Joe Biden is now POTUS
- Thread starter Spectrum
- Start date
#bunker bitch
I am so happy Joe Biden in Kamala Harris one because this shit right here does it make any sense anymore hell it never made sense
lol..this shit is hilarious. if there was voter fraud, they wouldn't need to offer $1M for it. They're literally proving they're making baseless claims and then trying to find evidence to support their claims
Last edited:
Poll watcher who spoke at Giuliani press conference is convicted sex offender
Daryl Brooks' criminal history involved charges of sexual assault, lewdness, and endangering the welfare of a minor.
thegrio.com
been saying , something is up ! they're trying to cover evidence & shit up before they split the joint !!
I swear...Trump is trying to create havoc to see if Biden will help him out of those State and Fed charges.
Trump sees himself as the key to either start or stop the insane followers upon America.
Trump sees himself as the key to either start or stop the insane followers upon America.
I was thinking about this earlier and Trump put his self in a bad spot to get any help on federal charges as for the state charges there is nothing no one could do about that. Once again Trump put his self in a major pickle.......he is getting out of the White House one way or another on January 20.
lol..this shit is hilarious. if there was voter fraud, they wouldn't need to offer $1M for it. They're literally providing they're making baseless claims and then trying to find evidence to support their claims
The Democrats should counter this by contesting the validity of any any Senate, House, etc. races they lost in the areas Trump's team is trying to contest and see how comfortable they are with this shit continuing.
Niggas gettin' shaky, I see.
A LOT of those Twitter accounts be bots or spoof accounts. Cowards.
A LOT of those Twitter accounts be bots or spoof accounts. Cowards.
Y'all thought he was kidding. Republicans have been playing chess for some time now, and now after their king has be pinned, they're looking to get out of check, and checkmate this country.
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
― Karl Rove
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
― Karl Rove
Gone put this bitch on ignore >>>here<<<.
It's no coincidence that ADOS shit started 4yrs ago.
It's no coincidence that ADOS shit started flooding this board this year..... This election year.
As I mentioned before and to slow ass HNIC, those fucks would be banned ASAP if they were proven to be white. This is supposedly a BLACK message board, their fuck-shit should not be tolerated.
How Black voters in key cities helped deliver the election for Joe Biden
"The fact that we have matched and topped white voter participation and done that while going through voter suppression in new and old forms every year, we are extraordinary," said organizer LaTosha Brown.
Joe Biden attends a service at Morris Brown AME Church in Charleston, S.C., on July 7, 2019.Demetrius Freeman / NYT via Redux file
Nov. 7, 2020, 5:24 PM EST
By Janell Ross
ATLANTA — In the way that one could on election night 2020, LaTosha Brown was making the rounds.
She was in a suite near the top of a luxury hotel so close to the airport that the balcony view overlooked a Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport airplane parking lot. Also there was Cliff Albright, who, with Brown, co-founded the voter mobilization organization Black Voters Matter.
After a Google Hangout with the field directors they had hired to register, engage and boost voter participation around the country, Brown sequestered herself in a bedroom, resting her body in a hotel chair, her tired feet — by then stripped to the socks — on the bed.
Between bites of food and watching election returns turn bits of the national map red or blue, Brown juggled calls, internet video sessions and texts, in each countering the conventional wisdom with journalists, political operatives and others that the election would come down to Donald Trump's mythical all-white suburbs filled with stay-at-home moms or Joe Biden's ability to convert them. Instead, it was decided in racially diverse urban centers and increasingly diverse suburbs in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia.
The Black people who make up 39 percent or more of the population in those areas chose Biden, with some exceptions. In fact, once the vote counts from Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee and Atlanta started to near completion, Trump's lead in their respective states disappeared. Biden — who would not have been the Democratic presidential nominee without Black voters in South Carolina — reached 270 Electoral College votes in large part because of Black voters in these cities.
Biden thanks Black supporters: ‘You’ve always had my back and I’ll have yours’
NOV. 7, 202000:42
But within minutes of starting an interview with the CBC/Radio-Canada, Brown ran headlong into the conventional and dismissive wisdom about American politics that conceives of white voters as more important or legitimate than Black and brown ones. It was the logic that perceives Black voters as an eternal problem rather than the solution.
"I would say that we have long participated at extraordinary levels and have to overcome extraordinary hurdles to do so," Brown said in that way a woman speaks when she aims to appear calm on the surface but is seething inside. The interviewer had dismissed the work of Brown, Albright, Georgia politician and organizer Stacey Abrams and many others who have registered and motivated voters for years, literally expanding the electorate and creating new swing states. In the interviewer's framing, Black Americans "have historically low turnout," so was that work really wise?
