- 5 hours ago
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Again, my name is Carrie Champion.
00:12I am so excited to be here to moderate this conversation.
00:16Stacey, I have had the opportunity of interviewing her a few times, and each time I walk away
00:21better.
00:22I walk away feeling activated.
00:23I walk away knowing that there is hope for us, and that is what she literally illustrates
00:30whenever I hear her speak about her story and what she wants to do for the community.
00:35As the collective, let's give her another big round of applause.
00:38Stacey Abrams coming out to the stage.
00:45So, I don't know if you all did this, but as Stacey was speaking, I was taking notes.
00:59You said a few things, many things, and I appreciate you, one of which was, in essence, religion
01:05should not be used as a sword.
01:07Absolutely.
01:07And I understand what you mean by that.
01:09So, that leads us to the conversation of the day, what so many people are talking about,
01:13which is the overturning of Roe versus Wade.
01:15Now, what I'd like to highlight, and what I heard you also speak about, a woman's reproductive
01:21rights, the fight for a woman's reproductive rights, is so intimately connected with voting
01:26rights.
01:27If you could explain to everyone why, and it's not just our problem.
01:34So, let's start with where I stand on access to abortion rights.
01:41I grew up in a religious family.
01:43My parents are now ministers.
01:45But my parents also raised me to believe that your responsibility is to protect.
01:51And part of reproductive health care is the ability to protect a woman's body and a woman's
01:57autonomy and her ability to make choices.
02:01And we all know folks who may make a different choice, but the issue is, do you have the right
02:05to make your own decisions?
02:07Those same decisions are embedded in the question of our democracy.
02:12What has happened is that we have a constitution that, for some, well, we know why.
02:19We know that the constitution was silent about voting rights.
02:23There is no right to vote in the constitution.
02:27The amendments in the constitution simply say who can't be prohibited from voting.
02:31And because it is not in the constitution, there is this derogation, this weakening of
02:37the right to vote.
02:39And the way they do it most effectively is by saying, well, we'll leave it up to the
02:42states.
02:43What that means is that the quality of your citizenship changes when you cross state lines.
02:48If I'm an American, my citizenship should be the same no matter where I live, no matter
02:53who I am.
02:54And they're doing the exact same thing with abortion, with reproductive care.
03:01And for black women in particular, this is a matter of life and death.
03:05Black women are three times more likely to die in pregnancy than anyone else.
03:11And if you live in Georgia, that is a state that has the second highest rate of maternal
03:15mortality in the nation.
03:17One of the top in the world.
03:19Which means if you are a black woman, being pregnant is literally a matter of life or death.
03:24And you should get to decide what your choice is.
03:28But when they can take away your rights, they chip at them one by one.
03:31They chip away at voting rights and say, well, we're going to leave it to the states.
03:35Hope you don't live in a state that says you can't get water in line and that you can't
03:39vote by mail.
03:40Then they say you can't choose what happens with your body unless you live in the right
03:43state.
03:44They're going to say, if you are a member of the LGBTQ plus community, we're going to leave
03:48it to the states to decide who you can love and if you can adopt and if the child that
03:52you have with your partner can be yours.
03:55And they're going to keep saying it's up to the states.
03:57Well, the reality is if they take over the states, they have taken over our lives and
04:02they have taken away our rights.
04:03And so I believe in let's fight them where they are.
04:06Let's win our states back so we can take our rights back.
04:10Do you see the connection?
04:12So crystal clear.
04:13And when you say let's win the states back, she is the next.
04:16And we're all proclaiming that governor of Georgia.
04:19Correct.
04:20But there's also that's right.
04:22There's also another race in Georgia that we need to look to and we need to make sure
04:25that we are working as a collective.
04:27And that's the Senate race.
04:28Explain the importance because you talked about taking back the states.
04:31But it's for all of us to do together.
04:34So I know there are a lot of folks who are disappointed that things that we thought could happen
04:39after the 2020 and 2021 elections didn't occur.
