As returns for Georgia’s Senate runoff came in on Tuesday night, it was clear what was happening. After considerable back-and-forth in November and December about just how much President-elect Joe Biden owed his electoral victory in the state to white suburban voters, control of the Senate was being unequivocally driven by Black turnout. The Democratic candidates, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, were outperforming Biden. And, once again, voters of color were in the process of flipping a red state.
Much of the public praise has been delivered to Stacey Abrams, who has done groundbreaking work mobilizing voters via the New Georgia Project. But singling out one name misses the comprehensiveness of the effort and goes against Abrams own ethos when speaking of the initiatives. In a state where political power has been rooted in systematic voter suppression, only systematic voter activation could reverse two Senate seats and hand control of the entire nation’s legislative agenda over to the Democrats.
It’s an exciting opportunity for an exercise of progressive political power to take place in Washington. Organizers, many of them Black women, who have spent months, even years, rallying voters, made this possible. Text and phone banking bolstered extensive ground campaigns, which included canvassing, personal conversations with voters, voter education events, relational organizing, and more. Such efforts, and political gains, cause literal shifts in policy discussions.
“If we get out to the polls, vote for the people who will represent us, and take our issues to whatever legislative body that they will occupy—that opens the door for us to then have the right conversations,” said Britney Whaley, a senior political strategist for the Georgia Working Families Party. “We won’t have a conversation about whether our schools need to be funded. We’ll have a conversation about how to fully fund them.”
The power behind the flip made sense for those who understand that the South is the birthplace of a number of radical traditions, as well as the nation’s most pertinent political region. For generations—from the Dixiecrat era through the Republican Southern Strategy—the South’s main role in national politics appeared to be as an obstacle against progress in general and racial justice in particular. This was the region of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a patch of solid red on the map that Democrats could at most hope to turn blue around the edges.
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