People march and celebrate after Joe Biden was projected to have won the presidential election Saturday.Eduardo Munoz / Reuters
Brown said: "The fact that we have caught up with white voters, white women in particular, who have historically reaped all the benefits of voting and even any slight level of political engagement, who can't get pollsters and parties to stop targeting them, to me says that we are extraordinary. The fact that we have matched and topped white voter participation and done that while going through voter suppression in new and old forms every year, we are extraordinary. That's what I know."
When the interview ended, Brown turned to say: "She wasn't ready for that. The truth. Don't ask me why Black voter turnout is consistently low when nothing could be further than the clear and obvious truth."
In the weeks before the election, about 63 percent of Black voters and 73 percent of white voters told Pew Research Center pollsters that they were "extremely motivated to vote in the General Election." About 54 percent of Latino and Asian voters said the same. In Georgia during the primary season, many voters, particularly Black voters, waited eight hours or more to participate. A surge in early and mail voting and other measures taken by Georgia's Republican secretary of state prevented a repeat on Election Day.
Picking presidents
If Brown's was the voice that may have reset the understanding of anyone watching BET or listening to CBC/Radio-Canada on election night, for others the truth about the election and how it was won arrived the next day in the poetic language of the Black church pulpit, when the Rev. Steve Bland Jr., pastor of Liberty Temple Baptist Church, spoke to MSNBC. He stood just outside Detroit's TCF Center, where Wayne County election officials tallied votes.
"As goes Detroit, will be done so ..." said Bland, wearing a black baseball cap with the words "Faith Over Fear." "We will determine the outcome, because we've gone from picking cotton to picking
The accuracy of his assessment only grew clearer as Election Day stretched into Election Week.
Initial voting data and exit polls point to a few patterns: Record numbers of Americans cast ballots for each of the candidates, with many more Democrats exercising early and mail-in voting options than Republicans.
According to exit polls, Trump claimed about 18 percent of the vote among Black men and 8 percent among Black women, increases over his performance among both groups in 2016. But Biden held 87 percent of the Black vote, performing better among Black voters than any other demographic group.
And, much like almost every other Democrat since the 1960s, Biden won about 42 percent of the white vote.
Many white voters simply fled the Democratic Party after President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, with a bipartisan collective in Congress pushed through landmark equity-building legislation, and President Richard Nixon coalesced white Republican political support with his "Southern strategy."
While some Democrats, like centrist Bill Clinton, have been able to attract a few more white voters, members of the group have remained a sort of elusive, most-sought voter. But Black voters have consistently proven essential in determining election outcomes and, when Democrats fail, these often disregarded voters appear to top many lists of those who are blamed.
"Just as in 2016, the presidential race is being decided in states where the robust or anemic turnout of people of color will determine the outcome of the election," Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science and director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University, said in a statement. "In close elections, Democrats can maximize the advantage of strong minority support only when those voters turn out in strong enough numbers."
Election cycle after election cycle, give or take a few points, about 90 percent of Black voters back Democrats, said Gillespie, who studies Black political behavior. About two-thirds of Latino and Asian American voters also vote for Democrats. But that strong Democratic advantage is less important if these groups do not show up to vote in high numbers.
For Cheetara Alexander, 34, the sense that this election, this presidential contest, was deeply consequential grew all year.
As a professional violence interrupter, Alexander works to prevent gun violence and murder in some of the Atlanta region's most dangerous and underserved communities. It is the kind of work often overlooked when questions of police misconduct are met with calls for Black Americans to care about so-called Black-on-Black crime.
It is also work that made her particularly attuned to the tolls that unchecked police brutality and the pandemic have exacted on Black Americans. Alexander said the political, policy and rhetorical failures of the White House have been so intense this year that she abandoned her usual plan to vote early. She decided to vote on Election Day.
Cheetara Alexander, 34, is the last to cast her vote at Barack Obama Elementary School in DeKalb County, Ga.Janell Ross / NBC
"There is just too much, too much going on that need not be, too much not happening that should be, to sit this out or even avoid what I had assumed would be crowds on Election Day," Alexander said.
After a long day of work, Alexander arrived at the door of her polling site in DeKalb County, which includes about 10 percent of the city of Atlanta. It was 7:01 p.m. Poll workers there told her they had to close at 7 sharp. She could drive to another DeKalb polling site at Barack Obama Magnet Elementary School of Technology and cast a provisional ballot until 7:45 p.m.
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The polling site at Obama Elementary, already serving two precincts because its multicolor cafeteria and assembly spaces could allow for social distancing, was ordered to remain open until 7:45 p.m. on Election Day because of earlier technical issues that were confirmed to NBC News by two poll workers and an election monitor, a white man in a mask bearing the words "SPEAK LIFE." The extended time meant Alexander got to cast her vote in person, one of the last in metro Atlanta.
