“Because I learned long ago that winning doesn’t always mean you get the prize. Sometimes you get progress, and that counts.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Logic is a seductive excuse for setting low expectations.”
― Stacey Abrams
“From the moment I enter a room, I am clear about how I intend to be treated and how I intend to engage. I do not tell self-deprecating jokes about my race or gender, though I will do so about my personal idiosyncrasies. I can be charmingly humble or playfully self-effacing without pandering to stereotypes in order to make others comfortable. For example, my attire, my hairstyle, even my presentation style, reflect me rather than aping the behavior of others. I know that when I offer criticism of men in the workplace, I may be seen as a man-hater. I know because I am not married, I may be seen as a lesbian. I know because I will never be less than curvaceous and wear my hair natural”
― Stacey Abrams
“Voting is a constitutional right in the United States, a right that has been reiterated three separate times via constitutional amendment.”
― Stacey Abrams
“What’s not right is giving credence to bad actions, and thereby becoming complicit.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Never tell yourself no. Let someone else do it.”
― Stacey Abrams
“It’s frustrating to realize we’re taught to be humble in a way that men are not.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Full citizenship rights are the bare minimum one should expect from the government. Yet, for two-thirds of our history, full citizenship was denied to those who built this country from theory to life. African slaves and Chinese workers and Native American environmentalists and Latino gauchos and Irish farmers—and half the population: women. Over the course of our history, these men and women, these patriots and defenders of liberty, have been denied the most profound currency of citizenship: power. Because, let’s be honest, that is the core of this fight. The right to be seen, the right to be heard, the right to direct the course of history are markers of power. In the United States, democracy makes politics one of the key levers to exercising power. So, it should shock none of us that the struggle for dominion over our nation’s future and who will participate is simply a battle for American power.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Being a token is real, and sometimes the urge to take a backseat so we don’t have to be “the one” is tempting. But denying fear of disappointing everyone to avoid responsibility for everyone doesn’t do anyone any good either.”
― Stacey Abrams
“We are strongest when we see the most vulnerable in our society, bear witness to their struggles, and then work to create systems to make it better”
― Stacey Abrams
“Voting rights are the most basic tenet of our democracy, and the bare minimum one should expect from the government.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Yet, from limiting original voting rights to white men, to the elitist and racist origins of the Electoral College, American democracy has always left people out of participation, by design.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Logic is a seductive excuse for setting low expectations. Its cool, rational precision urges you to believe that it makes sense to limit yourself. And when your goal means you’ll be the first, or one of the few, as I desired, logic tells you that if it were possible, someone else would have done it by now.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Single-strand identities do not exist in a household, let alone in a nation. When America is at its best, we acknowledge the complexity of our societies and the complicating reality of how we experience this country—and its obstacles. Yet we never lose sight of the fact that we all want the same thing. We want education. We want economic security. We want health care. Identity politics pushes leaders to understand that because of race, class, gender, sexual orientation/gender identity, and national origin, people confront obstacles that stem from these identities. Successful leaders who wish to engage the broadest coalition of voters have to demonstrate that they understand that the barriers are not uniform and, moreover, that they have plans to tackle these impediments. The greatest politicians display both of these capacities, and they never forget that the destination—regardless of identity—is the same: safety, security, and opportunity.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Defeating fear of otherness means knowing who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish and leveraging that otherness to our benefit. Knowing I’d never be invited into smoke-filled rooms or to the golf course, I instead requested individual meetings with political colleagues where I asked questions and learned about their interests, creating a similar sense of camaraderie. In business, I take full advantage of opportunities afforded to minorities but then always offer to share my learning with other groups that have similar needs—expanding the circle rather than closing myself off. Like most who are underestimated, I have learned to over-perform and find soft but key ways to take credit. Because, ultimately, leadership and power require the confidence to effectively wield both.”
― Stacey Abrams
“I confronted the expected stereotypes by knowing what they were and building an alternate narrative about myself.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Our priorities should ideally engage heart and head.”
― Stacey Abrams
“The best allies own their privilege not as a badge of honor but as a reminder to be constantly listening and learning to become better at offering support to others.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Because I suddenly saw opportunity where I had never been brave enough to look before, and I found that failure wasn’t fatal, that otherness held an extraordinary power for clarity and invention.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Voter suppression works its might by first tripping and causing to stumble the unwanted voter, then by convincing those who see the obstacle course to forfeit the race without even starting to run.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Arguments continue over what constitutes true “identity politics” as a philosophical construct, a public policy imperative, or a flawed means of picking candidates based solely on external characteristics rather than the candidate’s own merit. Rather than engaging in a false choice, I opt to short-circuit the debate with a more simplistic view: identity is real and necessary and intertwined in our politics in such a way that there is no going back.”
