By McKenna Seegmiller
Staff Writer
On February 1, Stacey Abrams was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. After all of her hard work to promote peaceful change during the last election, there is no doubt that she deserves the nomination.
At the end of 1973, Stacey Abrams was born in Madison, Wisconsin as the second of six children. The six siblings grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi and were raised in Georgia. She earned her Bachelor of the Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (political science, economics, and sociology). She studied public policy at the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affair as a Harry S. Truman scholar, and there she earned a Master of Public Affairs degree. She also earned a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School, which is the highest law degree in the United States.
Abrams has written 12 books, 8 of which are romance novels she published under the pseudonym Selena Montgomery. She worked for eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives and worked seven as the Democratic leader. Abrams is also the first Black woman and the first Georgian to deliver a Response to the State of the Union.
Her most notable actions are more recent, taking place after closely losing the gubernatorial election of Georgia in 2018. Since then, she has launched the Fair Fight organization and the New Georgia Project.
According to the Fair Fight website, “Fair Fight PAC has initiated programs to support voter protection programs at state parties around the country and is engaging in partnerships to support and elect pro voting rights, progressive leaders.” The website continues, stating that “Fair Fight Action has mounted significant programs to combat voter suppression in Georgia and nationally.”
In November of 2018, Fair Fight filed a federal lawsuit against Georgia election officials. Fair Fight alleges many voting problems such as broken down machines, long lines, inaccurate results, cancelled absentee ballots, and cancelled or missing voter registrations. While the case is ongoing, Fair Fight continues to advocate for reform and an end to voter suppression tactics that disproportionately affect Black and minority voters.
In the run-up to the 2018 election, the Fair Fight campaign and the campaign’s allies were able to register over 200,000 new voters, which aligns with the goals of the New Georgia Project, whose objective is to provide registration aid to new voters in Georgia. Last year, Fair Fight and the New Georgia Project were able to register over 800,000 new voters.
From late October to the last week of November, in just 39 days, the Fair Fight organization was able to raise $34.5 million. A significant portion of the raised money was devoted to increasing voter opportunities in almost two dozen states, including a large investment in Georgia.
In the last presidential election, the state of Georgia was a crucial component to secure Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s place as the next U.S. President and Vice President. With the efforts of Stacey Abrams, the Fair Fight organization and the New Georgia project, the 2020 election was the first in almost three decades in which Georgia voted for the Democratic candidate in the presidential election. The work done to ensure equal voting opportunities warranted more citizens to exercise their voting rights in such a pivotal election for this country.
We as a nation owe a great thank you to Stacey Abrams for her continued efforts to increase the voices of the people, and also for her dedication to advocating for voting reform and stopping voter suppression.
FEATURED IMAGE (at the top of this post): Picture features Stacey Abrams at a campaign event for a Democratic candidate for the Senate in Atlanta. (Photo Credit: CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
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