When she began to exit at 7:43 p.m., a poll worker offered to snap her picture with Obama's portrait, which hangs, at all times, on the school's front office wall. The former president had done a last swing through Atlanta to motivate Black voters the previous day.
"I didn't plan to be the last vote, but if this Black woman in Georgia winds up being the one that gives that man in the White House his walking papers, that will be just," Alexander said, pantomiming a chef's kiss.
As Alexander spoke, a Black man with a bald head and a gray beard who declined to give his name overheard the conversation and said to no one in particular, "I claim that in the name of the ancestors and the late, great John Lewis."
Lewis, a longtime member of Congress from Georgia and civil rights activist who was nearly killed in the push for Black voting rights, died in July. Trump, unlike many other Republican and Democratic government officials, declined to attend memorial services for Lewis, describing him as "not impressive" and saying, "Nobody has done more for Black Americans than I have."
While many Republicans and Democrats praised Lewis at his death and expressed reverence for his life's work, Republicans in the Senate — including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — have continued to block efforts to restore the intent of elements of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court invalidated in 2013. Now, part of Lewis' district, an Atlanta area that Trump described as "in horrible shape and falling apart," may have delivered key votes to swing Georgia into Biden's column, although NBC News has not called the state for either candidate yet, due to the closeness of the race.
In the days after the election, election officials in the key states of Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina made it clear. The election would, indeed, come down to cities with large Black voter bases and even, possibly, provisional ballots like Alexander's.
But for every Alexander, there are also Black voters disillusioned by American politics.
Brian Keith, 43, a truck driver, is registered to vote in North Carolina. He is in a long-distance relationship with a Black woman who lives and votes in Georgia. That is not the only difference between them.
In the hour before the polls closed at Obama Elementary, he stood in a hallway waiting for his girlfriend to cast her vote. She planned to vote for Biden, Keith said. He skipped the top of the ticket on his own North Carolina ballot and participated in elections for state office on down.
"To me, when people can, one way or another, pump a million dollars into a race, that's just legalized bribery, and so the election becomes a sham," Keith said about congressional and presidential races. "Those folks, whoever wins, are bought and paid for at that level."
Keith described himself as someone who was often offended by things Trump said but who also agrees with some of his ideas and demands. But because of the way national politics has been riddled with donations from wealthy donors and lobbyists, he would not back Trump, either.
"I don't believe either of the parties, either of the candidates," Keith said. "Honestly, if I had my choice, I would coup the federal government, because nobody really helps us, not the average person, not the average Black person, for sure."
The years of organizing led to this moment
Pushing back against narratives like Keith's was the work that organizations like Black Voters Matter took on, years before the 2020 election. Brown and Albright, Abrams and many other grassroots organizers have collectively registered tens of thousands and encouraged many more to vote, while also contending with the reality that Black voters, typically loyal Democratic voters, have a limited list of political and social rewards for their votes, Brown said.
Abrams, who formed the organization, Fair Fight, after narrowly losing her 2018 bid for Georgia governor, declined to comment this week. The organization battled various policies and practices that suppressed the Black vote in Georgia and other states and worked to register about 800,000 new voters since 2018, Abrams told Vogue in an interview published Thursday.
Expanding the electorate to include every eligible person and engaging Black voters is key to creating a more equitable and just country, she has said. Abrams, who lives and votes in Georgia, also insists that she lost her bid to become the country's first Black female governor after her opponent, Brian Kemp, then Georgia's secretary of state, disqualified an unusual number of Black voters. Kemp, a Republican, won the election by 54,723 votes, or 1.3 percent of all the ballots cast. Abrams never conceded the race. Instead, she said at the time, "the law currently allows no further viable remedy."
And Abrams made her feelings about the central role of what she describes as the new American electorate known on Twitter on Friday morning as the work of Georgia vote counters stood on the precipice of deciding the presidential election. The political groundwork she and others did in once-deep-red Georgia was on the verge of turning the state blue.
On election night — before the sweeping and definitive influence of Black voters had seeped into the space of the undeniable for even those uncomfortable with overt discussions of race in politics and those who have made a living decrying "identity politics" since 2016 — Brown had a few moments to reflect. As Brown and her assistant scanned Brown's digital calendar for her remaining election night obligations, Brown described what would come next.
"Having been through the Obama years, I think many of us have learned and are prepared now to demand and keep demanding some policies of significance to the Black community, should there be a Biden administration after tonight," she said. "That, too, is real. That's just where we are."
www.nbcnews.com
"The fact that we have matched and topped white voter participation and done that while going through voter suppression in new and old forms every year, we are extraordinary," said organizer LaTosha Brown.
Joe Biden attends a service at Morris Brown AME Church in Charleston, S.C., on July 7, 2019.Demetrius Freeman / NYT via Redux file
Nov. 7, 2020, 5:24 PM EST
By Janell Ross
ATLANTA — In the way that one could on election night 2020, LaTosha Brown was making the rounds.
