From xxxxxx <[email protected]>
Subject Grassroots Voices: How We Won Georgia
Date October 4, 2022 12:05 AM
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[Georgia was the epicenter of the struggle for political power in
2020 and is again a central player in 2022, with races for governor
and U.S. Senate up for grabs. Here are the perspectives of four
leaders in the organizing efforts that won Georgia. ]
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GRASSROOTS VOICES: HOW WE WON GEORGIA  
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Linda Burnham
October 3, 2022
xxxxxx
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_ Georgia was the epicenter of the struggle for political power in
2020 and is again a central player in 2022, with races for governor
and U.S. Senate up for grabs. Here are the perspectives of four
leaders in the organizing efforts that won Georgia. _

,

 

_This article is excerpted from an interview conducted by Linda
Burnham with four activists in the organizing that won Georgia in the
Presidential election of 2020 and two crucial U.S. Senate seats in a
Jan. 5, 2021, runoff. The interviewees are Cliff Albright (Black
Voters Matter), Adelina Nicholls (Georgia Latino Alliance for Human
Rights), Beth Howard (Showing Up for Racial Justice) and Nsé Ufot
(New Georgia Project). The interview is the opening chapter in the
book __POWER CONCEDES NOTHING: HOW GRASSROOTS ORGANIZING WINS
ELECTIONS [[link removed]],__
edited by Linda Burnham, Max Elbaum, and María Poblet. -- moderator]_

NSÉ UFOT: We are actually a constellation of organizations. New
Georgia Project, is a 501(c)(3). New Georgia Project Action Fund is
our 501(c)(4) and advocacy arm. New South Super PAC works in the
600-plus counties that make up America's Black Belt from East Texas
all the way to D.C. There are tons of counties across that swath that
are majority Black and have never had a Black elected official, never
had a Black mayor, never had a Black or Latino person serve on school
board or city council. The way that we change America is by changing
the South and supporting elected officials who come from the
communities that we care about. 

People probably know us best for registering nearly 600,000 Black and
Brown folks to vote in all 159 of Georgia's counties

People probably know us best for registering nearly 600,000 Black and
Brown folks to vote in all 159 of Georgia's counties. So there isn't a
place in Georgia where the New Georgia Project hasn’t organized,
even in the parts of the state that people call Deliverance Country. 

Georgia is changing really rapidly. Black and Brown people are going
to make up the majority of Georgians and there's this racial voter
registration gap. There are 1.2 million African Americans, Latinos,
Asian Americans and unmarried white women in the state who are
eligible to vote, but they're completely unregistered. 

CLIFF ALBRIGHT: In 2020 we were trying to expand and go deeper on the
work we’d been doing in Georgia for the past three years. We started
in one county in Georgia in 2016. Our first county was Sumter County.
There was one legislative seat that we were trying to impact. The
first $1,000 we raised went into doing some GOTV on election day. Lo
and behold, that seat flipped. It was a Republican-controlled seat in
a county that is largely Black. Since then, we’ve been expanding
county by county, mainly in rural areas, connecting with organizations
in places no one could find on the Georgia map. 

We connect with folks who are already there, already doing the work.
That might be a church group, it might be an NAACP chapter, it might
be a youth arts & culture organization. It might be a group that’s
not even a formal group. The group of mamas on the corner who, when
they need to round up the community, they get it done. Then sometimes
people reach out to us. Either way, it’s about that connection with
local groups, the existing infrastructure, and then seeing what we can
do together. 

“SOMETHING DIOFFERENT FROM TRADITIONAL ELECTORAL POLITICS”

ADELINA NICHOLLS:  In 2020… we started first with civic engagement,
get-out-the-vote, informing about the [election] dates and
candidates.  We organized, in collaboration with SONG and Mijente,
community forums and candidate forums. Our initial approach was to
target two counties: Cobb and Gwinnett counties. Both counties had
287(g) programs [agreements between the Department of Homeland
Security and local law enforcement] with devastating consequences in
the Latino or undocumented community.  We canvassed around 140,000
doors in both counties reaching Latinx and also communities of color,
explaining what 287(g) was, and that we need the support to kick out
those sheriffs.

At the end of the day, in both counties we were able to kick out both
sheriffs, putting in place for the first time in the history of those
counties, two Black sheriffs. Of course, one of the things they did
was deliver the end of 287(g). 

For more than twenty years we have built this network called _comites
populares_ (people’s committees) around the state–a network where
more than 19 groups in the state of Georgia have helped us to
mobilize, getting out the Latinx vote, in particular in rural
communities that nobody cared about. We started to have these young
voters—18, 19, 20, 25—who, for the first time, wanted to be
involved. With the general elections we canvassed more than 330,000
doors statewide, reaching every single Latinx door in the state.  

We wanted to do something a little different from traditional
electoral politics, which tells us we only need to reach those who are
able to vote. We thought “No way!” Many [in our community] do not
vote. So, we continued trying to motivate and create this movement
among the Latino community. 

BETH HOWARD: We are trying to build large-scale base-building work
centered in grassroots organizing. We're layering base-building with
electoral work through SURJ Action. As white anti-racist folks, being
in these communities that we've often overlooked, we have really seen
the vacuum that's left. The right has invested so much money in making
sure that poor and working-class white people will choose the side of
the oppressor. And so we're trying to build this base. We do that by
creating the kind of welcoming space that is centered in working-class
community. 