― Stacey Abrams
“To put the gap in stark racial terms, in America in 2013, the average wealth per household was $81,000. But averages have highs and lows. When you disaggregate the numbers, white families average $142,000 in wealth, Latinos come in at $13,700, and black families bring up the rear at $11,000.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Victory must begin to mean more than winning a single election. Our obligation, in Georgia and across the nation, is to seize the high road by changing how we campaign and to whom. Demography is not destiny; it’s opportunity. We have to expand our vision of who belongs in the big tent of progress, invest in their inclusion, and talk to them about what’s at stake.”
― Stacey Abrams
“I revered the civil rights movement and appreciated the laws that granted us the right to ride buses, to sit at lunch counters, to cast ballots. But the slowness of real change fueled the riots’ intensity, from coast to coast. Decades later, inequality still ravaged poor and black communities. Then toss in the continued international struggle to end apartheid, the skyrocketing incarceration rates that scooped up too many of black folks’ cousins, and a youth poverty rate that defied the wealth of the era. I knew the truth behind their rage.”
― Stacey Abrams
“At its most complex, ambition should be an animation of soul. Not simply a job, but a disquiet that requires you to take action.”
― Stacey Abrams
“and over the centuries, we clawed out access to the ballot for people of color through the Fifteenth Amendment, women in the Nineteenth Amendment, and young voters in the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. But each of those amendments contained a loophole for suppression: leaving implementation to the states, particularly the ones most hostile to inclusion.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Race and sexual orientation shared common threats, but not identical ones, and when she stood too firmly on one side, she stood accused of ignoring the other. I watched with admiration as Simone came to the conclusion that the”
― Stacey Abrams
“Identity politics forces those who ask for our support to do their jobs: To understand that the self-made man got zoned into a good school district and received a high-quality education, one that wouldn’t have existed if his zip code changed by a digit. To recognize that the woman on welfare with three kids is the product of divorce in a state where she risks losing food stamps if her low-wage job pays her too much. Or that the homeless junkie is an Iraq War veteran who was in the National Guard but lost his job due to multiple deployments and didn’t qualify for full VA care. And that the laborer is a migrant farmworker who overstayed his visa to care for his American-born children. Single-strand identities do not exist in a household, let alone in a nation.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Voter suppression no longer announces itself with a document clearly labeled LITERACY TEST or POLL TAX. Instead, the attacks on voting rights feel like user error—and that’s intentional. When the system fails us, we can rail and try to force change. But if the problem is individual, we are trained to hide our mistakes and ignore the concerns. The fight to defend the right to vote begins with understanding where we’ve been and knowing where we are now.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Moreover, because only Maine and Vermont allow the incarcerated to vote, prisoners in every other state have no political voice. To put a finer point on it, America’s mass incarceration has led to thousands of black and Latino bodies from Democratic-leaning areas being counted in rural white communities that are typically Republican, where most of the penal facilities are located.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Full citizenship rights are the bare minimum one should expect from the government. Yet, for two-thirds of our history, full citizenship was denied to those who built this country from theory to life. African slaves and Chinese workers and Native American environmentalists and Latino gauchos and Irish farmers—and half the population: women.”
― Stacey Abrams
“We are, by our natures, often required to manufacture our own breaks, identify new openings even before others know they exist. The best hack is to know this is the case, accept it, and move on, prepared to take full advantage. And then do it all over again.”
― Stacey Abrams
“The Stanford research also showed that had unlisted voters participated at the comparable rates to their registered peers, these voters would have handed the 2000 and 2004 elections to the Democratic presidential nominees. Not to mention the outcome in 2016. Democrats do themselves and the progressive cause a major disservice by trading efficacy for efficiency—by skipping over entire troves of potential voters, we unilaterally block ourselves from victories. Republicans are losing the demographic game, so instead they are rigging the system. But Democrats are forfeiting elections by refusing to reach out to all of the voters who could even the score or tip the balance.”
― Stacey Abrams
“My non-concession speech on November 16, 2018, served as a declaration of intent. We have been taught to expect concessions not only to the outcome of an electoral contest but to the system that undergirds it.”
― Stacey Abrams
“The voting system is not just political; it is economic and social and educational. It is omnipresent and omniscient. And it is fallible. Yet, when a structure is broken, we are fools if we simply ignore the defect in favor of pretending that our democracy isn’t cracking at the seams. Our obligation is to understand where the problem is, find a solution, and make the broken whole again.”