She was in a suite near the top of a luxury hotel so close to the airport that the balcony view overlooked a Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport airplane parking lot. Also there was Cliff Albright, who, with Brown, co-founded the voter mobilization organization Black Voters Matter.
After a Google Hangout with the field directors they had hired to register, engage and boost voter participation around the country, Brown sequestered herself in a bedroom, resting her body in a hotel chair, her tired feet — by then stripped to the socks — on the bed.
Between bites of food and watching election returns turn bits of the national map red or blue, Brown juggled calls, internet video sessions and texts, in each countering the conventional wisdom with journalists, political operatives and others that the election would come down to Donald Trump's mythical all-white suburbs filled with stay-at-home moms or Joe Biden's ability to convert them. Instead, it was decided in racially diverse urban centers and increasingly diverse suburbs in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia.
The Black people who make up 39 percent or more of the population in those areas chose Biden, with some exceptions. In fact, once the vote counts from Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee and Atlanta started to near completion, Trump's lead in their respective states disappeared. Biden — who would not have been the Democratic presidential nominee without Black voters in South Carolina — reached 270 Electoral College votes in large part because of Black voters in these cities.
Biden thanks Black supporters: ‘You’ve always had my back and I’ll have yours’
NOV. 7, 202000:42
But within minutes of starting an interview with the CBC/Radio-Canada, Brown ran headlong into the conventional and dismissive wisdom about American politics that conceives of white voters as more important or legitimate than Black and brown ones. It was the logic that perceives Black voters as an eternal problem rather than the solution.
"I would say that we have long participated at extraordinary levels and have to overcome extraordinary hurdles to do so," Brown said in that way a woman speaks when she aims to appear calm on the surface but is seething inside. The interviewer had dismissed the work of Brown, Albright, Georgia politician and organizer Stacey Abrams and many others who have registered and motivated voters for years, literally expanding the electorate and creating new swing states. In the interviewer's framing, Black Americans "have historically low turnout," so was that work really wise?
People march and celebrate after Joe Biden was projected to have won the presidential election Saturday.Eduardo Munoz / Reuters
Brown said: "The fact that we have caught up with white voters, white women in particular, who have historically reaped all the benefits of voting and even any slight level of political engagement, who can't get pollsters and parties to stop targeting them, to me says that we are extraordinary. The fact that we have matched and topped white voter participation and done that while going through voter suppression in new and old forms every year, we are extraordinary. That's what I know."
When the interview ended, Brown turned to say: "She wasn't ready for that. The truth. Don't ask me why Black voter turnout is consistently low when nothing could be further than the clear and obvious truth."
In the weeks before the election, about 63 percent of Black voters and 73 percent of white voters told Pew Research Center pollsters that they were "extremely motivated to vote in the General Election." About 54 percent of Latino and Asian voters said the same. In Georgia during the primary season, many voters, particularly Black voters, waited eight hours or more to participate. A surge in early and mail voting and other measures taken by Georgia's Republican secretary of state prevented a repeat on Election Day.
Picking presidents
If Brown's was the voice that may have reset the understanding of anyone watching BET or listening to CBC/Radio-Canada on election night, for others the truth about the election and how it was won arrived the next day in the poetic language of the Black church pulpit, when the Rev. Steve Bland Jr., pastor of Liberty Temple Baptist Church, spoke to MSNBC. He stood just outside Detroit's TCF Center, where Wayne County election officials tallied votes.
"As goes Detroit, will be done so ..." said Bland, wearing a black baseball cap with the words "Faith Over Fear." "We will determine the outcome, because we've gone from picking cotton to picking
The accuracy of his assessment only grew clearer as Election Day stretched into Election Week.
Initial voting data and exit polls point to a few patterns: Record numbers of Americans cast ballots for each of the candidates, with many more Democrats exercising early and mail-in voting options than Republicans.
According to exit polls, Trump claimed about 18 percent of the vote among Black men and 8 percent among Black women, increases over his performance among both groups in 2016. But Biden held 87 percent of the Black vote, performing better among Black voters than any other demographic group.
And, much like almost every other Democrat since the 1960s, Biden won about 42 percent of the white vote.
Many white voters simply fled the Democratic Party after President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, with a bipartisan collective in Congress pushed through landmark equity-building legislation, and President Richard Nixon coalesced white Republican political support with his "Southern strategy."
While some Democrats, like centrist Bill Clinton, have been able to attract a few more white voters, members of the group have remained a sort of elusive, most-sought voter. But Black voters have consistently proven essential in determining election outcomes and, when Democrats fail, these often disregarded voters appear to top many lists of those who are blamed.