04:44But let's remember what we were facing.
04:46We had four years, not only of Donald Trump, but four years of unfettered conservative assault
04:52on who we are and what we wanted to be.
04:55You cannot undo four years, which followed 40 years of an attempt to roll back who we are
05:01and fix it in two and a half years, three years.
05:04But what we could do was stop the bad from happening.
05:08And that's exactly what we did when we elected John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock from the state
05:13of Georgia.
05:14If you think Mitch McConnell is bad now, imagine how bad he would be if he actually had all
05:20of the votes he needed in the Senate.
05:22We would not have Ketanji Brown Jackson on the U.S. Supreme Court.
05:26Holding the Senate is about making sure that we not only stop bad from happening, but we
05:34build towards good.
05:35But the most important thing for us to remember, and if you take nothing else from this, we
05:40have to stop treating voting like it's magic.
05:44Voting is not magic.
05:45We do not undo the past with a wave of the wand or a moment in the ballot booth.
05:51Voting is medicine.
05:53Raphael Warnock is medicine.
05:55If I am elected, I am medicine.
05:58And it's medicine that we have to take that sometimes tastes nasty, sometimes hurts more
06:03than whatever is wrong with us.
06:04But we know if we take our medicine, we will get better.
06:07Our votes have to make us better.
06:10And that is why we've got to vote in every election, every time, even if the people we
06:14elect disappoint us a little bit.
06:16Because we know the other side, our side might disappoint, but the other side intends to destroy.
06:21And I will take disappointment every time because I know they're at least trying to get
06:25something done.
06:25And that is why it's critical that we hold the Senate.
06:29Medicine.
06:30Don't forget that, okay?
06:32And I want to take a moment and focus on that idea.
06:35There are so many, and I'm not excluding our brothers.
06:38I love you.
06:39But we look to so many wonderful black women to hold us together.
06:43She talked about Ketanji, yourself.
06:46You can look over and over again and see what's happening in the fight.
06:50And oftentimes, and this is for the black women in the audience, we just get tired.
06:55Like, we feel like we're doing it all.
06:57We can't save the world.
06:58We can't always feel like we meet everything.
07:02But then again, we do.
07:05So talk to me about being in a space where you know you can speak to these women and they'll
07:12turn out.
07:13They will come and vote.
07:14What is the call to action for us?
07:18Number one, we can't presume that because we did it before, we will do it again.
07:24We, people are tired.
07:27Black women are tired.
07:29Inflation is real.
07:31The assault on our rights is real.
07:33COVID is real.
07:34If we don't talk about it, it's still very real.
07:37And so part of our responsibility and our opportunity is just acknowledge each other's pain.
07:42It is not helpful to say to someone, well, it's, it'll get better.
07:47Some people just need to sit with that pain and we need to give them space to do so.
07:52And then we've got to give them a way to get beyond it.
07:55And that means, or more importantly, get to the other side.
07:58And that's why voting is so critical.
08:00And I know I talk about voting a lot, but it's because I have seen what happens when people
08:04have the right to vote.
08:05And I see what happens when they don't.
08:08And we've got to remember that there are three choices in an election.
08:11You can vote for the person you want.
08:13You can vote for the person the other side wants, or you can not vote.
08:17And my deep fear is that people are going to choose to not vote.
08:20What we need, what I need, is that we have to stop calling this an enthusiasm gap.
08:27This is a trust gap.
08:29People don't trust what's coming next.
08:32And so I need you all to stand in that gap.
08:35I need you to be the voices who say, yes, more is possible.
08:38Yes, Stacey Abrams, if you look at her record, if you look at who she is, she can do more.
08:44But I also need us to remember, we've got to go all the way down the ballot because the
08:48worst harm they do to us is in the fine print.
08:51It's those folks at the very bottom of the ballot that we don't pay attention to who cause
08:54us the most harm.
08:56And so we need, I need you all to do that.
