September 30, 2025 • 30 mins
Today's special guest is Stacey Abrams, American lawyer, voting rights activist, and author who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017. Part 1 of 2.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Civic Cyper Studios. Welcome to the QR Code,
where we share perspective, seek understanding, and shape outcomes. The
man you are about to hear from is a man
that I share so many laughs with. He is the
Q and QR code. He goes by the name of
q Ward.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
The voice you just heard is the R and the
QR Code man. We've been all around the world together.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Man and a ya yai.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Another trip down and some game perspective together. But he
goes by the name ramses Jah. Indeed, and we need
you to stick around. We got a special show in
store for you today. A little later on, we are
going to be hearing from the great Stacy Abrams. I'm
very excited to talk to her and get some leadership
(00:49):
from her. I think it is important to mention that
we're just coming back from a long week in Washington,
d C. On the ground at the Congressional Black Caucus,
where we were able to speak with a lot of
leaders in this country, a lot of congress people, a
(01:09):
lot of senators, a lot of elected officials, state representatives,
et cetera, and a lot of you know, big names,
including Stacy Abrams and many others that you'll hear from,
you know, as we continue to roll out content on
this program. And it was a necessary pilgrimage for us.
This is something that we do every year, and I
(01:35):
think that anytime we end up, you know, in one
of these places, these conventions or you know, speaking engagements
where we get to fellowship with people that are doing
kind of similar work that we're doing, there's something to
be said about how it energizes us and reinvigorates us.
(01:55):
You know, I'll speak for myself.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
You how about you? Any highlights that you care to
share from our week out there.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah, I think we have kind of different perspectives on
this because I had expectations when we got on our
flights that we would gain a lot in the way
of insight, in the way of strategy, in the way
of tangible hope, and I didn't get any of that
this time. Like the difference between the Congressional Black Caucus
(02:23):
last year and this year couldn't be more pronounced. Last
year we left there with a mission statement, with a
mission with a collective view, with the collective strategy, with
the collective desired outcome, and this year a bunch of
different pain points a bunch of different strategies, a bunch
(02:46):
of different voices, a bunch of different missions. I didn't
leave there feeling coalation and solidarity, and.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Like, I hope that leader.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Would come to the front, or some leadership would come
to the front, and that we would all collectively collaise
around something and all collectively pursue that. And that just
wasn't the case. And that actually made me pretty sad
man that we don't. We have all these different groups
(03:25):
with their own specific desired outcomes. And as I've said before,
those who oppress us have a singular vision. They have
a figurehead, they have a leader, they have a mission statement,
and they forgive all their differences to collaise around that mission.
(03:45):
You know, again, you have evangelical Christian Baptist pastors forgiving
their leader of all his sins in order to stand
arm in arm with him and to carry out their mission,
even though they're what they say they're about. Couldn't be
(04:06):
more opposite, yeah, or more at antithetico. So it's uh,
it's interesting that here we are and I don't feel
any more invigorated, any more led, any more sure about
what's next or what we're supposed to do this. This
(04:27):
This conversation with Stacy Abrams helps a lot to that end.
But I had some mixed emotions on my flight leaving DC. Man,
I have to admit some confusion, some frustration, some some hopelessness.
And you know that the group of young women that
(04:49):
we encountered that had a very, very very pronounced pronouncedly
different stance on everything than us. We can find single
thing that we agreed with with a group of young
black women from the South side of Chicago. Even saying
that again now seems crazy. We could find anything we
agreed on. Yeah, yeah, there's the actually like verbally attacked us.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Oh yeah, yeah, I know. And that's something that obviously
we're going to talk about. I know that I'm kind
of spearing this conversation with her, but no, I appreciate
that because I think that your feelings represent and reflect
a lot of you know, hopelessness that that people are
feeling around the country. You know, me as as always,
(05:39):
I think the things that I took from it is
I expected things to be worse than they were. Everyone
still showed up. I mean, with the exception of like
a Corey Booker, I think pretty much everyone we would
have expected to be there was there. And I still
I recognize that this is you know, uncharted and the
(06:00):
strategies still coming together. But you know, I think to
your point, there are people like you know, Stacy Abrams.
There are people like Justin Pearson, you know, we had
a conversation with him on the ground out there, people
that do represent you know, hope, people that do have
some ideas and they I think what we can do
(06:22):
is platform them and help share share their ideas that
feel reasonable and logical and based into shared reality. So
where I was expecting to find a void, I found
people still showing up and that, unfortunately, I have to
say it this way, that's not nothing. And so without
(06:44):
you know, spending too much time teasing it, let's just
get into our conversation with Stacy Abrams and let's hear
her thoughts on this and so much more. Stacy Abrams
is a New York Times best selling author, entrepreneur, producer,
(07:05):
and political leader. She served eleven years in the Georgia
House of Representatives, seven as minority leader, and was the
first black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a
major party in United States history. And she is our
guest today. All right, Stacey Abrams, welcome to the show.
We've been very much looking forward to talking to you.