"Just as in 2016, the presidential race is being decided in states where the robust or anemic turnout of people of color will determine the outcome of the election," Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science and director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University, said in a statement. "In close elections, Democrats can maximize the advantage of strong minority support only when those voters turn out in strong enough numbers."
Election cycle after election cycle, give or take a few points, about 90 percent of Black voters back Democrats, said Gillespie, who studies Black political behavior. About two-thirds of Latino and Asian American voters also vote for Democrats. But that strong Democratic advantage is less important if these groups do not show up to vote in high numbers.
For Cheetara Alexander, 34, the sense that this election, this presidential contest, was deeply consequential grew all year.
As a professional violence interrupter, Alexander works to prevent gun violence and murder in some of the Atlanta region's most dangerous and underserved communities. It is the kind of work often overlooked when questions of police misconduct are met with calls for Black Americans to care about so-called Black-on-Black crime.
It is also work that made her particularly attuned to the tolls that unchecked police brutality and the pandemic have exacted on Black Americans. Alexander said the political, policy and rhetorical failures of the White House have been so intense this year that she abandoned her usual plan to vote early. She decided to vote on Election Day.
Cheetara Alexander, 34, is the last to cast her vote at Barack Obama Elementary School in DeKalb County, Ga.Janell Ross / NBC
"There is just too much, too much going on that need not be, too much not happening that should be, to sit this out or even avoid what I had assumed would be crowds on Election Day," Alexander said.
After a long day of work, Alexander arrived at the door of her polling site in DeKalb County, which includes about 10 percent of the city of Atlanta. It was 7:01 p.m. Poll workers there told her they had to close at 7 sharp. She could drive to another DeKalb polling site at Barack Obama Magnet Elementary School of Technology and cast a provisional ballot until 7:45 p.m.
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The polling site at Obama Elementary, already serving two precincts because its multicolor cafeteria and assembly spaces could allow for social distancing, was ordered to remain open until 7:45 p.m. on Election Day because of earlier technical issues that were confirmed to NBC News by two poll workers and an election monitor, a white man in a mask bearing the words "SPEAK LIFE." The extended time meant Alexander got to cast her vote in person, one of the last in metro Atlanta.
When she began to exit at 7:43 p.m., a poll worker offered to snap her picture with Obama's portrait, which hangs, at all times, on the school's front office wall. The former president had done a last swing through Atlanta to motivate Black voters the previous day.
"I didn't plan to be the last vote, but if this Black woman in Georgia winds up being the one that gives that man in the White House his walking papers, that will be just," Alexander said, pantomiming a chef's kiss.
As Alexander spoke, a Black man with a bald head and a gray beard who declined to give his name overheard the conversation and said to no one in particular, "I claim that in the name of the ancestors and the late, great John Lewis."
Lewis, a longtime member of Congress from Georgia and civil rights activist who was nearly killed in the push for Black voting rights, died in July. Trump, unlike many other Republican and Democratic government officials, declined to attend memorial services for Lewis, describing him as "not impressive" and saying, "Nobody has done more for Black Americans than I have."
While many Republicans and Democrats praised Lewis at his death and expressed reverence for his life's work, Republicans in the Senate — including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — have continued to block efforts to restore the intent of elements of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court invalidated in 2013. Now, part of Lewis' district, an Atlanta area that Trump described as "in horrible shape and falling apart," may have delivered key votes to swing Georgia into Biden's column, although NBC News has not called the state for either candidate yet, due to the closeness of the race.
In the days after the election, election officials in the key states of Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina made it clear. The election would, indeed, come down to cities with large Black voter bases and even, possibly, provisional ballots like Alexander's.
But for every Alexander, there are also Black voters disillusioned by American politics.
Brian Keith, 43, a truck driver, is registered to vote in North Carolina. He is in a long-distance relationship with a Black woman who lives and votes in Georgia. That is not the only difference between them.
In the hour before the polls closed at Obama Elementary, he stood in a hallway waiting for his girlfriend to cast her vote. She planned to vote for Biden, Keith said. He skipped the top of the ticket on his own North Carolina ballot and participated in elections for state office on down.
"To me, when people can, one way or another, pump a million dollars into a race, that's just legalized bribery, and so the election becomes a sham," Keith said about congressional and presidential races. "Those folks, whoever wins, are bought and paid for at that level."
Keith described himself as someone who was often offended by things Trump said but who also agrees with some of his ideas and demands. But because of the way national politics has been riddled with donations from wealthy donors and lobbyists, he would not back Trump, either.
"I don't believe either of the parties, either of the candidates," Keith said. "Honestly, if I had my choice, I would coup the federal government, because nobody really helps us, not the average person, not the average Black person, for sure."