08:58But the other piece is, and Carrie, I appreciate the way you framed the question, but we've got
09:03to remember that we can't show up alone.
09:05That's right.
09:06They are doing their best to divide black women and black men.
09:10To say that our needs have diverged, that black women don't seem to want or need black
09:16men's voices, that is not true.
09:17And they're going to lie about what black men are doing or have done.
09:21They tried that in my election.
09:22They tried to say that black men let me down.
09:24No, they didn't.
09:26Black men voted.
09:27Black women voted.
09:28But black men tend to vote at a lower level because they tend to have more assailed against
09:33them.
09:33Mass incarceration hurt all of us, but they went after black men with surgical precision.
09:39And so we've got to remember that we've got to do a little bit more to make sure that we
09:43wrap everyone up and we remind everyone that they have this power that I'm talking about.
09:47Women who say out loud that we are not going alone.
09:50We are bringing our husbands with us, our brothers with us, our neighbors with us, the guy we want
09:54to date, the guy we might be dating, the guy we broke up with, but we still talk to on
09:58occasion.
09:58We all have to show up because that is the only way we change the future in the United
10:02States.
10:03Amen, amen, amen.
10:04Where do we use today?
10:05One a day and one a day.
10:06That can come into the election, right?
10:07Get to the polls with us.
10:09This is so funny and I appreciate her humor.
10:12I think what we are realizing is that no matter how defeated we may feel when we know what's
10:19happening in our world today, mass shootings, right?
10:22Like you mentioned, COVID, Roe versus Wade, there will be more.
10:26And you gave a very specific call to action, but I don't want to miss what you said.
10:30They went after our black men with surgical precision.
10:33What does that look like and what is the plan to help?
10:38In Georgia, I'm running against someone who is getting credit for not committing treason.
10:45I mean, bottom line, that's basically it.
10:46But he has responded to gun violence in Georgia by removing one of the last remaining background
10:56checks that we had.
10:58He eliminated the concealed carry permit.
11:01And while it is a dangerous thing in and of itself because it puts weapons in the hands
11:05of criminals, it also makes black men less safe because my brother is one of those.
11:11My brother carries, has a concealed carry permit.
11:13Well, now when he is stopped and somebody sees the gun on his hip, they can, they can assume
11:19he shouldn't have it.
11:21They can hold him responsible and he can't pull out proof that he has the right to carry
11:26that weapon.
11:27It has made it more dangerous for him to exercise his Second Amendment rights, for him to exercise
11:32his humanity in the state of Georgia.
11:35When we think about gun violence, it is killing more black men than anyone.
11:40And when you exacerbate that by putting more guns on the streets and then you treat every
11:45black man you see as a criminal by saying that the only solution is to just put them all
11:49in prison, we are redoing what we just stopped doing 10 years ago.
11:54Mass incarceration punishment is not the way we get to safety.
11:57It has never worked.
11:59It will never work.
12:00We must have public safety, but we must also have justice.
12:05And we have to reclaim that conversation.
12:08That conversation has been hijacked by some on the left and some on the right.
12:12But those of us who live these lives every single day, who know the complexity of what
12:16we face, have to have a full conversation about who we are and what we want.
12:21We want police to be held accountable for what they do.
12:24We want them to be held to a higher standard for what they do.
12:27But we also know that we need protection in our communities.
12:30And when they tell us that it is an either or, they are trying to pit us against one another.
12:35And I'm here to say that we can have both and we can have safety and justice because
12:39we know that safety also includes decriminalizing being poor, losing your driver's license when
12:45you miss a custody, a child support payment.
12:47If you can't get to work, how are you going to meet your obligations?
12:51So we've got to let them not we can't allow them to distract us.
12:55We've got to focus on the real issues that we face.
12:58And that means voting against those who do not have our interest at heart.
13:02Stacey Abrams, ladies and gentlemen, I need you guys to stand up and give this woman a round
13:10of applause.
13:10She is changing our country.
13:19Thank you, guys.
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