For the runoff election, I was with part of our field team in rural
north Georgia. There's really no progressive infrastructure there, or
if there is, it's pretty small. We had a robust phone-banking program
in the general election that we continued into the runoffs. Between
the general and the runoff, we made 1.8 million calls into Georgia to
do persuasion, turnout, and deep listening.

A lot of what I helped strategize around was our rural canvassing. We
were knocking on doors that are largely ignored by the Democrats. We
really wanted to educate our canvassers and our members, preparing us
to go out and be in our culture, love on people, see them in their
dignity and embrace the culture as opposed to it being something that
is wrong or something we need to change. That's a challenge, and it's
so rewarding. Time after time we would hear people [say], “I cannot
believe you came out here! No one comes out here to talk.” 

“HIGH QUALITY, FACE-TO-FACE CONVERSATIONS”

NSÉ UFOT: Our most sophisticated, most effective tactic is
high-quality face-to-face conversations. We go door to door, we have
in-person meetings in church basements and in housing projects and
college campuses all over the state of Georgia. And quarantine didn't
allow us to do that. And so we had to get creative. How do we recreate
those high quality conversations in a technologically mediated
environment? A huge challenge, and I don't think that we’ve figured
it out yet. 

One of the things that we were really proud of is that all of our
meetings had always had food, always had music, always had childcare.
We couldn't meet in person, but we would send people Uber Eats and
DoorDash if we needed people to meet with us virtually. Fifteen
minutes before we began, we'd make sure that there was food delivery
at your house to try to recreate the experience we had if people were
coming to meet us at the office. We kept our phone banks and text
banks alive. But instead of texting people and asking if they
registered to vote or reminding them about the upcoming election, we
would ask them how they were doing and if they knew where to go to get
help, if they needed it. So we were keeping our list warm, but we led
with our humanity. 

“THE SOUTHEAST HAS BEEN NEGLECTED”

ADELINA NICHOLLS: For many years, in particular with us here in the
Latino community, the Southeast of the United States has not been
funded; organizations like ours that didn’t have participation in
electoral politics. We saw the attention going just to the electoral
part, diminishing the importance of grassroots organizing. 

I did hear many years ago that the coalition between Black and Brown
was “Mission Impossible.” I don’t think so.

I did hear many years ago that the coalition between Black and Brown
was “Mission Impossible.” I don’t think so. I think the new
generations of Latinos, but also the Black communities, have opened
up. I do believe we have shown, in terms of last year, that this is
possible. Communities of color made the impossible possible. 

CLIFF ALBRIGHT: The power of culture in our work is something we knew
was important prior to 2020. In 2020, it went to a whole different
level. We were able to use music and culture and faith and food, and
traditions. One of the most powerful activities that we did was, we
were giving out food boxes during the holiday season, which included
fresh produce, fresh vegetables grown largely by Black farmers in the
area. December 31 was the last day of early voting. Well, what are
people thinking about on New Year’s Eve? They’re thinking about
New Year’s Day, which in our community is a tradition around cooking
collard greens and black-eyed peas. Folks are getting ready for New
Year’s Day. Why don’t we help them by giving out fresh collards
and black-eyed peas and why not throw in a few boxes of cornbread. But
we’re going to do it at locations that are across the street from
the early vote polling place. As people are going through getting
their box of goodies for their New Year’s meal, we’re like “Hey,
by the way, today’s the last day of early voting. How about you go
across the street and go vote.”  And we did this in 30 counties
simultaneously in one day. We believe this is part of the reason the
Georgia legislature made sure to forbid giving out food and water to
people as they were waiting in line. That didn’t just come out of no
place.

Another lesson, there was a lot of attention being paid to Georgia,
and a lot of our groups got more money than we get in a typical
election year. Money is not the end all and be all. But [for our]
groups, having some extra cash matters! 

All of that—the importance of investment, the importance of unity,
the importance of using culture to turn out voters, and the importance
of focusing on the issues, not on personalities—all of that is part
of the secret sauce. 

TOWARD 2022 AND 2024: “PLAYING FOR KEEPS”

NSÉ UFOT: Cconservative Republicans are playing for keeps. The
violence that we are seeing in this moment by white bad actors is
being underreported. I'm really proud of all that we have been able to
accomplish. People don't recognize how remarkable it is because they
don't appreciate the violence that we are routinely subject to in
trying to do this work. And I'm talking about state violence that
includes press conferences where they put my photo up and call me a
criminal and accuse us of participating in voter registration fraud.
Georgia's anti-voting bill created five new voting crimes, and two of
them are felonies.

We love ourselves, we love our families, we love our communities.
That's a renewable resource.

What I need people to know is that what we are building is super
innovative. It's designed to meet the threat of the moment. The level
of sophistication of these white supremacists and their campaigns has
increased. The response from movement and justice organizations has to
meet that sophistication with its own sophistication. That's why we
build video games. That's why we focus on misinformation and
disinformation and how it's poisoning the information wells and social
media. 

We love ourselves, we love our families, we love our communities.
That's a renewable resource and that's what we use to power our
campaigns. As awful as things are, as angry as we get, as hypocritical
as our government is, the thing that keeps us going back to work is
that we do this work in community. You've seen people go to the ends
of the earth for their loved ones. And that is what we're willing to
do for Black families in Georgia. 

* Georgia
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* voter registration
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* Grassroots Organizing
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* elections
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