Our first guest is the former Georgia House Minority leader
and a voting rights advocate who ran a historic campaign
for governor in 2018.
Please welcome the amazing Stacey Abrams.
[CLAPPING] Hi.
Hello.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thanks for taking the time.
You must be very busy.
And we're taping this a week before it airs.
So who knows what's happened in that time?
So but what do you think about the charges in George Floyd's
murder?
My deep hope is that these charges actually
lead to justice.
We have seen this happen before.
The demonstrations demanding action, some action is taken,
but when the demonstrations stop, the action abates.
Basically, people are-- these officers get exonerated.
And I think what's so critical at this time
is that we see justice fully play out,
that they are held accountable for their behavior
in the same courts that we would have sent another bad actor to.
Yep.
I've said this before, but I can't even
imagine what would happen if they aren't
convicted to the full degree that they
deserve to be convicted.
It would cause a whole new wave of trouble.
So let's hope that that happens.
And not just George Floyd's death, but Ahmaud Arbery's
murder happened in your state.
And that happened under the claim
of citizen's arrest, which is--
so that is a whole different issue.
That's not police brutality.
That's-- let's talk about that for a minute.
Well, when people are calling for systemic justice,
it's not simply ending the extrajudicial killings
performed by law enforcement.
It's also a judicial system that allows
others, especially white people, to believe
they have the authority and the color of law behind them,
so that they can take the life of others.
But it was also the challenge of once these men murdered
Ahmaud Arbery in the streets, the district
attorney, the sheriff, the police,
they all refused to take action.
These men were released on their own recognizance.
They were never charged.
It took 74 days to get the justice system
to actually start to respond to what happened to Ahmaud Arbery.
And we can't forget what happened to Breonna Taylor
in Louisville.
Using the law of no knock warrants,
they broke into her house.
And they shot her in her sleep.
This is a woman who did nothing, but try to save lives.
And she was murdered by the very people
who were her colleagues in arms, who should have protected her.
And so we have to expand our notion
of what we talk about when we talk about justice.
It's not simply stopping the police
from killing black people and brown people.
It's also making certain that the justice
system serves their interests and that justice is actually
done.
Yeah.
So voting is probably one of the most important things
that everyone can do right now to help change
this systematic racism and everybody that's
in power that is not doing anything to help,
basically inciting it.
Voter suppression, which affected you
in the governor's race, I mean, we're
trying to use the platform on our show
to educate viewers who might not be aware of how that is
contributing to the loss of black lives,
if you want to address that for a minute.
Thank you.
It's three things.
It's can you register and stay on the rolls,
can you cast a ballot, and does your ballot get counted?
And in that, that means if you live
in a state like Georgia or Ohio, yes, you
might be able to get on the rolls.
Will they purge you because you didn't vote in a few elections?
If you live in Wisconsin, are you
required to have a voter ID?
That means you have to show an original birth
certificate, which a lot of folks born during segregation,
for example, won't have because they were not allowed
to be born in white hospitals.
And it says your ballot count.
We know across the country, including
in Georgia and Florida and a number of other states,
absentee ballots or provisional ballots are thrown out--
or worse, they're never allowed to be cast at all.
And so we have to look at the entire network of voter
suppression.
That's no longer one thing.
It's any impediment that disallows an eligible voter
to cast their ballot.
And if it's under the color of law,
if it's done by those responsible for our access,
then it is voter suppression, and we need to wipe it out.
I think that's the one thing that everyone should start
really looking at early on.
If you're going to vote by absentee by mail, if you're
going to-- and wherever you live,
you need to do the research starting now almost to make
sure you're eligible to vote.
Because if you wait too late, then we don't hear that voice.
Trump is already saying that voting by mail is--
shouldn't happen.
It's fraudulent, which is, again, I'll
let you speak to that.
Well, he actually told the truth once,
when he said that the reason he doesn't like vote by mail
is it's because he doesn't think he can get reelected
if everyone actually voted.
There is no voter fraud.
And voter fraud is largely mythical.
There are handfuls of examples, but even the most arduous
defenders of the voter fraud idea, the Heritage Foundation,
have only found 1,200-- no, 1,300 examples out
of 625 million ballots that were cast between 2000 and 2020
in just federal elections.
Let's just count federal elections.
Voter fraud is not the problem.
It doesn't happen.
It doesn't change elections.
It does not exist in any meaningful way.
But what they're trying to block is voter participation
because they know that in a pandemic,
the easiest way to protect everyone
is to allow people to vote by mail because we
have some folks who don't have that choice.
Those are the people who need to go to vote on Election Day.
Everyone else should be allowed to vote early through vote
by mail.
And the reason they're worried is
they know that this is a year where the elections truly
matter, and that people are energized.
If they can stop them from voting by mail,
they think they can shut us up.
And we need to prove them wrong.
We sure do.
This is the most important election
I think we've ever, ever had in this country.
This is a critical time.
And I just want to keep talking about how people
can get prepared to vote because that is the absolute necessity
on all levels.
We're going to take a break, and we'll be back.
More with Stacey after this.