― Stacey Abrams
“However logical the argument may sound, though, the reality is that as those outside the norms of politics rise, so too do various rationales for their level of success or defeat. Candidates do not win or lose because they express concern or solidarity for otherness. They win or lose because they ignore it or because some voters are afraid of it. But in the midst of demographic upheaval, the rise of voter suppression and the denouncement of identity politics by the marginalized share common cause. Voter suppression serves to block access for those who are not considered full citizens because of race and status. And rejecting identity politics tells the same groups that their difference not only doesn’t matter, it is harmful to their progress.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Saving democracy is not an overblown call to action—we are in trouble. The changing demography of America speaks to more than whether Democrats or Republicans control political decisions. Young people will be financially responsible for the largest population of elderly Americans in our history, but without the resources necessary to provide for them. The increased frequency of extreme climate events costs billions of dollars that will not be spent on education or infrastructure. The past fifty years of public policy toward communities of color have consequences. For decades, black and brown children have had higher dropout rates, higher incarceration rates, and lower earning power. This very same population continues to grow in size and political might, but America has largely abandoned our tradition of civic education to help guide their decisions. And international crises will demand American attention, but without a cogent and consensus-driven electorate, we will likely be paralyzed by inaction or stupid decision making. We”
― Stacey Abrams
“The United States must no longer be a patchwork of good, bad, and worst states for voters, a degradation of democracy based on state lines and zip codes. Being an eligible citizen should be sufficient for full participation,”
― Stacey Abrams
“THE MECHANISMS OF voter suppression have transformed access to democracy in ways that continue to reshape not only our partisan politics but the way we live our daily lives. In 2020, a poor woman in South Georgia, miles away from a doctor or a hospital, may discover her pregnancy too late to make a choice. If she makes more than $6,000 per year, she is too rich to qualify for Medicaid and too impoverished to afford anything else because the governor refuses to expand the program.1 If she is black in Georgia, she is three times more likely to die of complications during or after her pregnancy than a white woman in the same position.”
― Stacey Abrams
“We are strongest when we see the most vulnerable in our society, bear witness to their struggles, and then work to create systems to make it better.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Because I learned long ago that winning doesn’t always mean you get the prize. Sometimes you get progress, and that counts. This lesson has been drummed into me for most of my waking life. When it comes to voting in America, I certainly believe.”
― Stacey Abrams
“I am not calling for violent revolt here. We’ve done that twice in our nation’s history—to claim our freedom from tyranny and when we fought a civil war to recognize (at least a little) the humanity of blacks held in bondage. Yet, as millions are stripped of their rights, we live out the policy consequences, from lethal pollution running through poor communities to kindergartners practicing active shooter drills taught with nursery rhymes. I question what remedy remains. The questions that confront me every day are how to defend this sacred right and our democracy, and who will do so.”
― Stacey Abrams
“The right to be seen, the right to be heard, the right to direct the course of history are markers of power.”
― Stacey Abrams
“For those who cling to the days of monochromatic American identity, the sweep of change strikes a fundamental fear of not being a part of an America that is multicultural and multicolored. In their minds, the way of life that has sustained them faces an existential crisis, and the response has been vicious, calculated, and effective.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Today, the ones barring access have shifted from using billy clubs and hoses to using convoluted rules to make it harder to register and stay on the rolls, cast a ballot, or have that ballot counted. To move forward, we must understand the extent to which the shrinking conservative minority will go to create barriers to democracy.”
― Stacey Abrams
“No, [I’m not an optimist]. I am an ameliorist, which is something I made up. I believe that the glass is half full. It’s just probably poisoned. And so my job is always to be on the hunt for the antidote.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Choices are based on personal needs—end of story.”
― Stacey Abrams
“The practical reality is that where you live determines your ability to marry, buy a house, get an abortion, or start a business, and creating equality in these areas has usually required federal action to guarantee basic rights. Thus, by recognizing and harnessing the power of nonfederal offices, those who long for a more homogenous, segregated bygone era have grown stronger and more resilient.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Finding the truth requires three simple questions, she explained, and they must be answered in any investigation: (1) What is the problem? (2) Why is it a problem? (3) How do you solve it?”
― Stacey Abrams
“No one born into the minority has the luxury of giving up, even if we do not win enough of the time.”
― Stacey Abrams
“You cannot have those things you refuse to dream of.”
― Stacey Abrams
“Voters will never agree with everything you say, but they get excited to know that a politician is willing to tell them the truth. They want to trust that a candidate won’t suppress their values to try to appeal to a specific group. A voter wants to know that the one in whom they invest their time and trust is an authentic candidate who stands on the values that they hold.”
― Stacey Abrams