The years of organizing led to this moment
Pushing back against narratives like Keith's was the work that organizations like Black Voters Matter took on, years before the 2020 election. Brown and Albright, Abrams and many other grassroots organizers have collectively registered tens of thousands and encouraged many more to vote, while also contending with the reality that Black voters, typically loyal Democratic voters, have a limited list of political and social rewards for their votes, Brown said.
Abrams, who formed the organization, Fair Fight, after narrowly losing her 2018 bid for Georgia governor, declined to comment this week. The organization battled various policies and practices that suppressed the Black vote in Georgia and other states and worked to register about 800,000 new voters since 2018, Abrams told Vogue in an interview published Thursday.
Expanding the electorate to include every eligible person and engaging Black voters is key to creating a more equitable and just country, she has said. Abrams, who lives and votes in Georgia, also insists that she lost her bid to become the country's first Black female governor after her opponent, Brian Kemp, then Georgia's secretary of state, disqualified an unusual number of Black voters. Kemp, a Republican, won the election by 54,723 votes, or 1.3 percent of all the ballots cast. Abrams never conceded the race. Instead, she said at the time, "the law currently allows no further viable remedy."
And Abrams made her feelings about the central role of what she describes as the new American electorate known on Twitter on Friday morning as the work of Georgia vote counters stood on the precipice of deciding the presidential election. The political groundwork she and others did in once-deep-red Georgia was on the verge of turning the state blue.
On election night — before the sweeping and definitive influence of Black voters had seeped into the space of the undeniable for even those uncomfortable with overt discussions of race in politics and those who have made a living decrying "identity politics" since 2016 — Brown had a few moments to reflect. As Brown and her assistant scanned Brown's digital calendar for her remaining election night obligations, Brown described what would come next.
"Having been through the Obama years, I think many of us have learned and are prepared now to demand and keep demanding some policies of significance to the Black community, should there be a Biden administration after tonight," she said. "That, too, is real. That's just where we are."
How Black voters in key cities helped deliver the election for Joe Biden
"The fact that we have matched and topped white voter participation and done that while going through voter suppression in new and old forms every year, we are extraordinary," said organizer LaTosha Brown.
www.nbcnews.com
This is proof’: Biden’s win reveals power of Black voters
By KAT STAFFORD, AARON MORRISON and ANGELIKI KASTANIS
November 9, 2020
In this Nov. 3, 2020, photo, a man wearing a mask gathers with a group in support of Black Voters Matter at the Graham Civic Center polling site in Graham, N.C. Even as votes are still tallied, there's little dispute that Black voters were a driving national force pushing the former vice president to the winner’s column. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)
DETROIT (AP) — Power. Respect. Finally.
When Eric Sheffield first saw Joe Biden take the lead in the vote count in Georgia, the 52-year-old Black man immediately thought about all the years he spent urging his Black friends and family to vote and all the times he saw his preferred candidate lose.
“Over the years, a lot of Black people have said, ‘Well, my vote doesn’t matter,’” the real estate development analyst in Atlanta said Friday. “This is proof that our vote does matter.”
Even as votes are still tallied, there’s little dispute that Black voters were a driving national force pushing the former vice president to the winner’s column. By overwhelmingly backing Biden and showing up in strong numbers, Black voters not only helped deliver familiar battleground states to the Democrat, but they also created a new one in the longtime GOP bastion of Georgia — potentially remaking presidential politics for years to come.
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Activists pointed to the results as a repudiation of the racist rhetoric of President Donald Trump and an endorsement of Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris, the first Black woman on a major party presidential ticket, as his running mate. But they also credited their years of work organizing voters and signaled they intended to seek a return on their investment.
“We saw this early — we believed in us,” said Maurice Mitchell, a Movement for Black Lives strategist and national director of the Working Families Party — a progressive multiracial grassroots effort. “We believed in the power of Black voters and Black organizers in our movement.”
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Black voters made up 11% of the national electorate, and 9 in 10 of them supported Biden, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide. Both figures are about on par with 2016, when Democrat Hillary Clinton also overwhelmingly won Black voters’ support but fell short of winning the White House, according to Pew Research Center estimates.
But when compared to Clinton, Biden drew more voters in critical areas with large Black populations. In Wayne County, Michigan, which includes Detroit, and in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Biden added to his vote totals and his margins compared to Clinton, while Trump’s votes failed to match the Democratic gains. The increase in the Democratic vote in Milwaukee, about 28,000 votes, was more than the 20,000-vote lead Biden had in the state.
While votes are still being counted in Philadelphia, Biden had not surpassed Clinton’s 2016 total vote tally in the county. Still, he received at least 93% of the vote in the city’s wards where more than 75% of the population is Black, according to an Associated Press analysis.
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But perhaps the most striking evidence for the influence of Black voters was in Georgia, where Biden’s slim edge could make him the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the Republican stronghold in nearly three decades. The AP has not called that race.
