Ment Nelson
Portrait of Stacey Abrams, 2018
Watercolor on paper
Courtesy of the artist
BLACK POLITICAL ACTION
DE’ARA BALENGER
Our Black political future is bright but it is up to us to keep the momentum going.
A new wave of unapologetically Black and progressive candidates and campaigners are taking matters into their own hands with a clear agenda. An agenda that’s committed to growing opportunity and access for Black communities, holding officials accountable in a real constructive way, investing in and meeting Black voters where they are, and intensely fighting against voter suppression.
Ment Nelson
Portrait of Stacey Abrams, 2018
Watercolor on paper
Courtesy of the artist
As we’re reveling in the most diverse Congress in the history of the United States, we see the power of Black candidates, especially Black women candidates. Get to know the new talent elected in 2018: Boston city council member Ayanna Pressley, the first Black congresswoman for Massachusetts; Jahana Hayes, the first Black congresswoman to represent Connecticut; the first Muslim woman elected to Congress, Ilhan Omar; Lauren Underwood, who beat a four-term Republican in Illinois; Rhodes scholar Antonio Delgado in New York; civil rights attorney Colin Allred in Texas; Joe Neguse, the first Black congressman from Colorado; Steven Horsford in Nevada; and our beloved Lucia McBath—mother of Jordan Davis, who was shot and killed by a white man at a gas station in 2012—who won a tight race in Georgia.
These wins were by no means easy but through grassroots organizing—tapping into the progressive base—Black voters, particularly Black women; Latinx; and young folks, these campaigns are redefining who the targeted progressive voting populations are—therefore giving power back to these communities. Investing in them and being accountable to them, instead of expecting to get their vote and if they do not, dubbing entire communities as apathetic. What’s key here is meeting low-propensity voters where they are and using cultural currency to reach them in a way that is not pandering. Newsflash: Black folks (like most Americans) appreciate what is authentic. There’s a two-prong issue here: one of voter suppression and the other is the perception of Black voter apathy.
Our new wave of Black candidates and Black-founded organizations supporting them, whether strategy firms or fundraising vehicles, invest and trust in hiring Black leadership. You can’t say that you’re committed to equity and equality and you don’t have one Black person on your leadership team.
There are two key things we should be wary of: First, “constituency work,” or essentially claiming to represent the interests of all Black folk in the country (i.e., African Americans for Obama or African Americans for Hillary), as though all of our issues can be compressed into one monolithic group. Second, grassroots organizing, also known as “working in the field.” I’m not kidding, they actually call it that. These two campaign leadership structures indicate that candidates may not be considering our votes as significant portions of their tactical campaign strategy. For some of these campaigns, communities of color and the LGBTQIA+ community are boxes to be checked. But best believe, we can now call out and demand accountability. We know what inclusivity and commitment to community look like within a campaign.
There is no better example of this than Stacey Yvonne Abrams. Stacey ran an incredible campaign, investing in Black voters and trusting Black leadership within her campaign to be the first Black woman governor in the history of the United States. Stacey grew up in Mississippi and Georgia, went on to graduate from Spelman College, the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and Yale Law School. Ultimately, she went from being a tax attorney to being appointed city attorney of Atlanta by the mayor, was elected to the state House in 2006, then elected minority leader of the House in 2010, and served until 2017, stepping down when she decided to run for governor.
Ever committed to combating voter suppression, and understanding the importance of reaching low-frequency voters, Stacey founded the New Georgia Project, which registered more than two hundred thousand Georgia voters of color between 2014 and 2016, meeting voters where they were—in churches, on college campuses—to share information about how to register and how to vote. The New Georgia Project is also a stopgap for voter suppression practices that are now legal after some of the powers of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were curtailed by the Supreme Court in 2013. (The Voting Rights Act made it unlawful to require Black folks to take literacy tests, pay poll taxes, and face other ridiculous voting restrictions that had disenfranchised generations of Black voters.)
For the first time since 1965, local officials, such as officials in Georgia, could close polls or change voting laws without the permission of the federal government. One of the restrictions we saw at play that hindered Abrams in becoming the first Black woman ever elected as governor in the United States is the “exact match” rule, which suspended fifty-three thousand voter-registration applications for inconsistencies as minor as a hyphen missing from a last name.
On voting day in Georgia, many Black districts endured technical difficulties with voting machines, some having no power cords. Black folks stood in line for up to five hours, while across most states the wait time is twenty minutes. We all went to bed that night not knowing who the victor was, but felt confident that if Stacey didn’t win, she was close enough for a recount. In Georgia, you need 50 percent plus one vote to win, and her opponent, Georgia secretary of state Brian Kemp, had only 50.36 percent of the votes. Abrams’s campaign believed that since absentee ballots, military ballots, and provisional ballots hadn’t been counted yet, her opponent would not meet the threshold. Four days after the polls closed, the race had not been officially called. Kemp, who had refused to step down from his role as chief elections officer, claimed victory that was echoed by the president of the United States, who instructed us to move on, although ballots were still outstanding. Abrams’s campaign filed lawsuits challenging election procedures, believing that with the pending ballots, there would be a runoff. Ultimately, Kemp was determined the winner. Stacey, however, refused to concede.