(07:26):
How you doing today.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
I'm wonderful. I appreciate the invitation, and I thank you
for the work that you do that you and your
co host do. Q really sharing information with the.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Community, absolutely, and I want to get into that a
little bit later, but I want to make sure that
I honor you and I let people know indeed who
it is that we have on the show. Sad of
course everyone knows, but for those that might, you know,
just now politics is just now starting to affect them adversely,
(07:59):
and they're starting and wrap their heads around the new
state of the country. I want to get into the
weeds a little bit, so, you know, even before founding
Fair Fight Action, as someone who's well known for fighting
voter suppression, give us your thoughts on the redistrict thing
(08:20):
that we've seen in red states across the country and
the response from blue states. I want to start here
because obviously we're all looking forward to kind of taking
back power in the midterms, some power or taking away
some power, whatever it is that we can do. Those
of us believe in a more progressive society, and this
(08:41):
is one thing that has concerned a lot of people.
So talk to us a little bit about what's going
on with the redistricting and just kind of share your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Sure, so I'm going to link two things. So, when
I launched Fair Fight in twenty eighteen, it was after
the twenty eighteen election here in Georgia, where voter suppression
was very much in full force. But I came into
leadership in the Georgia General Assembly at the end of
(09:12):
twenty ten. So my very first year as minority leader
was during a redistricting year. I was the minority leader
in the Georgia House of Representatives, and I watched them
redraw the lines. In a state where they'd won fifty
seven percent of the population, they gave themselves almost seventy
percent of the votes. And that disproportion was achieved by
(09:34):
packing black communities wherever they could, cracking Latino and Api communities,
meaning scattering them so that they couldn't build coalitions. And
then they went after white legislators who represented black or
brown communities and essentially drew them into competition. The intention
was not simply to win more seats. It was to
(09:56):
create long term divisions that would disc allow the aggregation
of power for communities that were rising in population and
rising in influence. And so what we're watching happening right
now is that same device, but on steroids, because typically
you know it's coming, but it comes once a decade,
(10:17):
it comes after the census, and it precedes the next
midterm election that follows the next midterm election that follows.
And the reason this is so important to understand is
that it's not just about what we did with Fair Fight.
I also created an organization called Fair Count because in
twenty ten, what I realized was the reason they could
(10:39):
diminish our voting power so much was that we did
not participate in the census. And if you don't get
counted in the census when they're drawing those lines, they
are ignoring your needs. And so what we're watching happen
in these red states is that they can count and
they know that in terms of the sheer volume of people,
(11:00):
that the rising power of communities of color is so
great that in seventeen years, this nation is a majority
minority nation. If you don't want that to come to fruition,
you've got to start now breaking their ability to coalition,
breaking their ability to elect representation, breaking their ability to
direct the future of this country. And so the red
(11:21):
states that are redistricting in the middle of the decade
are doing so based on old information and trying to
game the next system, because if you can change who
is in Congress in twenty twenty six, you control the
census in twenty thirty. The blue states that are interceding
then are by some measure are being considered Oh well,
(11:43):
they're just doing the same thing that the Republicans are doing. No,
they're nullifying an attempt to gain the system. They are
nullifying an attempt to rig the system. It is not
that these are states that are going out saying we
want extra power. They're saying we won't let you steal
power from and those who fought to get it by
participating in the twenty twenty census. Because the work that
(12:05):
Pair count did, the work that countless organizations did in
twenty twenty in the middle of not just the pandemic,
but under a Trump administration that was trying to weaponize
the census, was to assure that we had as many
people of color as possible who participated in the census.
So they could get those seats. That are the seats
being attacked in Texas, the seats being attacked in Missouri.
(12:28):
They are trying to take the seats that we gained
because we did the work. And so it's critical for
us to understand that this isn't just about winning an election.
This is about reorganizing a system so communities that you
do not value are denied power on a permanent basis.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
If I may, I would like to add to that,
and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I
want to make sure that this lives and it's fully
pronounced in the minds of our listeners. So when you
were talking about the Blue states nullifying the power, or
that these red states are trying to grab ahead of
the census, and of course the strategy makes sense, I
(13:05):
appreciate you laying that out of why they want to
get ahead of the shifting population, the Blue states nullifying
that power as opposed to grabbing power themselves. I think
there's a little bit more life that we can breathe
into that, because my understanding is that historically red states
(13:27):
have gone to great lengths to disenfranchise voters. It's particularly
so across the South, where there are a statistically significant
amount of black people that want to vote, and because
they've already been, as you mentioned, cracking and packing, they
(13:47):
don't have as much room to continue in that same
way as Blue states do. And so you know, these
blue states conceivably could gain more power by doing cracking
and packing, but what they're doing is trying to simply
nullify what's happening there. And the other thing I do
(14:07):
want to add and then get your response, if indeed
you have one, is that when you mentioned the census
two and I actually did work with the census, the
last census, and we went out and we sort of
campaigned to get folks to participate. And you're absolutely right,
the census affects so many parts of people's lives. You know,
what schools are needed? Do you need a fire department
(14:32):
otherwise you know, if something happens the fire, the closest
fire department is too far away. You know, fiscal resources, parks, libraries,
et cetera, bus lines, all these sorts of things are
drawn from participation in the census. And so this was
a message that we certainly had to get out to
people who I believe that once upon a time the
(14:56):
showing for black people in the census was less than
three fifths, and so they compared it to the three
fifths compromise, saying that, hey, by not participating in the census,
we've actually done a disservice to our own community on
par with or worse than the three fifths compromise of
(15:17):
yester year. And so I just wanted to make those
live a little bit more. Any thoughts you have to add, well.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
I appreciate you framing it that way, because the two
things to understand. In twenty ten we were dramatically underrepresented
in the census, and so yes, by twenty twenty, for me,
that was an incredibly important issue, and I always lift up.