So far, the Democrat has added 588,600 voters in Georgia compared to Clinton’s tally in 2016, while Trump saw an increase of only 366,900. Almost half of Biden’s gains came from the four largest counties — Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett and Cobb — all in the Atlanta metro area with large Black populations.
Biden acknowledged Black voters’ role during his victory speech Saturday night, noting the “African American community stood up again for me.”
Full Coverage: Race and ethnicity
“You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours,” he said.
In 2008 and 2012, Black voters showed up in record numbers for Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president — setting a new high bar. But Black voter turnout dropped significantly in key cities in 2016, prompting debate within the party about why and a feeling among Black voters that they were being blamed for Trump’s victory.
But as Biden declared his candidacy and was competitive in the Democratic primary, it was Black voters in states such as South Carolina, Virginia and Alabama who aligned with the former vice president and helped him win the nomination.
The choice of Biden was a source of tension within the party — particularly among progressive activists who were critical of his role in the passage of federal criminal justice legislation in the 1990s that lengthened sentences for violent crimes, helped fill prisons and flooded Black communities with police officers. Others in the party were unhappy with his positions on health care, climate change and economic policy.
Polling suggests those tensions did not hurt Biden in the end. Black Biden voters were much more likely than other Biden voters — especially those who were white — to say they were casting their ballots for the Democrat rather than against Trump, according to AP VoteCast.
For many Black women, Biden’s choice of Harris, who will be the first Black woman and the first South Asian woman to hold the vice presidency, made their votes an extension of the legacy of civil rights workers Fannie Lou Hamer and Shirley Chisholm.
“This literally is what our ancestors have fought and died for — the freedom, liberation and survival that they knew they would never live to see, but they knew that it was so important for generations to come,” said Alencia Johnson, a political strategist and Biden adviser.
Behind that sentiment was massive voter mobilization.
Black Voters Matter Fund targeted more than 15 states, sending a fleet of buses on road trips across the nation. In Georgia alone, they reached more than 500,000 voters and sent nearly 2 million text messages.
The effort was helped in that state by implementation of statewide automatic registration when voters obtain or renew state IDs. Black voter registrations increased by 40% in both Fulton and Gwinnett counties, according to the Georgia secretary of state. The increase in the growing counties outpaced the 6% increase in the Black population over the same time period.
Turnout may also have been boosted by new rules making it easier to vote during the pandemic. After many Black voters experienced long lines during primary elections in Georgia and Wisconsin, many were motivated to take advantage of mail-in and early voting options, helping Biden’s campaign bank those votes early.
Fair Fight, the voting rights group founded by Stacey Abrams, launched widespread voter education efforts and pushed back aggressively against GOP-led efforts to limit mail voting. Abrams, a former candidate for Georgia governor, said she saw the election as a critical moment to try to “mitigate harm” done under the Trump administration.
“It’s one of those few moments where we have this power to shape the future for ourselves, to insist upon at least attention to our plight,” she said. “And to demand behavior that meets this notion that we have as a nation that there should be justice for all.”
Organizers and activists are now pivoting to plans to hold Biden accountable for promises of economic investment, tackling systemic racism, policing reforms and improved health care.
The Rev. William Barber II, a civil rights leader, said he expects Black poverty — a rate of 18.8% worsened by the coronavirus pandemic — to be an immediate priority for a Biden administration.
“We’ll be expecting follow-through,” said Barber, a leader of the Poor People’s Campaign. “Biden needs to have a 50-day strategy, not a 100-day strategy, for addressing the issues.”
Swift action on Biden’s agenda, however, will be impossible without Democratic control of the Senate. That could be determined by the outcome of two Georgia runoff elections on Jan. 5.
Activists said they intended to keep up momentum and expected a flood of attention and money, giving Black voters another chance to demonstrate their power.
“We are going to put everything we have into them, just as much, if not more, than the presidential,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund. “The choice is clear and we don’t have a choice to sit this one out, and we’re going to highlight the fierce urgency of it.”
___
Morrison reported from New York; Kastanis reported from Los Angeles. Polling reporter Hannah Fingerhut in Washington also contributed to this report.
apnews.com
By KAT STAFFORD, AARON MORRISON and ANGELIKI KASTANIS
November 9, 2020
In this Nov. 3, 2020, photo, a man wearing a mask gathers with a group in support of Black Voters Matter at the Graham Civic Center polling site in Graham, N.C. Even as votes are still tallied, there's little dispute that Black voters were a driving national force pushing the former vice president to the winner’s column. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)
DETROIT (AP) — Power. Respect. Finally.
When Eric Sheffield first saw Joe Biden take the lead in the vote count in Georgia, the 52-year-old Black man immediately thought about all the years he spent urging his Black friends and family to vote and all the times he saw his preferred candidate lose.