Stacey Abrams is a force of nature. She has the ability to connect in a way that allows you to believe in yourself and your power to participate in making equality, opportunity, and equity a reality. It is in Stacey’s DNA to fight for every vote but it’s our job to fight beside her, and she’s created a platform for us to do just that. She launched Fair Fight Action, an organization fighting to ensure that every Georgian has a voice in the election system by challenging Georgia’s discriminatory election process in federal court.
And as we know, it’s not just Georgia. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, ninety-nine bills designed to diminish voter access were introduced in thirty-one state legislatures. In Manatee County, Florida, for example, there was a 30 percent reduction in polling places in primarily Black and Latinx areas, and research by three University of Florida academics showed that in-person voting declined precipitously as a result of closures. This obviously impacted Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, who at thirty-nine years old has amassed an impressive résumé, and was the youngest person (at twenty-three) to be elected city commissioner before being elected mayor of Tallahassee. Gillum ran on Medicare for all, a fifteen-dollar minimum wage, and virulent opposition to the stand-your-ground law in Florida, which played a huge role in the injustice surrounding Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012. Had Gillum been elected, he would have been the first Black governor in Florida’s history. He believed in young Black political talent, hired them into leadership roles, and ran an ambitious and unapologetic campaign.
Gillum surprised establishment Democratic folks by winning the Democratic primary in Florida, in which he was the youngest, the most progressive, and the only non-millionaire running. During debates and public exchanges with his opponent, Gillum endured racist innuendos and verbal attacks from his opponent, exacerbated by the ranting of the president of the United States. But brother Gillum’s confidence, quick thinking, and poise always shined so brightly, he made us holler and stomp our feet in prideful support as we watched.
Ment Nelson
Portrait of Andrew Gillum, 2018
Watercolor on paper
Courtesy of the artist
On election day, as votes were coming in, it seemed as though Gillum’s opponent had won. Gillum conceded. As votes were still coming in and a recount looked possible, his campaign and supporters encouraged him to withdraw his concession. Gillum announced that he was committed to seeing every vote counted.
Of course, we know the curse of recounts in Florida. In some counties, like Palm Beach, election officials said that the deadline to complete machine recounts was impossible given the precarious state of election equipment, which the secretary of state and the governor “were extremely aware of” and still they would not extend the deadline. The New York Times reported, “In Miami-Dade County, 266 mailed ballots passing through a sorting facility where bombs targeting Democratic politicians had been found were apparently delayed—they arrived on Saturday, after the deadline, and were not counted.”1 There’s a general sloppiness and accepted incompetence in Florida that goes unaddressed until a high-profile election comes around, and then it’s just too late for remedying.
Abrams’s and Gillum’s campaigns have birthed a renewed collective commitment to finally stomping out voter suppression. They, in addition to all of the Black candidates that have run campaigns in the past couple of years, successfully or unsuccessfully, have given us a gift. We now have the blueprint that we need to challenge existing electoral structures and the lie that Black folks are apathetic when it comes to voting.
And there’s a lot of work to do in putting this blueprint to work before the next wave of critical races in 2020. To give you perspective, in addition to the 2020 presidential race, there are twenty races for Senate in states that have cities with significant Black populations like Montgomery, Atlanta, New Orleans, Detroit, Flint, and Memphis. These are also cities that have faced decades of racial discrimination and institutional voter suppression. Keep in mind that there have been only ten Black senators in the history of the United States, three of whom are serving now—the most Black senators serving at one time—among the one hundred total senators.
Let’s get to work. Support organizations committed to Black voter engagement, ending voter suppression, or investing in Black candidates. That support could be volunteering, making connections leveraging your network, fundraising, identifying Black talent to work on campaigns, or amplifying voter engagement tools on social media.
Campaigns are expensive, and typically Black candidates are underfunded, so it’s critically important that we have bodies to raise money for the candidates we believe will lead us well. Money that goes toward hiring staff, operations, technology, research (polling, data), and media. If you think about it, a campaign—no matter how small—is like running a business that must do a lot with very little. It’s important to support Black political action committees, which are organizations established by a group of people with a shared agenda who raise money privately, then funnel that money into supported campaigns. Higher Heights for America and The Collective PAC are also good resources to see which Black candidates are running where and how to support them. There are also organizations like Woke Vote, a Black millennial voter engagement organization that helped to get Doug Jones elected in Alabama. You can also support Abrams’s organization, Fair Fight Action, or other organizations fighting voter suppression, like the ACLU or Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
There are no bounds to Black political action. Let’s continue to put on the pressure and support the candidates that support growing and advancing the Black community.
1. Robles, Frances, and Patricia Mazzei, “Uncounted Ballots, Overvoted Ballots: Why Is the Governor Claiming Fraud in Florida’s Election?” The New York Times, November 12, 2018. www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/us/florida-recount-elections-scott-nelson-desantis-gillum.html.
BALENGER