I am so grateful for the attention that fair Fight
gets because protecting the infrastructure of democracy against voter suppression
(15:45):
is vital. But we have to remember that they are
paying attention not just to the output, but the input,
and the census is the input you laid out, I
think an important set of metrics. If you live in
a food desert, grocery stores decide where going to go
based on the census. From a decade before PPE, when
COVID hit communities that got fewer resources. It was because
(16:08):
they were undercounted. We now live in a moment where
if we do not understand the power of our numbers,
we are doomed. Because they can count, we should count too.
And the last thing I'll say is this, fifty six
percent of Black people live in the South. The majority
of the Latino population lives in the South and the West.
(16:32):
We know that these are populations that can determine the
outcome of nearly every major decision made, which is why
they are so assiduous about attacking our voting rights. And
so as we think about the attacks on DEI on diversity, equity,
and inclusion, they're not talking about a boring seminar that
you have to do in HR. They're talking about the
(16:54):
Voting Rights Act. They're talking about the thirteenth, fourteenth, and
fifteenth Amendments. Because it was DEE that made elections accessible
to black and brown communities. It was DEI that said
that African Americans, to your point about three fifths our
very citizenship is DEI. When they talk about eliminating birthright citizenship,
(17:15):
they're talking about us. And so I think it's so
critical that we linked together all of these component pieces
because their goal is for us to see them as
separate and disparate. They are all of a piece. If
we don't count, we don't get counted. We don't count.
If we don't get counted, we can't vote. If we
don't get counted and we can't participate, then our value
(17:35):
as a citizen is diminished not by our actions, but
by their intention. And so for me, it is so
incredibly important that we see this as a holistic, multi
layered attack and not as a one off or something
that's an inconvenience.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
The reality of the situation that I think you know,
Q and I we learned over this past week and
we were at CBC out there in DC, and you know,
there are a lot of people that really are pushing
back against the idea that these things are based on
racism and that somehow everyone else is playing the game fair.
(18:20):
And you know, black people need to come to terms
with that, and you know, shed this sort of victim mentality,
and it shows kind of a stunning disconnect from the
reality of the situation which I think you laid out,
which is the fact that, as you mentioned, in the South,
you know, fifty six percent of the black people in
this country are located in the south and or Latinos,
(18:42):
that's the south and the southwest, and those people tend
to vote in such a way that it challenges the
pathways I suppose to a white supremacist nation, and so
to disenfranchise that group in particular, it's so sort of
(19:06):
a step removed from the racism that people wish they
could see so they could clearly market. I identify it
as racism, like these aren't people calling you the inWORD.
These are people just removing your power at the ballot
box so that they're still in position to shape outcomes
for themselves and for your community. So I appreciate you
saying that, just because again we've had some recent conversations
(19:28):
on the ground, which I think will circle back to.
This is why I was saying initially, it's such a
breath of fresh are to talk to somebody who is
intelligent and who's reasonable and someone who is When you're
in a studio, you kind of feel like you're in
the four walls, and that's really it. So to get
with somebody to remind you that you're not crazy is
(19:50):
kind of a special feeling. So all right, let's move
on one of the things that has dominated headlines recently
and I think has affected changed politics for the foreseeable future.
It might not last forever, because I think some of
(20:12):
us subscribe to a reality that is shared in some
of us subscribed to technically a shared reality, but very
much a detached reality that doesn't account for all of
the facets of it. But the fact is that Charlie
Kirk's assassination, I can call it, that has shifted conversations
(20:36):
and shifted the optics around politics and shifted I think,
the culture in this country. And I don't want to
talk about him. I'm sure that you've been talking about
him quite a bit, and everyone kind of knows what
the what is and feels how they feel. But I
think you're in a pretty good position to explain how
(20:58):
his assassination makes politics less safe for black women in particular.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
I recently launched a campaign known as the Ten Steps Campaign,
and it is our attempt to push back against the
rise of authoritarianism and autocracy. For me, this isn't an
abstract intention, because authoritarianism is about taking my humanity away.
Authoritarianism is about diminishing my capacity to live and operate
(21:35):
and navigate in this country, and one of the key
ten steps to autocracy is step seven, which is you
scapegoat marginalized in vulnerable communities. You attack DEI, You accuse
people of being less than because you do not like
their identities, not because you're opposed to identities, because you'll
(21:57):
use identities to describe the people you like. You just
don't like certain identities, namely identities where race and other
immutable characteristics are the proxy for your harm. So step
seven in the ten steps to autocracy, Step seven is
attacking DEI, attacking people of color, attacking immigrants, attacking the disabled,
any marginalized and dispossessed community. But step nine is normalizing violence.
(22:22):
It is using violent means, whether it's having militarized occupation
of our cities, whether it is having secret masked police
known as ICE, roaming the streets. Those moments where we
normalize violence and make it acceptable as a means of
power and control is very dangerous. The reason this is
(22:44):
so critical, and the reason I'm glad you raised this
question is that I launched ten steps a week ahead
of time because I wanted to get in front of
the changing narrative that was about to say that you
could not talk about violence without venerating ideas that said
that violence against your community was permissible. We cannot permit
(23:04):
ourselves to become the targets of authoritarian normalization of violence
while at the same time being silenced and told it
is inappropriate to talk about these issues. I very fundamentally
understand that when you look at where ice is swarming,
if you look at the cities that have been targeted
(23:26):
by this administration, by Republicans and those who support authoritarianism
and intocracy, they are unilaterally attacking and targeting black and
brown communities. Every single community they've gone to until Portland
has been led by a black woman, or if you
get to Memphis, a black man, if they've gone to
Chicago a black man. So we can't divorce the identities
(23:50):
we hold from the harm that will be visited upon
us by a regime that believes that normalizing violence is permissible.
