If there’s one piece of advice Stacey Abrams has for those looking to enter politics, it’s this: “Politics should be a tool for your policy. Policy should never be a tool for your politics.”
The author, activist, entrepreneur, and political leader spoke to an online audience of over 3,800 on March 18 as part of the 2021 Distinguished Speaker Series at Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. “The minute we start making choices so we can win elections instead of winning elections so we can make better choices,” she said, “you have fallen far afield from what should be driving you.”
Abrams should know. For 11 years, including seven as Minority Leader, she served in the Georgia House of Representatives. In 2018, she was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia, making her the first Black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in the United States.
Over the course of her career, she founded multiple organizations devoted to voting rights, training and hiring young people of color, and tackling social issues at both the state and national levels. The author of nine books, she is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the 2012 recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award, and a current member of the Board of Directors for the Center for American Progress. According to Forbes, which ranked the Nobel Peace Prize nominee among the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women, “few people were more powerful in 2020 than Stacey Abrams.”
Abrams discussed several aspects of her political career, including strategies for improving community outreach and increasing voter engagement. Below are takeaways from her conversation with Alan D. Solomont, A70, A08P, Dean of Tisch College of Civic Life. Watch it here.
Serve people, not parties.
“When I served in the legislature, it was always front and center that my responsibility was to serve people,” Abrams said. “It was not my job to make sure I only passed democratic bills to serve people. My job was to get good done and to stop stupid and, even more importantly, to stop mean and evil and wrong.”
The most effective way to do that, Abrams learned, was to work with the other side. “I sometimes adopted their ideas, and I helped them get their bills through,” she said. “We have come to this place in our politics where everything from the other side must be inherently wrong. And that’s just not true. There is a whole universe of what we can do together.”
A pragmatist and entrepreneur at heart, Abrams also recognizes the foundational need for money to produce results, which is why she welcomes the return of congressional earmarking. “Money makes you compromise. When you have to work together to deliver resources, you are much less likely to respond through demagoguery.”
Meet people where they are.
The child of Methodist ministers and activists, Abrams developed from an early age a strong sense of communal obligation. “I grew up in a family that was very committed to social justice. My parents would take us with them to protest. They would take us with them to vote, but they also took us with them to volunteer. We worked at soup kitchens and homeless shelters. We would go to juvenile justice facilities. We spent time in housing projects, teaching young people to read because the school system was not doing its job.”
Seeing “the places and the spaces where things had just broken and fallen apart” led Abrams to ask the fundamental question behind all her efforts: How do we make government work better?
“I do not recall a single politician ever knocking on my parents’ door because we lived in a neighborhood and in a community where we weren’t expected to be part of the political space. If no one asks you to participate, if you come from communities that have been so often distanced—not just from the reality of campaigning and voting, but from receiving the benefits of engagement—you don’t participate. For me, it was about building one narrative that actually spoke to people where they were.”
Abrams credits her upbringing and her parents’ grassroots activism with informing her own approach to organizational leadership. “I read a lot of theological texts about how you grow a church, and I thought, ‘I’m going to grow the church of progress, and we’re going to do the work to get people to be engaged.’” As leader of the Georgia Project and Fair Fight, organizations committed to increasing voter registration and fighting voter suppression respectively, Abrams recruited young people to go into the community and build operations while also training them to run campaigns and think critically about policy.
Adopt a franchise model for organizing.
When asked how her work in Georgia could be scaled up to the national level, Abrams pushed back on the idea. “I think about it instead as a franchise model,” she said. “Scale is trying to build the largest entity possible. Franchising is taking the core of it and replicating it, but making it adapt to where you situate it. Unfortunately, in our country democracy differs based on where you live. The rules are different. Access is different. The needs are different. The responsible thing to do is to look at the states that have the opportunity to change engagement and to scale that investment.” Abrams identified three specific strategies for doing so:
Create an organizing universe. “In Georgia, that meant LGBTQIA, communities of color, communities serving the poor, labor, environmental groups—it was bringing all of those groups together and creating an ecosystem, not where we agreed on everything, but where we all agreed that we needed more people in the process and more people who had stake in what we did. That can be replicated in other places.”
