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A recent Sunday of October, Stacey Abrams has been presented to Vogue– with a few hundred people. The morning worship had begun at 20 minutes at the New Life Church in Decatur, Georgia, and Abrams walked on the scene, carried away by the group's gospel music.
Abrams was there to inspire the New Life Baptist congregation to vote to become the next governor of Georgia; if she wins on November 6, she will be the first black female governor in US history. But instead of a stump speech, she gave a sermon: Abrams delivered his remarks with the intimate and telling style of the truth and the slippery cadence of a preacher from his hometown (she comes honestly his parents were both Methodist ministers). "What the Scriptures tell us is that people will get up," she said with enthusiastic applause. She concluded by asking people to vote, tell their family, and their friends to vote, to "vote for the next 21 days."
The ballots that black voters will vote in this race are not just in question, they are in jeopardy. Georgia (and its disturbing voting statistics) has been closely monitored by pressure groups for years: since 2012, more than 200 local polling stations have been closed; between 2012 and 2016, 1.5 million people were removed from the electoral lists. But the mid-term elections of 2018 have drawn national attention to the issue, not least because Abrams' opponent, Republican Brian Kemp, is currently Georgia's Secretary of State and is therefore charged with ensuring the fairness of the elections in which he presents himself. When it was announced in September that more than 50,000 voters were stranded by the controversial verification method of the Kemp office (called "exact match"), it is necessary that the information regarding the candidacy of electors reflect exactly those appearing on other identification information held by the Social Security Administration or the DMV. (A hyphen or misspelling may delay registration), of which more than two-thirds were intended for black voters, the historical challenge of Abrams was even more important.
What is happening in Georgia illustrates the crisis of American representation and growing awareness by the masses that it can not be tolerated. We have heard of it as a pink wave (more candidates), a blue wave (more Democrats) and a wave of color candidates, all of whom are trying to redo American leaders in our image. Abrams, as far as identity is concerned, check each box. But she also embodies the people part of a plea for a people's champion: one of the six brothers and sisters, Abrams quickly insisted that his family was "working poor". Vogue The crew sat down for a video interview with Abrams after the church in his modest townhouse in Atlanta's Kirkwood neighborhood. She described what it meant to be the first person in her family to own a home: "know it's mine," she said. designating his shelves. Her parents have always encouraged their children to claim more – they were "the only black kids in Gulfport, Mississippi, to have watched the ballroom dancing, because it was on PBS," before their family moves to Georgia. Abrams eventually graduated from Spelman, UT Austin's Master of Public Affairs and Yale JD, and sat in the House of Representatives of Georgia from 2007 to 2017.
Abrams' appeal to Democrats clearly hoping to be a big tent to come November is evident when you spend more than a few minutes with her in public. She exudes a powerful combination of authenticity and skill, qualities that, at least in politics, often feel mutually exclusive: at 44, she is a Xer general also able to answer questions about Star Trek as she is on the series of novel thrillers she wrote (under the name Selena Montgomery), or health, as she recently demonstrated in a Reddit AMA. In her speech to New Life in Decatur, Abrams caught the attention of the almost entirely black congregation, deeply touched by the governance problems of Georgia that she placed at the heart of her campaign. The expansion of Medicaid is something New Life Reverend Marlin Harris has said his congregation badly needed to be. This is a principle of the Abrams platform, which sees the fight against poverty as a moral rather than a political imperative; and she took the case of Medicaid on the road, telling rural voters (for whom her opponent called Medicaid an expensive expense) that her expansion would help stimulate small businesses and create jobs.
The diversity of the Abrams base was nowhere more apparent than at Atlanta's pride parade on Sunday afternoon, when she was the first ever governorship candidate ever to appear. Abrams spent hours under the sunroof of a jeep coming down Peachtree Street, signing autographs, heading to Rihanna and responding to the yells of "Stacey!" Stacey! Stacey!
Spending the day with Abrams – an "old shy person" purported to stand out in the spotlight of the national scene – has made it clear that the prospect of even greater attention does not really delight her. She overcame questions about her unmarried, childless status, exploring some aspects of her business-like personality that might be ignored in a male candidate. Although outspoken, quick to make a joke and dynamic while speaking in public, the ability of Abrams to spoil is very limited. Now that its run is a flash point for the Democratic Party in general and that it has been endorsed by almost all the presidential candidates of 2020, it's hard to remember that five months ago at she had finished a lively primary campaign. (Asked about the hurdles she had faced in her political career during an appearance in New York in September, Abrams joked that she was already beating another Stacey to get the party's nomination. ) To turn it off, she looks "disproportionate". Netflix and constantly reads (sometimes with his family's reading club), although his exhausting campaign schedule does not leave much time out. The early elections in Georgia on October 15 would also mark the beginning of a three-week bus tour for Abrams in the state.
The way Abrams uses her non-anecdotal background to describe how she transcended obstacles such as poverty and discrimination, but rather to win with her, to illustrate why she believes in what she believes is radical and new . (When asked how long she had been preparing for her candidacy, Abrams said she looked at her Republican colleagues sitting in the state legislature in 2010 "granting a reduction of money". On the last day of the session, before depriving the Georgian poor of benefits, remember that my family was looking for $ 5, "she said. experience of that of power, "running for the governor has become my mission.") This looks like the way politicians should talk about the struggles of their constituents: our social problems – like its six-figure debt, which she mentions when she talks about public education, and a history of incarceration and addiction her brother, which she discusses in the context of criminal justice reform and mental health – are not inevitable.
Although Abrams can position itself as the proof of the successful American dream – of the independent, autonomous and autonomous type, it wants Georgia to be the best. "We must be a society that believes in redemption," she said, questioned about her vision of the state: "We will hold you accountable, but we will also hold your hand and walk with you" . not only for his condition; Abrams wants Georgia to be a stewardship model that can transform the country as a whole. "We have seen terrible ideas from governors," she said. Vogue, listing Florida's Stand Your Ground legislation, the welfare state erosion in Wisconsin and the massive incarceration in California. But "if you can hurt, you can do well," she says, no matter the current president.
On Wednesday, October 24, the NAACP of Georgia announced that votes for Abrams in two counties were registered on election machines as votes for Kemp. The news came to us a few days after a 40-person senior coach led the election by a group called Black Voters Matter was ordered by a county official to disembark – even though many of them have ended to drive there on their own. In all of the state, less than two weeks of advance voting have already seen three times more voters vote than in the last mid-term election.
"I'm afraid of losing because I know what's the alternative, I've already seen it," said Abrams towards the end of our interview, even though it's not the same thing. was not clear if she was talking about not getting too much out of it. a child or watching Republicans continue to deny federal assistance, year after year, in a state where 14.9% of the population live below the poverty line. "My call to the bugle," she repeated, "is to protect the most vulnerable and to lift the oppressed. And do the work to make life better for everyone … We have the right to demand more. "
Director: Tari Wariebi
DP: Mustafa Mahadi
Sound: Barry Rathbun
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