And as a black woman, we are the most susceptible
in every way to the worst harms that get visited
upon communities. We cannot allow the normalization of violence, the
(24:13):
normalization of military occupation, to take hold, because that is
an intent to not just diminish our freedom and power.
It's an attempt to dehumanize us, because when we are
not worthy of defense, when we are not permitted to
talk about the need for our own defense, then that
silence becomes another weapon wielded against us. But it's not
(24:36):
enough to just be angry about it. We've got to
be intentional about our response. Violence is not the answer.
I believe in non violence, civil engagement, and civil resistance,
not only because I don't think violence is the answer,
but it's also less effective than nonviolence. When communities have
overthrown oppression, nonviolence has actually been the far and away
(24:59):
superior strategy. But you cannot fight it by not talking
about it. We cannot thwart it by hoping that people
just know what we mean. And so we've got to
call out what it means to send the National Guard
into our cities, to call up the military, and have
(25:19):
the President of the United States saying he's declaring war
on a city. Those are issues that we cannot divorce
ourselves from because when we do, autocracy takes hold, and
the reality is their singular target are the communities that
they dislike that run encounter to their political ends, and
that means dei communities and therefore it is incumbent upon
(25:41):
us to talk about both things at the exact same time.
And that's why I founded American Pride Rises Network, is
why I found that the Ten Steps campaign. It's why
I'm here today because I need us to hear all
of these things at once, but to know that we
can do something about it.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
So, speaking of doing something about it, and you know,
getting back to your point about calling it out, I
want to float this sort of action step for you know,
our listeners, because a lot of folks, and we heard
this a lot, you know in DC, they're asking what
can I do? So you mentioned calling out, let's let's
(26:18):
let's make that live. What does that actually mean? Calling
it out? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (26:22):
So, if there are ten steps to autocracy and authoritarianism,
and I've walked through those in a number of forms,
so I encourage people to look it up because we
need to we need to recognize it, we need to
know what it looks like. The reason they dismantled the
Department of Education was because of authoritarianism. Because if you
can dismantle half of that department, you are no longer
protecting students from violations of their civil rights. So let's
(26:45):
be clear. Pretty much all the things they're doing are
in pursuit of authoritarianism, So we need to know how
to recognize it. The reason they're going after Lisa Cook
and trying to take her off of the Fed Reserve board,
that's because of the ten steps to autocracy. But there
are then ten steps to freedom and power. One is committing.
We got to talk about what's happening. We got to
understand it, We got to share it. We have to
(27:08):
do the work of telling our neighbors, our friends, our pastors.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
We got to talk about it.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Because one of the ways authoritarianism wins you can become
convinced it's an individualized experience. I'm just unhappy. My life
is just hard. If you don't see yourself as part
of the community under attack, you won't see yourself as
part of the community that can win. And so we
got to understand that this is a shared experience. We
have to do the work of organizing. And organizing doesn't
(27:36):
mean everybody. It means three or four people, ten or
fifteen people, but bringing people together and saying we think
together that we can do something about this thing, and
then mobilizing actually doing something. It's litigating It's why those
lawsuits are so important. Even if we lose, we got
to fight anyway. But it's also making sure that we
are being disruptive. We've got to know your rights. We've
(27:56):
got to film when they show up and are doing
something they shouldn't, We've got to film. We've got to
share those films and share those that on meet social media.
But we also tell our stories. We got to not
just hope that people heard about it. We got to
repeat it, because they'll tell a lie a thousand times
until it sounds like the truth. We tell the truth
one time, and when people don't like it, we stop talking.
We've got to flood the zone. We also have to
(28:19):
deny them the authority to take our language. That's why
I use DEI all the time. I talk about DEI,
because they want to demonize our language. The reason people
don't understand the systemic harm we faced is because they
demonized critical race theory. The only purpose of critical race
theory was to lay out how the laws in this
country disproportionately and intentionally harmed Black existence and our ability
(28:43):
to build wealth, build power, and have economic security and
personal security. But we've got to talk about these things.
We can't let them ban our books or our stories.
We then have to engage, show up and talk to
your elected officials, and if they don't do what you want,
bring laws with you, write a petition, do a valid initiative,
tell them I expect you to pass this law or
(29:03):
at least introduce it, and if they don't do it,
keep showing up. Elections matter. Yes, I am concerned about
the twenty twenty six midterms, but I'm also concerned about
judicial elections that are happening in November. I'm concerned about
whether we have a public service commission in Georgia that
can jack up our rates or protect our communities. I'm
concerned about communities across this country being led by people
(29:24):
who don't like the people they represent. So we've got
to elect the right people at every level of government.
And then ultimately we have to demand not just what
we had before this authoritarian regime came to power. We've
got to demand what we should have had in the
first place. Our democracy was too fragile. If what we
were they were able to accomplish in nine months is
(29:45):
the decimation of so many of our communities and the
military occupation of our cities. So we need to demand
the democracy we have deserved for two hundred and fifty years.