Localize the work. While presidential elections turn out the highest number of voters, local elections produce a greater return on investment for most people, Abrams said. “It’s about making sure that the zoning decisions made by your county allow for affordable housing. And making sure your state legislature is not operating to strip you of the most basic and fundamental of rights. What I would say is take the organizing model, but also make sure you understand the needs of your people and localize that work.”
Don’t expect results overnight. “Know that it’s going take time. If you promise instant results and you cannot deliver, people start to disbelieve you. I always under-promised—and sometimes I barely delivered—but I was always very clear about what we could or could not do.”
Motivate and mobilize young voters.
Noting that Georgia had the largest share of 18- to 29-year-old voters of any state in the country during the 2020 presidential election, Solomont asked Abrams about her strategies for engaging young voters. In addition to meeting young people where they are, she offered these tips:
Invest in party infrastructure. “Sometimes we eschew the idea of political parties and that apparatus, but it’s an amazing organizing model,” she said. “I made certain that we were part of building an aggressive state party that was very much able to lead the charge through the organizing core that happens through the Democratic National Committee.”
Hire young people in legislative and political spaces. “Over the course of my seven years as Democratic Leader in the Georgia House of Representatives, we had more than 400 interns. We trained them on public policy during session, and we trained them on politics when we were out of session. And that created a whole cadre of operatives who could work within their communities to help other young people learn about politics and do the work.”
Reach across young people. Abrams emphasized the importance of investing on college campuses and allowing young people to shape their own communication tools. She explained, “We put money into young people’s hands and said, ‘Tell us what you need. Tell us how you would do this.’” But she cautioned that political leaders must reach out to young people in all circumstances. “Not every young person is going to college. Not every young person is employed. There are some people who simply want to find a way to belong.” For Abrams, that has meant anything from attending music festivals and pop culture conventions like Dragon Con to communicating through streaming services like Spotify and Pandora.
Abrams also acknowledged the profound impact that the COVID-19 pandemic, economic hardship, healthcare disparities, and racial injustice had on voter turnout in 2020. “The ability to connect the dots between voter engagement and actual change had never been more real and more salient,” she said. “Like any other community, people vote when they know that voting can change their lives, and young people in the starkest reality saw what that meant and understood that that was true.”
But young people were not the only group to vote in record numbers in Georgia and many other states this election year. Solomont noted that women of color were crucial to Democrats’ success in Georgia, where exit polls show 91% of Black women voted for Biden. “Almost every societal ill, every social malignancy, every political consequence hits Black women, hits Black communities, hits communities of color,” Abrams explained. “We are often the receptacles of the trash of bad policy. We are the victims of bad decision-making and, worse, of intentional decision-making that dehumanizes and discounts our role and our responsibilities and our right to active engagement.”
The key to building solidarity among communities, said Abrams, is empathy. “What I’ve seen happen with communities of color and with women of color, in particular, is that there is always a sense of ‘How can I lift myself and others? How can I share my benefit?’” Following the deadly Atlanta spa shootings in which six victims were Asian-American women, she noted, “it was not simply Asian-American women standing by themselves. Black women, Brown women, Indigenous women—we all stood up and said, ‘Yes, we have to lift these women up. We have to center their story.’”
Perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from Abrams is to never give up. Politics, she reminds us, is not an episodic instrument available only to elected officials. “When I did not become governor, we did not stop,” she said. “We have seen progress. It has been slow. It has been plodding. It has not been sustained. But it has happened. We are responsible for the next generation in a biological [way], but also in a cultural way. That means that we don’t have the luxury of just abandoning ship. We’ve got to keep going because we see the shore and we believe that there is space for us when we get there.”
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
