On flipping states toward democracy

 

The corporate campaign to push back against Republican voter suppression legislation is on in Georgia. This billboard targeting one of Atlanta's biggest businesses was paid for by the New Georgia Project which is leading the resistance to GOPer efforts to crush democracy when they don't like the results of people voting. The sort of ant-democratic voting rules they are pushing are only a little less violent than the 1/6 assault on the Capitol. I mean, outlawing giving out water to people waiting in long lines to vote? 

In a recent interview with the Times' Kara Swisher, Georgia voting rights leader Stacey Abrams explained the strategic insight which led to the creation of the New Georgia Project. All of us concerned with organizing ourselves for more effective progressive politics can learn from her.

I am part of a coalition of organizations. I would say I had a bit of a lead in the process in that I helped to secure tens of millions of dollars for the state of Georgia. I have been a clarion demanding attention for the state for about a decade. I helped build infrastructure and invest in organizations. I mean, one thing that Lauren [Groh-Wargo, Abrams' political director/side-kick] and I are always very intentional about is when we raise money, we share our resources. So when we did the New Georgia Project back in 2014, we took a quarter of a million dollars and made sure we gave it to other organizations that weren’t going to have access to the resources we did. 

In 2020 and 2021, we shelled out more than $25 million to other organizations. And so my posture is that, yes, I had a leadership role in this, and in a lot of ways became sort of the avatar for what happened. But what I always want people to remember is that it took a coalition of organizations more than a decade to get us here.

Swisher: So what did you learn from Georgia 2020 that you think would help turn states blue? How do you scale? 

Abrams: There’s scaling, and then there’s replication. Sometimes you scale an organization so that the organization just expands its service map. 

And sometimes you replicate it in the franchise system. And instead, you say here are the benchmarks, here are the metrics, and here are the resources you need, but then you allow each franchisee to adapt to where they are. Changing a state is a franchise model. It’s not a scaling model. 

And our responsibility, my responsibility is to make certain that any franchisee of democracy, plus any franchisees of Democratic transformation, big D, that they have the building blocks they need as a franchise would. But my intention is not the scaling notion. That is, I should not be making the decisions —

She's talking about creating and aiding organizations that are rooted in their places and can, with investment of sweat and money, turn their places in a progressive direction.

Abrams: ... you got to figure out what your opportunities are where you are. Then the building blocks are the same. The building blocks are, you’ve got to build political power within your actual party. Your party has to be effective. You have to understand what the party is and what the party isn’t. You have to have political leaders that are willing to take risks and work with other political leaders, not worrying about who gets the credit. 

You’ve got to raise absurd amounts of money, but that money can be raised. And part of the conversation we’re having is with donors that they need to invest in places and understand that investment cannot be a one-off, and they cannot only show up during elections. 

You’ve got to work with the grassroots organizations and recognize that they don’t have to have the exact same methodology that you have. But they have to have a combined ethos and an intentionality of working together. And then you have to wash, rinse, repeat, and evaluate what you did that worked and what you did that didn’t work and whose fault it was.

She has proved she knows whereof she speaks.