And if you want to look at all of those,
go to ten steps campaign dot org. I lay them
all out, give your resources, and tell you how we
can get it done.
Broadcasting from the Civic Cyper Studios. Welcome to the QR Code,
where we share perspective, seek understanding, and shape outcomes. The
man you are about to hear from is a man
that I share so many laughs with. He is the
Q and QR code. He goes by the name of
q Ward.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
The voice you just heard is the R and the
QR Code man. We've been all around the world together.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Man and a ya yai.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Another trip down and some game perspective together. But he
goes by the name ramses Jah. Indeed, and we need
you to stick around. We got a special show in
store for you today. A little later on, we are
going to be hearing from the great Stacy Abrams. I'm
very excited to talk to her and get some leadership
(00:49):
from her. I think it is important to mention that
we're just coming back from a long week in Washington,
d C. On the ground at the Congressional Black Caucus,
where we were able to speak with a lot of
leaders in this country, a lot of congress people, a
(01:09):
lot of senators, a lot of elected officials, state representatives,
et cetera, and a lot of you know, big names,
including Stacy Abrams and many others that you'll hear from,
you know, as we continue to roll out content on
this program. And it was a necessary pilgrimage for us.
This is something that we do every year, and I
(01:35):
think that anytime we end up, you know, in one
of these places, these conventions or you know, speaking engagements
where we get to fellowship with people that are doing
kind of similar work that we're doing, there's something to
be said about how it energizes us and reinvigorates us.
(01:55):
You know, I'll speak for myself.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
You how about you? Any highlights that you care to
share from our week out there.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah, I think we have kind of different perspectives on
this because I had expectations when we got on our
flights that we would gain a lot in the way
of insight, in the way of strategy, in the way
of tangible hope, and I didn't get any of that
this time. Like the difference between the Congressional Black Caucus
(02:23):
last year and this year couldn't be more pronounced. Last
year we left there with a mission statement, with a
mission with a collective view, with the collective strategy, with
the collective desired outcome, and this year a bunch of
different pain points a bunch of different strategies, a bunch
(02:46):
of different voices, a bunch of different missions. I didn't
leave there feeling coalation and solidarity, and.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Like, I hope that leader.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Would come to the front, or some leadership would come
to the front, and that we would all collectively collaise
around something and all collectively pursue that. And that just
wasn't the case. And that actually made me pretty sad
man that we don't. We have all these different groups
(03:25):
with their own specific desired outcomes. And as I've said before,
those who oppress us have a singular vision. They have
a figurehead, they have a leader, they have a mission statement,
and they forgive all their differences to collaise around that mission.
(03:45):
You know, again, you have evangelical Christian Baptist pastors forgiving
their leader of all his sins in order to stand
arm in arm with him and to carry out their mission,
even though they're what they say they're about. Couldn't be
(04:06):
more opposite, yeah, or more at antithetico. So it's uh,
it's interesting that here we are and I don't feel
any more invigorated, any more led, any more sure about
what's next or what we're supposed to do this. This
(04:27):
This conversation with Stacy Abrams helps a lot to that end.
But I had some mixed emotions on my flight leaving DC. Man,
I have to admit some confusion, some frustration, some some hopelessness.
And you know that the group of young women that
(04:49):
we encountered that had a very, very very pronounced pronouncedly
different stance on everything than us. We can find single
thing that we agreed with with a group of young
black women from the South side of Chicago. Even saying
that again now seems crazy. We could find anything we
agreed on. Yeah, yeah, there's the actually like verbally attacked us.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Oh yeah, yeah, I know. And that's something that obviously
we're going to talk about. I know that I'm kind
of spearing this conversation with her, but no, I appreciate
that because I think that your feelings represent and reflect
a lot of you know, hopelessness that that people are
feeling around the country. You know, me as as always,
(05:39):
I think the things that I took from it is
I expected things to be worse than they were. Everyone
still showed up. I mean, with the exception of like
a Corey Booker, I think pretty much everyone we would
have expected to be there was there. And I still
I recognize that this is you know, uncharted and the
(06:00):
strategies still coming together. But you know, I think to
your point, there are people like you know, Stacy Abrams.
There are people like Justin Pearson, you know, we had
a conversation with him on the ground out there, people
that do represent you know, hope, people that do have
some ideas and they I think what we can do
(06:22):
is platform them and help share share their ideas that
feel reasonable and logical and based into shared reality. So
where I was expecting to find a void, I found
people still showing up and that, unfortunately, I have to
say it this way, that's not nothing. And so without
(06:44):
you know, spending too much time teasing it, let's just
get into our conversation with Stacy Abrams and let's hear
her thoughts on this and so much more. Stacy Abrams
is a New York Times best selling author, entrepreneur, producer,
(07:05):
and political leader. She served eleven years in the Georgia
House of Representatives, seven as minority leader, and was the
first black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a
major party in United States history. And she is our
guest today. All right, Stacey Abrams, welcome to the show.
We've been very much looking forward to talking to you.
(07:26):
How you doing today.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
I'm wonderful. I appreciate the invitation, and I thank you
for the work that you do that you and your
co host do. Q really sharing information with the.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Community, absolutely, and I want to get into that a
little bit later, but I want to make sure that
I honor you and I let people know indeed who
it is that we have on the show. Sad of
course everyone knows, but for those that might, you know,
just now politics is just now starting to affect them adversely,
(07:59):
and they're starting and wrap their heads around the new
state of the country. I want to get into the
weeds a little bit, so, you know, even before founding
Fair Fight Action, as someone who's well known for fighting
voter suppression, give us your thoughts on the redistrict thing
(08:20):
that we've seen in red states across the country and
the response from blue states. I want to start here
because obviously we're all looking forward to kind of taking
back power in the midterms, some power or taking away
some power, whatever it is that we can do. Those
of us believe in a more progressive society, and this
(08:41):
is one thing that has concerned a lot of people.
