Stacey Abrams, welcome to The Daily Social Distancing Show.
(chuckles) Thank you for having me, or not.
Yeah. That's... that's a great way to put it.
Having you, and not, at the same time.
Um, we're living through a very strange time where, you know,
it felt like coronavirus was the biggest issue
affecting America, and very quickly we've come to realize
that there is a much longer-standing issue
that America has had,
that people are now standing up against
and fighting about in the streets, and that's,
you know, racial disparity, police, um, brutality,
um, the lack of justice for black people in this country,
for brown people, who are oftentimes oppressed.
You have lived that life in more ways than one, you know?
As a black woman and as someone who's been in politics,
you've experienced America in a very unique way.
How do you feel
about what America is going through right now?
I think that we do ourselves a disservice
if we actually separate these moments from one another.
What has happened with COVID-19 is that it exposed the fractures
and the inequities in our health care system,
and the expectations we have, where essential workers
essentially were the people we weren't protecting,
but we demanded their obeisance to our needs anyway.
And then what we saw happen with George Floyd
and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery
and Rayshard Brooks just in the last months or so,
what happened to Tony McDade,
is that we see that part of the dehumanization
that we experience with COVID
translates into how we are viewed by those
who are charged with protecting us.
That police brutality, that systemic injustice,
that systemic inequity
are all part of the original sin of America,
which is the devaluation and the dehumanization
of people of color, primarily and most clearly, black people.
Atlanta has become a hotbed of these conversations.
Georgia has become a hotbed of these conversations.
Everything from Ahmaud Arbery to Rayshard Brooks,
as you just mentioned, has...
thrown Atlanta into turmoil, you know?
You've had, um, police officials resigning,
you've had the mayor coming out and condemning the violence,
and it feels like Atlanta is more on edge
than we've seen, I mean, almost ever.
When you... when you look at what has happened,
what is happening and-and the conversations around it,
where do you think America needs to go?
Where do you think Atlanta needs to go?
Where do you think George needs to go?
I approach this in a different space,
because my first major activism on my own
was in the '92 Rodney King protest.
It was being a part of a community,
separated by Gates College on one side,
housing projects on the other,
but we were all cordoned off and teargassed
by the city of Atlanta, by the state of Georgia.
I understand the outrage and the pain
that is discomfiting to some and offensive to others,
because I understand where it began.
And what we have to understand is that these moments
cannot be allowed to dissipate and let us return
to, not a normal, but to a state of numbness,
where we just accept that our deaths are gonna happen,
we accept that our degradation's going to happen.
My hope and my expectation and the reason I wrote this book
is because there is a pathway for more,
but it doesn't happen if we just assume
that we get what we get and we don't deserve more.
It really is interesting that you've written a book,
um, that I think affects so many, including yourself,
you know, in a really personal way.
To write a book about voter suppression,
you know, is-is...
to many people would be a tall task,
because they'd say: Can you prove it?
Can you show it?
We just saw primaries take place in Georgia
where people were forced to wait an hour.
Some people even left before they could vote.
What was interesting is that this took place
in predominantly African American communities
but also in Republican communities,
as well, um, that are predominantly white.
My-my question to you is
when I look at the book that you're writing now
and what's happening in Georgia,
what are you learning from Georgia
that America needs to learn about voting
and protecting people's rights to vote?
First of all, voter suppression has a singular way
of being expressed in Georgia.
I experienced it in '18,
I experienced it on Tuesday in 2020,
and it's happened for the last 20 years.
But what's singular to Georgia
is not solely limited to Georgia,
because we also watched on April the 7
as men and women were forced to stand in lines
at the height of COVID-19 in Wisconsin.
We saw the hours-long lines in Texas
because of the shutdown of precincts.
We know that in Nevada and South Carolina, on Tuesday,
while Georgia got the lion's share of the attention
because of the size of our population,
there were also challenges, hours-long lines
because they shut down precincts in Clark County in Nevada.
What we at Fair Fight, the organization I started,
what we're trying to do
and what I'm trying to do through this book
is make us pay attention
to voter suppression now in the primaries
so we can fix it for the general.
Because the other side,
the conservatives that have architected this suppression,
they hope that we give up.
They hope we look away,
and they hope that the conflagration
and that the explosions of anger and pain,
that they, you know, basically die down before November
and that we allow the system
to continue the way it's been designed.
What was interesting about Georgia was the fact
that, you know, some Republican precincts
were affected, as well.
Do you think that that undermines
the argument of voter suppression,
or do you think it shows something else?
It actually... It-It's the through line
that I've tried to push since 2018 in specific,
which is that the targets may be people of color,
it may be young people, it may be the poor,
but when you break the machinery of democracy,
you break it for everyone.
Incompetence and malfeasance-- when they come together,
it can't distinguish
who is the target and who is a bystander.
And that's why you saw Republican communities,
you know, areas that the Speaker of the House oversees.
They couldn't vote.
Black folks couldn't vote.
Brown folk... brown folks couldn't vote.
It happens wh-when you...
When you harm the infrastructure
of what holds us as a nation together,
everyone suffers.
They may not suffer in the same amount
and not at the same time,
but eventually, it takes us all down.
There-There's no getting around the fact that, um,
one of the reasons you've been put forth as a potential VP
is because you speak to so many of the issues
that Americans are facing today
and because many people feel like you would bolster
Joe Biden's presidential run.
You know, you would bring, um, not just different angles
but I guess a different experience
and a-a different demographic, as well,
who-who support you, you know?
You've shown... We've seen your numbers in Atlanta.
We've seen how strong you are with Hispanic voters,
with younger voters, et cetera.
That's-that's been the biggest conversation
in and around the name Stacey Abrams.
My question to you,
instead of are you gonna be the VP,
are you running to be the VP, et cetera,
which I see you've been asked a thousand times,
is rather what do you think the role
of a vice president should be, especially in this climate?
The role of a vice president
is to be the chief lieutenant to the person in charge.
It's to shore up
where additional support is needed.
It's to take on specific tasks when they need to be delegated.
But most of all, it is to reaffirm
for an entire nation that the leader sees them.
And part of my background
is that I come from a working, poor community,
but as a legislator, I did the work
of holding police accountable, passing legislation.
I did the work of criminal justice reform,
ensuring that people had access.
I worked on concrete issues,
helping bring together communities,
as you pointed out, that are often separated.
I was able to convince Republicans
to work-- Tea Party-- to work with me
on environmental legislation.
And I was able to get Republicans
to do what's right to hold police accountable.
I know how the systems work
because I've been a part of them,
but I also know how they work
because I've been a victim of them.
I come from an activist community
and an activist family
that believes you fix the problems you see.
You don't lament them. You work on them,
and that's what I would do.
And if I were so honored, it would be my role,
any role, the role of any person who the vice president chooses
to be his running mate and his partner,
to use what we have, to bring our experiences,
to add to the narrative of what America can be.
And that's why I'm-I'm so excited
to even have my name mentioned.
Uh, I hope to you have back on again and again and again.
And I hope everybody reads the book,
because, um, I think every American
really needs to understand how important it is
to, uh, maintain the safety and sanctity of their vote.
So, Stacey Abrams, thank you so much for joining us on the show.
Thank you, Mr. Noah. It's been an honor.