, call your state
legislator and say I'd like to come and talk to you,
unless it's somebody with whom you vehemently disagree, and then
find the person closest to you. Uh, it's in your community,
so it's a city council member, county commissioner, judge. But
(29:44):
find an elected official and asked to come and meet
with them, do an informational interview, Ask how they got
it done, what were their hardships, how did they raise money?
Sometimes mentorship is what we have to demand, and it's
a moment as opposed to a long process. But whether
(30:05):
you get it from books or find it from strangers,
or get to know political leaders or get trained, build
the build the curriculum that you need by touching the
people that are within your sightline. And then whatever you
can't find, reach out. As you can probably guess, politicians
(30:25):
love talking to folks, and so I can rarely imagine
someone who shares your political beliefs being unwilling to talk
to you. And if they are, then you should probably
think about why they're in office. But find someone who's
willing to spend some time with you. I will tell
you I've made it a mission of mine to cultivate
young leaders. I have. I ran a mentorship program, an
(30:47):
intern shipped through the caucus. We've had more than three
hundred graduates through the Georgia House Democratic Caucus Internship program,
as well as creating a group called Blue Institute, which
is now being run by my former chief of staff
and my former director of Copue Services, which are both
young people who learned how to be leaders in politics.
(31:10):
So I take this very seriously, and you know, if
somebody wants to reach out to me, I'm at Stacy
at Stacy Abrams dot com or just go to a
website Stacy Abrams dot com, and I'm happy to see
what I can do to help. That's awesome. So you
said before that people may not have liked you, but
they respected you. I would imagine that that's a pretty
(31:31):
hard point to get to. That a lot of people
wouldn't like being liked at least not being liked at
least initially. So how did you get to that point? Um?
Is it just through your years of experience or is
there some like mental like toughening that you did um
to get there. Leadership is hard because leadership requires telling
(31:53):
people you love no, and people you don't like that
much yes. And when people see that, they get really
upset because they either think you're being mean to those
who are loyal or that you're being loyal to those
who are mean. Leadership makes you have to confront the
complexity of issues, and the results of that is often
(32:15):
that people take it personally. And I don't disparage that
I feel that way myself when I say that sometimes
people don't like me. You know, I was reelected multiple
times and most of my caucus members like me, but
there are those who very clearly do not. I don't
internalize that because I know who I am, I know
(32:36):
what I've accomplished, and I know how to be critical
of myself. I know there are places where I was
not as successful as I could have been. There are
ways I could have done a better job of communicating.
There are times where I could have taken an extra
beat to think through what the consequences are for someone else.
(32:59):
Not that I would have changed my decision, that I
may have changed how I delivered that decision. But the
consequence of being able to be a leader is that
you do have to be willing not to be liked
by everyone, because often the people who are liked by
everyone aren't doing much. I would rather be successful and
(33:24):
effective than be beloved. It would be great to do
all of the above, but the leadership is hard. Um
leadership is painful, but it's also critical to understand that
as long as you're a good person who is doing
things from an authentic space, who was willing to hear
(33:44):
feedback and adjust and adapt and get better at what
you do, than that's your responsibility. One of my dearest
friends in the legislature is the Whip of the Caucus.
Her name was Carolyne Hugley. Uh. Caroline served with me
as whipped for the seven years I served as a
minority leader. She's the number two, and she had this
(34:07):
habit of asking me these rhetorical questions to kind of
point out to me when I was not being as
uh people friendly as I needed to be. So she
would say, well, these stacy, have you thought about this?
And when she said have I thought about the answer
was of course not. And so I just finally used
to say to her, just tell me what I did wrong.
But what was delightful about working with her was her
(34:30):
willingness to help make me better at being accessible. I'm
I'm an introvert. I am not highly social. I didn't
go out a lot and hang out with folks, and
that was important to people. People needed to see me
in a different context. I didn't understand that at first,
and so they imputed from my lack of social activity
(34:52):
a lack of concern for their needs. And it wasn't
until she helped me see that connection that I understood.
It didn't mean that I was going to start going
out more, but it did mean that I've found other
ways to connect with people, other ways for them to
see more than the dimension of means that they saw
on the floor of the legislature. Toughening sometimes about toughening
(35:13):
yourself and recognizing that you aren't right about how you're
doing this, and therefore you're responsible for adapting to the
people you want to lead. What what does it Thriving
Georgia look like to you? Thriving Georgia is exciting to me.