So talk to us a little bit about what's going
on with the redistricting and just kind of share your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Sure, so I'm going to link two things. So, when
I launched Fair Fight in twenty eighteen, it was after
the twenty eighteen election here in Georgia, where voter suppression
was very much in full force. But I came into
leadership in the Georgia General Assembly at the end of
(09:12):
twenty ten. So my very first year as minority leader
was during a redistricting year. I was the minority leader
in the Georgia House of Representatives, and I watched them
redraw the lines. In a state where they'd won fifty
seven percent of the population, they gave themselves almost seventy
percent of the votes. And that disproportion was achieved by
(09:34):
packing black communities wherever they could, cracking Latino and Api communities,
meaning scattering them so that they couldn't build coalitions. And
then they went after white legislators who represented black or
brown communities and essentially drew them into competition. The intention
was not simply to win more seats. It was to
(09:56):
create long term divisions that would disc allow the aggregation
of power for communities that were rising in population and
rising in influence. And so what we're watching happening right
now is that same device, but on steroids, because typically
you know it's coming, but it comes once a decade,
(10:17):
it comes after the census, and it precedes the next
midterm election that follows the next midterm election that follows.
And the reason this is so important to understand is
that it's not just about what we did with Fair Fight.
I also created an organization called Fair Count because in
twenty ten, what I realized was the reason they could
(10:39):
diminish our voting power so much was that we did
not participate in the census. And if you don't get
counted in the census when they're drawing those lines, they
are ignoring your needs. And so what we're watching happen
in these red states is that they can count and
they know that in terms of the sheer volume of people,
(11:00):
that the rising power of communities of color is so
great that in seventeen years, this nation is a majority
minority nation. If you don't want that to come to fruition,
you've got to start now breaking their ability to coalition,
breaking their ability to elect representation, breaking their ability to
direct the future of this country. And so the red
(11:21):
states that are redistricting in the middle of the decade
are doing so based on old information and trying to
game the next system, because if you can change who
is in Congress in twenty twenty six, you control the
census in twenty thirty. The blue states that are interceding
then are by some measure are being considered Oh well,
(11:43):
they're just doing the same thing that the Republicans are doing. No,
they're nullifying an attempt to gain the system. They are
nullifying an attempt to rig the system. It is not
that these are states that are going out saying we
want extra power. They're saying we won't let you steal
power from and those who fought to get it by
participating in the twenty twenty census. Because the work that
(12:05):
Pair count did, the work that countless organizations did in
twenty twenty in the middle of not just the pandemic,
but under a Trump administration that was trying to weaponize
the census, was to assure that we had as many
people of color as possible who participated in the census.
So they could get those seats. That are the seats
being attacked in Texas, the seats being attacked in Missouri.
(12:28):
They are trying to take the seats that we gained
because we did the work. And so it's critical for
us to understand that this isn't just about winning an election.
This is about reorganizing a system so communities that you
do not value are denied power on a permanent basis.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
If I may, I would like to add to that,
and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I
want to make sure that this lives and it's fully
pronounced in the minds of our listeners. So when you
were talking about the Blue states nullifying the power, or
that these red states are trying to grab ahead of
the census, and of course the strategy makes sense, I
(13:05):
appreciate you laying that out of why they want to
get ahead of the shifting population, the Blue states nullifying
that power as opposed to grabbing power themselves. I think
there's a little bit more life that we can breathe
into that, because my understanding is that historically red states
(13:27):
have gone to great lengths to disenfranchise voters. It's particularly
so across the South, where there are a statistically significant
amount of black people that want to vote, and because
they've already been, as you mentioned, cracking and packing, they
(13:47):
don't have as much room to continue in that same
way as Blue states do. And so you know, these
blue states conceivably could gain more power by doing cracking
and packing, but what they're doing is trying to simply
nullify what's happening there. And the other thing I do
(14:07):
want to add and then get your response, if indeed
you have one, is that when you mentioned the census
two and I actually did work with the census, the
last census, and we went out and we sort of
campaigned to get folks to participate. And you're absolutely right,
the census affects so many parts of people's lives. You know,
what schools are needed? Do you need a fire department
(14:32):
otherwise you know, if something happens the fire, the closest
fire department is too far away. You know, fiscal resources, parks, libraries,
et cetera, bus lines, all these sorts of things are
drawn from participation in the census. And so this was
a message that we certainly had to get out to
people who I believe that once upon a time the
(14:56):
showing for black people in the census was less than
three fifths, and so they compared it to the three
fifths compromise, saying that, hey, by not participating in the census,
we've actually done a disservice to our own community on
par with or worse than the three fifths compromise of
(15:17):
yester year. And so I just wanted to make those
live a little bit more. Any thoughts you have to add, well.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
I appreciate you framing it that way, because the two
things to understand. In twenty ten we were dramatically underrepresented
in the census, and so yes, by twenty twenty, for me,
that was an incredibly important issue, and I always lift up.
