#fairfight

As of today's biography, I have now drawn the equivalent of two entire decks of playing cards. Probably as good a time as any to take a look back on this project, permit myself a pause, and make some decisions as to what practical use this might all be put.

Therefore Lesson #104 couldn't possibly be anyone else: Stacey Yvonne Abrams, quite possibly one of the most important people in the United States just now. Born in 1973 Madison, Wisconsin, Stacey and her family later moved to Atlanta, Georgia. In her junior year at Stacy Avondale High School (from which she would later graduate as valedictorian), she was selected for a Telluride Association Summer Program, which led to her being hired (at age 17) as a typist for a congressional campaign and a speechwriter --her first exposure to national politics.

Abrams graduated magna cum laude from Spelman College in 1995, earned a Master's of Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin in 1998, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1999. She worked as a tax attorney in Atlanta, and was appointed Deputy City Attorney of that city in 2002. She was elected to the Georgia General Assembly in 2007 (District 84 and then District 89), and became Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives in 2011, the first African-American to do so. In 2013 she founded the New Georgia Project, which, between 2014 and 2016, submitted more than 200,000 voter registrations. She left this organization in 2017 to focus on her gubernatorial candidacy.

In 2018 Abrams won the Democratic nomination for governor of Georgia. Her Republican opponent, Georgia's then-secretary of state, defeated her in a close race --50% to 49%, amidst voter suppression concerns. In the aftermath, Abrams launched Fair Fight Action, an organization devoted to registering voters, and ensuring free and fair poll access and reporting. On February 5, 2019, Abrams delivered the official rebuttal to the State of the Union address, not only making her the first African-American woman to do so, but also the first and only non-office-holding person to do so since that tradition began in 1966.

On January 5, 2021, with both of its Senate elections having been too close to count, Georgia held two special runoff elections, narrowly tipping the balance back to Senate Democrats with the election of Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock --both of whom credited Stacey Abrams with helping to ensure such high voter turnout. Today (as in, literally this week, according to Federal data), Georgia now has one of the highest statewide voter registration rates in the nation, with 95% of citizens over 18 years old signed up to vote.

(Oh, and... Ms. Abrams is a Doctor Who fan. Yes. As in, old school AND the present-day series. She informed the press that, prior to delivering the State of the Union response, her pre-speech prep was basically to marathon three episodes --for the record, Matt Smith's final episode in the role and Peter Capaldi's first two, though she names Tom Baker as "the one Doctor to rule them all." So...yeah. Just adds a little bonus extra layer of nerdy awesomeness, there.)

All right, enough trivia. Get registered: https://www.vote411.org/register

And get involved: https://fairfight.com/

There will be more in this series --I can't NOT generate more. Still too much work to do, still too much little-known history to recount. But for the time being, this artist/educator will take a brief pause. Ms. Abrams certainly isn't quitting, so neither shall I.