It's a place where if you are a child zero
(35:35):
to three, you are in this high quality daycare where
you are learning every single day, and where the children
around you are excited and are not bounded by their
economic situation. It's a state where, if you're in case
through twelve, you go to school every day excited to learn,
(35:59):
and that you are served by educators who are happy
to be there because they are making enough money to
take care of their families and they know that when
they help a child, they know that child has all
of the wraparound services that he or she needs. It's
a post secondary system where anyone who graduates from our
high schools knows that they have a pathway to success,
(36:22):
either through apprenticeships or through technical college or associates degrees,
or to college. There's also one where you have thriving
and diverse businesses in every part of the state, where
no one has to work more than a single job
to make ends meet, and where people are excited about
what's happening in their communities, and not just for themselves,
(36:44):
but because they see that they are interconnected. And it's
one where the state itself is doing its job better,
where we have expanded Medicaid so that health care is
seen as a right and not a privilege. Where rural
communities can access the Internet just as easily as someone
who lives in the wealthiest part of Atlanta, where mass
(37:07):
incarceration is a relic, and where anyone who has committed
a crime but serve their time knows that they are
going to be welcomed back into the community and have
real opportunities for success. A successful and thriving Georgia has
eradicated poverty, has challenge the status quo where it comes
(37:28):
to discrimination, and we have embraced the LGBTQ community and
the disabled and seniors, and where people believe that this
is their Georgia. I talk about inclusion a lot because
I know that the most successful place is a place
where everyone is welcome and everyone can contribute and everyone
(37:52):
is served. Those services look different, people need different things,
but fundamentally, we will be a state where the leadership
respects the diversity of our state, wants everyone to be successful,
and is willing to do the hard work to make
sure that we all can thrive. Could you give advice
to people of color specifically looking to run for office
(38:16):
as a person of color, Do not be dissuaded by
being the first or being the only. Understand that even
if you can't see the people, there are folks around
this country who are cheering for you, who share your
values and your background and your worries, and we are
(38:37):
here to help. But I also say do it. Stand
up and run run for office, because your voice changes
the conversation. Your ability to push for change makes change happen.
You may not see it immediately, but every person who
stands for office changes the dynamic of an election, and
(39:00):
then whoever wins. If it's you who wins, you can
do the work. And if you don't win, you then
have a platform to use to force the person who
was successful to do their work. And then you just
wait and run the next time. But the other thing
I would say is run for the things that is
closest to your heart, not for the titles it's closest
(39:22):
to your head. And by that I mean if what
drives you is education, then don't run for the city council.
It's the council doesn't control education. Run for the school board.
If what matters to you is mass incarceration, find out
where in your political scheme, in the structure of your
your politics, people impact that issue, and run for that job.
(39:46):
I think sometimes we get so excited about the opportunities
we don't always think through what the job itself requires.
And so be very careful to run for the jobs
that you want to do, because this is hard work.
It's good work, it's worthwhile work, but it's hard, and
so you need to be committed to solving the problems
that affect you and the problems that animate you. But
(40:11):
most of all, do not be afraid run. Running for
office requires raising money, and often people of color, especially
women of color, are afraid to raise money because we
either don't have experience, or we don't think we know
anyone with money, or we just it feels weird to
(40:32):
ask people for money. Here's what I say. I don't
get to keep any of the money, so I don't
feel bad about asking for it. I'm not asking anyone
to invest in me. They're investing in my vision, They're
investing in my ingenuity, They're investing in the work I
plan to do. And I've become a very solid fundraiser
for that reason, because I don't see this as a
(40:52):
personal ask. Everyone can contribute, whether it's a dollar, three dollars,
ten dollars, a hundred dollars. Make certain that when you
get ready to run for office, that you are also
ready to ask people to invest in your vision. So
many of our people lose campaigns, not because we don't
have the best ideas, but because we just hope people
(41:13):
will hear about them and will spontaneously give. They're not
going to do that. President Barack Obama is the only
human in history who was able to achieve that, and
even for him, it didn't happen quite as fantastically as
people like to believe. He's been a lot of time fundraising.
(41:34):
We have to be willing to ask people to invest,
because if we aren't willing to ask them to invest,
we can't then tell more people about what we need
and what we intend to do. So get over the
worries of fundraising and get to work. Apro Punk Solutions
(41:57):
Sessions is a co production between apro Punk and Stuff Media.
Your hosts are Brigittad and Eves Jeff Code. Executive producers
are Julie Douglas, Johnson Cooper and Quality of Hill. Dylan
Fagan is supervising producer and audio engineer. Many many thanks
to Casey Pegram and Annie Reeve for their production and
editorial oversight, and many thanks to our on the ground
Atlanta crew, Ben Boland, Corey Oliver and Noel Brown. The
(42:20):
Underside of Power is performed by Algiers. Connect with us
at afropunk dot com and don't forget to vote on
November six,
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