I am so grateful for the attention that fair Fight
gets because protecting the infrastructure of democracy against voter suppression
(15:45):
is vital. But we have to remember that they are
paying attention not just to the output, but the input,
and the census is the input you laid out, I
think an important set of metrics. If you live in
a food desert, grocery stores decide where going to go
based on the census. From a decade before PPE, when
COVID hit communities that got fewer resources. It was because
(16:08):
they were undercounted. We now live in a moment where
if we do not understand the power of our numbers,
we are doomed. Because they can count, we should count too.
And the last thing I'll say is this, fifty six
percent of Black people live in the South. The majority
of the Latino population lives in the South and the West.
(16:32):
We know that these are populations that can determine the
outcome of nearly every major decision made, which is why
they are so assiduous about attacking our voting rights. And
so as we think about the attacks on DEI on diversity, equity,
and inclusion, they're not talking about a boring seminar that
you have to do in HR. They're talking about the
(16:54):
Voting Rights Act. They're talking about the thirteenth, fourteenth, and
fifteenth Amendments. Because it was DEE that made elections accessible
to black and brown communities. It was DEI that said
that African Americans, to your point about three fifths our
very citizenship is DEI. When they talk about eliminating birthright citizenship,
(17:15):
they're talking about us. And so I think it's so
critical that we linked together all of these component pieces
because their goal is for us to see them as
separate and disparate. They are all of a piece. If
we don't count, we don't get counted. We don't count.
If we don't get counted, we can't vote. If we
don't get counted and we can't participate, then our value
(17:35):
as a citizen is diminished not by our actions, but
by their intention. And so for me, it is so
incredibly important that we see this as a holistic, multi
layered attack and not as a one off or something
that's an inconvenience.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
The reality of the situation that I think you know,
Q and I we learned over this past week and
we were at CBC out there in DC, and you know,
there are a lot of people that really are pushing
back against the idea that these things are based on
racism and that somehow everyone else is playing the game fair.
(18:20):
And you know, black people need to come to terms
with that, and you know, shed this sort of victim mentality,
and it shows kind of a stunning disconnect from the
reality of the situation which I think you laid out,
which is the fact that, as you mentioned, in the South,
you know, fifty six percent of the black people in
this country are located in the south and or Latinos,
(18:42):
that's the south and the southwest, and those people tend
to vote in such a way that it challenges the
pathways I suppose to a white supremacist nation, and so
to disenfranchise that group in particular, it's so sort of
(19:06):
a step removed from the racism that people wish they
could see so they could clearly market. I identify it
as racism, like these aren't people calling you the inWORD.
These are people just removing your power at the ballot
box so that they're still in position to shape outcomes
for themselves and for your community. So I appreciate you
saying that, just because again we've had some recent conversations
(19:28):
on the ground, which I think will circle back to.
This is why I was saying initially, it's such a
breath of fresh are to talk to somebody who is
intelligent and who's reasonable and someone who is When you're
in a studio, you kind of feel like you're in
the four walls, and that's really it. So to get
with somebody to remind you that you're not crazy is
(19:50):
kind of a special feeling. So all right, let's move
on one of the things that has dominated headlines recently
and I think has affected changed politics for the foreseeable future.
It might not last forever, because I think some of
(20:12):
us subscribe to a reality that is shared in some
of us subscribed to technically a shared reality, but very
much a detached reality that doesn't account for all of
the facets of it. But the fact is that Charlie
Kirk's assassination, I can call it, that has shifted conversations
(20:36):
and shifted the optics around politics and shifted I think,
the culture in this country. And I don't want to
talk about him. I'm sure that you've been talking about
him quite a bit, and everyone kind of knows what
the what is and feels how they feel. But I
think you're in a pretty good position to explain how
(20:58):
his assassination makes politics less safe for black women in particular.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
I recently launched a campaign known as the Ten Steps Campaign,
and it is our attempt to push back against the
rise of authoritarianism and autocracy. For me, this isn't an
abstract intention, because authoritarianism is about taking my humanity away.
Authoritarianism is about diminishing my capacity to live and operate
(21:35):
and navigate in this country, and one of the key
ten steps to autocracy is step seven, which is you
scapegoat marginalized in vulnerable communities. You attack DEI, You accuse
people of being less than because you do not like
their identities, not because you're opposed to identities, because you'll
(21:57):
use identities to describe the people you like. You just
don't like certain identities, namely identities where race and other
immutable characteristics are the proxy for your harm. So step
seven in the ten steps to autocracy, Step seven is
attacking DEI, attacking people of color, attacking immigrants, attacking the disabled,
any marginalized and dispossessed community. But step nine is normalizing violence.
(22:22):
It is using violent means, whether it's having militarized occupation
of our cities, whether it is having secret masked police
known as ICE, roaming the streets. Those moments where we
normalize violence and make it acceptable as a means of
power and control is very dangerous. The reason this is
(22:44):
so critical, and the reason I'm glad you raised this
question is that I launched ten steps a week ahead
of time because I wanted to get in front of
the changing narrative that was about to say that you
could not talk about violence without venerating ideas that said
that violence against your community was permissible. We cannot permit
(23:04):
ourselves to become the targets of authoritarian normalization of violence
while at the same time being silenced and told it
is inappropriate to talk about these issues. I very fundamentally
understand that when you look at where ice is swarming,
if you look at the cities that have been targeted
(23:26):
by this administration, by Republicans and those who support authoritarianism
and intocracy, they are unilaterally attacking and targeting black and
brown communities. Every single community they've gone to until Portland
has been led by a black woman, or if you
get to Memphis, a black man, if they've gone to
Chicago a black man. So we can't divorce the identities
(23:50):
we hold from the harm that will be visited upon
us by a regime that believes that normalizing violence is permissible.
