Black leaders excited about success in Georgia
What started as a day of celebration for Black organizers, voters and other Georgians who helped deliver two historic Senate runoff victories was overshadowed Wednesday when a mostly white mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.
But Black leaders and organizers say the rioters’ insurrection won’t deter the momentum achieved after the hard-fought victories of Georgia Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. Instead, it serves as a harsh reminder of the work that lies ahead for the nation to truly grapple with white supremacy and racism, which Trump’s presidency emboldened.
“It’s a little bit bittersweet because on one hand it feels like vindication that if we invest in our communities and our organizations, then amazing things can happen,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, which estimates that it reached 2.8 million individuals in Georgia through text and phone banking campaigns, digital and social media advertising, door knocking and street outreach, and billboards.
“But then you come around the next day and people are literally swarming the Capitol in the name of overturning an election and trying to take away the power of Black voters,” Albright said. “So while it’s a victory that’s worth celebrating ... it’s still in this wider context of what our larger struggles are and we’ve got a long way to go.”
Despite the challenges ahead, there’s hope that the Georgia victories could serve as a blueprint to transform the Southern political landscape, which has been a Republican stronghold for decades.
“The beauty of what happened in Georgia is that by knocking on people’s doors, by sitting on people’s front porches, by putting money and energy into really hearing people and giving them a voice in their community, it has awakened a generation of folks who never would have thought that this was possible and that’s empowering and it’s contagious,” said Nadia Brown, a Purdue University political science professor. “And it doesn’t stop at the borders of Georgia. It’s going to spill over.”
Britney Whaley, a political strategist for the Working Families Party, said keeping up this level of voter engagement among Black Georgians and Black voters in general requires a commitment to them be
yond these nationally important elections.
“Sure, Black people saved the day,” Whaley said. “My question then becomes: What next? What have you learned? How do you thank them? It is not in lip service. It’s in policy. It’s in changing material conditions for people who are in need.”
T he political v ision of f lipping Georgia blue rested largely with grassroots organizations that knocked on doors and traveled from city cores to more rural areas to directly interface with Black voters who have long felt ignored by both political parties.
The Rev. Barrett Berry, who directed a bus tour organized by the Black Church PAC, a national group of prominent Black
clergy, said the large Black turnout in the runoff was due to a growing understanding among organizers that winning required being “competitive in places outside of Fulton County,” which is home to Atlanta.
Berry’s bus crisscrossed the state with several organizing partners, making stops in Albany, Valdosta and Savannah. He and other pastors distributed hot meals, groceries and toys for hundreds of families struggling to make Christmas cheer happen amid the pandemic. The gifts and food came with voter education, Berry said.
The voters needed to know they had a voice and could make the change that they had been told they couldn’t make, he said.