–Our country, now from thee,
Claim we our liberty,
In freedoms name
Guarding homes altar fires,
Daughters of patriot sires,
Their zeal our own inspires,
Justice to claim.
Today we sang some Suffrage songs. A couple of weeks ago Vicki Luther presented Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, two women who laid the intellectual framework and strategies needed for woman to win the right to vote. Vicki taught me a lot. For instance, do you know what voting issue is important to a horse? A stable economy.
Today we’re shining the spotlight on Stacy Abrams as a current day suffragist, and leader in the resistance to the latest wave of voter suppression.
Logic and high-powered intellect has been common to the women we’ve spotlighted this month. All used intellect with strategy to expose the deception, the myths, and practices enabling oppression continuance.
These women show us how to take UU values from words to deeds. Each has fought for the worth and dignity of every person, justice and compassion for all, dismantling of the oppressive structures intended to continue privilege for the few, poverty for many. Today I’ll show how Abrams has done it.
Learning about Stacy Abrams, I experienced so much encouragement and inspiration. I feel some sadness not knowing how in a short time to present the depth of Abram’s insight. How to do what she has done given details and patterns that give a clear view of the racialized voter suppression, the systematic attacks upon voting rights and their importance for democracy.
I am also grateful for Dahlia Lithwick and her book “Lady Justice”. In chapter 9, she rivets you with the sequence of events since the Supreme Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act. She presents the story of Stacy Abrams. Featuring Abrams work, she shows the impact of the law on the registration and voting rates of African Americans. She presents Stacy Abrams cracking the code of the Republican right wing anti-democratic takeover. The reports on Abrams, a leader who offers the nation a way to defeat the anti-democratic movements by defending equal voting rights for people of color and poor people. Dahlwich’s presentation of the hero Abrams, made me want to cheer again and again.
You heard one Stacy Abram story earlier. Here is another. Because Stacy Abrams was her high school valedictorian, she received an invitation to meet with the governor. Not owning a car, her parents and her took the Marta bus to get to the governor’s mansion. They walked up the long driveway and were stopped by a security guard. Stacy’s mother had the invitation with Stacy’s name on it, but the guard did not ask for it. He told them that there was a private event inside, that they didn’t belong there and would have to leave. Stacy watched as the bus started to pull away. She said that were it not for the fact that her mother kept a firm grip on her arm, Stacy would have been back on that bus. Abrams says that besides defending the privilege that Stacy had worked so hard to earn, she thinks her parents wouldn’t let her leave because they wanted her to know that she had a responsibility not to allow someone else to define for her where she did and did not belong.
This story has UU values all over it. Our tradition asks us to be advocates who won’t allow people to be treated that way. Inclusion is our spiritual practice. Affirming dignity and the need for belonging, these are our values my friends. Yes? We need heroes and good writers like Dahlwich and Abrams. We need women and people of color to tell their stories. We need to hear and learn from these stories.
I hear shared values in Abrams articulation of her philosophy. In an interview Stacy Abrams was asked to reconcile her mention of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and her own writing of romance novels. She said: “it’s important to enjoy what it means to live in a free society and to have these moments of respite but it’s also an organizing tool. If you can be with people where they are and they want to be with you when you get there, that helps a lot!”
If we enter this work chastising, lecturing, and hectoring you might get a few people to do what you want, but you are never going to convert them or convince them that it’s worth doing again.
If they see the normalness of activism and political engagement… If they see that normalness can be profound in how their lives get better, then they are going to more willing to risk showing up and standing that line and being rained on and being yelled at by some guy in a truck telling them to go home, they are going to be more willing if they think they are in this together as opposed to their sort of being lead to do this by people who are too important to show up.”
Abrams is said to have one of the most brilliant and analytical minds in politics today. Abrams said that she learned much from her mother who was a research librarian. Abrams entered Georgia politics and was perplexed as to why the democrats were getting crushed. She looked at the demographics, analyzed data, factored the effects of redistricting, and voter suppression. She developed a plan to flip the state before anyone considered that possible. She presented her findings nationally, gave the message to pay attention to Georgia, and she raised an unprecedented amount of money. Her opponent Kemp won by a small margin. Kemp was elected by 55K votes, less than the 2% of the counted vote. As Georgia secretary of state, Kemp had canceled 1.4 million voter registrations, closed 214 polling places mostly in areas with high African American population, and he put 53,000 voters on hold, 70% of whom were Black. Is that how Abrams was kept from becoming the first Black woman governor?
Abrams has toured the country speaking about racialized voter suppression in Georgia. People became alerted that most Republican controlled states were attempting the same thing. Previously the worst offenders had been restricted by the Voter Rights Act because of their histories of racial discrimination and voting suppression.
The many new voter suppression strategies have much in common with those used historically. Abrams and other lawyers are using discrimination suits to fight and to illuminate the patterns of voter suppression.
Another way we can learn from Abrams is her grass roots organizing. Abrams says that when politics becomes about the personality or charisma of a candidate, when they lose, all can be lost. She wants to keep the focus on people’s needs, and the goals and strategies that will bring about many more victories in the long haul.
Her strategies and efforts were key in flipping Georgia for Biden in 2020, and for victory in both Senate seats that kept the Senate blue in 2022.
Instead of reliance on campaign ads, Abrams has relied upon canvassing and forming neighbor teams that build bonds that can transfer from one season to the next. Abrams identifies all the small groups working on related issues and develops a plan for them all to increase their scale by working in coalition.
Instead of narrowly focusing on voter registration, her organizations do voter education to help neighborhoods develop motivation and strategies to overcome all the obstructions presented to keep Black people from voting or keep their votes from being counted.
Learning about Abrams reminded me of my preparation for my “Black Resilience” sermon. Keeping the vision on the horizon, the long haul is part of it. I was reminded of what King called the Drum Major for Justice. Black people, especially leaders, have had to live with the reality of beatings and loss, and to survive had to learn to keep on no matter. I see or imagine in Abrams the spirit that keeps resistance alive. It’s like we might lose today, but if we don’t speak up, resist, and organize, its only going to get worse. Abrams like so many before her has her eyes, not on personal achievement, but something far greater.
Rather than idealize Stacy Abrams, it’s that something greater I hope we aim for, too. But do watch her. Learn from her, from Georgia and from all the people who understand that voting is the foundation upon which all other rights are built. Study the suffragist. And as a people, let’s learn how to keep representative governance alive, democracy alive. Power to the people. Alive!
Life alive, to life. To life Amen.
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