And as a black woman, we are the most susceptible
in every way to the worst harms that get visited
upon communities. We cannot allow the normalization of violence, the
(24:13):
normalization of military occupation, to take hold, because that is
an intent to not just diminish our freedom and power.
It's an attempt to dehumanize us, because when we are
not worthy of defense, when we are not permitted to
talk about the need for our own defense, then that
silence becomes another weapon wielded against us. But it's not
(24:36):
enough to just be angry about it. We've got to
be intentional about our response. Violence is not the answer.
I believe in non violence, civil engagement, and civil resistance,
not only because I don't think violence is the answer,
but it's also less effective than nonviolence. When communities have
overthrown oppression, nonviolence has actually been the far and away
(24:59):
superior strategy. But you cannot fight it by not talking
about it. We cannot thwart it by hoping that people
just know what we mean. And so we've got to
call out what it means to send the National Guard
into our cities, to call up the military, and have
(25:19):
the President of the United States saying he's declaring war
on a city. Those are issues that we cannot divorce
ourselves from because when we do, autocracy takes hold, and
the reality is their singular target are the communities that
they dislike that run encounter to their political ends, and
that means dei communities and therefore it is incumbent upon
(25:41):
us to talk about both things at the exact same time.
And that's why I founded American Pride Rises Network, is
why I found that the Ten Steps campaign. It's why
I'm here today because I need us to hear all
of these things at once, but to know that we
can do something about it.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
So, speaking of doing something about it, and you know,
getting back to your point about calling it out, I
want to float this sort of action step for you know,
our listeners, because a lot of folks, and we heard
this a lot, you know in DC, they're asking what
can I do? So you mentioned calling out, let's let's
(26:18):
let's make that live. What does that actually mean? Calling
it out? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (26:22):
So, if there are ten steps to autocracy and authoritarianism,
and I've walked through those in a number of forms,
so I encourage people to look it up because we
need to we need to recognize it, we need to
know what it looks like. The reason they dismantled the
Department of Education was because of authoritarianism. Because if you
can dismantle half of that department, you are no longer
protecting students from violations of their civil rights. So let's
(26:45):
be clear. Pretty much all the things they're doing are
in pursuit of authoritarianism, So we need to know how
to recognize it. The reason they're going after Lisa Cook
and trying to take her off of the Fed Reserve board,
that's because of the ten steps to autocracy. But there
are then ten steps to freedom and power. One is committing.
We got to talk about what's happening. We got to
understand it, We got to share it. We have to
(27:08):
do the work of telling our neighbors, our friends, our pastors.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
We got to talk about it.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Because one of the ways authoritarianism wins you can become
convinced it's an individualized experience. I'm just unhappy. My life
is just hard. If you don't see yourself as part
of the community under attack, you won't see yourself as
part of the community that can win. And so we
got to understand that this is a shared experience. We
have to do the work of organizing. And organizing doesn't
(27:36):
mean everybody. It means three or four people, ten or
fifteen people, but bringing people together and saying we think
together that we can do something about this thing, and
then mobilizing actually doing something. It's litigating It's why those
lawsuits are so important. Even if we lose, we got
to fight anyway. But it's also making sure that we
are being disruptive. We've got to know your rights. We've
(27:56):
got to film when they show up and are doing
something they shouldn't, We've got to film. We've got to
share those films and share those that on meet social media.
But we also tell our stories. We got to not
just hope that people heard about it. We got to
repeat it, because they'll tell a lie a thousand times
until it sounds like the truth. We tell the truth
one time, and when people don't like it, we stop talking.
We've got to flood the zone. We also have to
(28:19):
deny them the authority to take our language. That's why
I use DEI all the time. I talk about DEI,
because they want to demonize our language. The reason people
don't understand the systemic harm we faced is because they
demonized critical race theory. The only purpose of critical race
theory was to lay out how the laws in this
country disproportionately and intentionally harmed Black existence and our ability
(28:43):
to build wealth, build power, and have economic security and
personal security. But we've got to talk about these things.
We can't let them ban our books or our stories.
We then have to engage, show up and talk to
your elected officials, and if they don't do what you want,
bring laws with you, write a petition, do a valid initiative,
tell them I expect you to pass this law or
(29:03):
at least introduce it, and if they don't do it,
keep showing up. Elections matter. Yes, I am concerned about
the twenty twenty six midterms, but I'm also concerned about
judicial elections that are happening in November. I'm concerned about
whether we have a public service commission in Georgia that
can jack up our rates or protect our communities. I'm
concerned about communities across this country being led by people
(29:24):
who don't like the people they represent. So we've got
to elect the right people at every level of government.
And then ultimately we have to demand not just what
we had before this authoritarian regime came to power. We've
got to demand what we should have had in the
first place. Our democracy was too fragile. If what we
were they were able to accomplish in nine months is
(29:45):
the decimation of so many of our communities and the
military occupation of our cities. So we need to demand
the democracy we have deserved for two hundred and fifty years.
And if you want to look at all of those,
go to ten steps campaign dot org. I lay them
all out, give your resources, and tell you how we
can get it done.
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