“Over the years, a lot of Black people have said, ‘Well, my vote doesn’t matter,’” the real estate development analyst in Atlanta said Friday. “This is proof that our vote does matter.”
Even as votes are still tallied, there’s little dispute that Black voters were a driving national force pushing the former vice president to the winner’s column. By overwhelmingly backing Biden and showing up in strong numbers, Black voters not only helped deliver familiar battleground states to the Democrat, but they also created a new one in the longtime GOP bastion of Georgia — potentially remaking presidential politics for years to come.
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Activists pointed to the results as a repudiation of the racist rhetoric of President Donald Trump and an endorsement of Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris, the first Black woman on a major party presidential ticket, as his running mate. But they also credited their years of work organizing voters and signaled they intended to seek a return on their investment.
“We saw this early — we believed in us,” said Maurice Mitchell, a Movement for Black Lives strategist and national director of the Working Families Party — a progressive multiracial grassroots effort. “We believed in the power of Black voters and Black organizers in our movement.”
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Black voters made up 11% of the national electorate, and 9 in 10 of them supported Biden, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide. Both figures are about on par with 2016, when Democrat Hillary Clinton also overwhelmingly won Black voters’ support but fell short of winning the White House, according to Pew Research Center estimates.
But when compared to Clinton, Biden drew more voters in critical areas with large Black populations. In Wayne County, Michigan, which includes Detroit, and in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Biden added to his vote totals and his margins compared to Clinton, while Trump’s votes failed to match the Democratic gains. The increase in the Democratic vote in Milwaukee, about 28,000 votes, was more than the 20,000-vote lead Biden had in the state.
While votes are still being counted in Philadelphia, Biden had not surpassed Clinton’s 2016 total vote tally in the county. Still, he received at least 93% of the vote in the city’s wards where more than 75% of the population is Black, according to an Associated Press analysis.
ADVERTISEMENT
But perhaps the most striking evidence for the influence of Black voters was in Georgia, where Biden’s slim edge could make him the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the Republican stronghold in nearly three decades. The AP has not called that race.
So far, the Democrat has added 588,600 voters in Georgia compared to Clinton’s tally in 2016, while Trump saw an increase of only 366,900. Almost half of Biden’s gains came from the four largest counties — Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett and Cobb — all in the Atlanta metro area with large Black populations.
Biden acknowledged Black voters’ role during his victory speech Saturday night, noting the “African American community stood up again for me.”
Full Coverage: Race and ethnicity
“You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours,” he said.
In 2008 and 2012, Black voters showed up in record numbers for Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president — setting a new high bar. But Black voter turnout dropped significantly in key cities in 2016, prompting debate within the party about why and a feeling among Black voters that they were being blamed for Trump’s victory.
But as Biden declared his candidacy and was competitive in the Democratic primary, it was Black voters in states such as South Carolina, Virginia and Alabama who aligned with the former vice president and helped him win the nomination.
The choice of Biden was a source of tension within the party — particularly among progressive activists who were critical of his role in the passage of federal criminal justice legislation in the 1990s that lengthened sentences for violent crimes, helped fill prisons and flooded Black communities with police officers. Others in the party were unhappy with his positions on health care, climate change and economic policy.
Polling suggests those tensions did not hurt Biden in the end. Black Biden voters were much more likely than other Biden voters — especially those who were white — to say they were casting their ballots for the Democrat rather than against Trump, according to AP VoteCast.
For many Black women, Biden’s choice of Harris, who will be the first Black woman and the first South Asian woman to hold the vice presidency, made their votes an extension of the legacy of civil rights workers Fannie Lou Hamer and Shirley Chisholm.
“This literally is what our ancestors have fought and died for — the freedom, liberation and survival that they knew they would never live to see, but they knew that it was so important for generations to come,” said Alencia Johnson, a political strategist and Biden adviser.
Behind that sentiment was massive voter mobilization.
Black Voters Matter Fund targeted more than 15 states, sending a fleet of buses on road trips across the nation. In Georgia alone, they reached more than 500,000 voters and sent nearly 2 million text messages.
The effort was helped in that state by implementation of statewide automatic registration when voters obtain or renew state IDs. Black voter registrations increased by 40% in both Fulton and Gwinnett counties, according to the Georgia secretary of state. The increase in the growing counties outpaced the 6% increase in the Black population over the same time period.
Turnout may also have been boosted by new rules making it easier to vote during the pandemic. After many Black voters experienced long lines during primary elections in Georgia and Wisconsin, many were motivated to take advantage of mail-in and early voting options, helping Biden’s campaign bank those votes early.
Fair Fight, the voting rights group founded by Stacey Abrams, launched widespread voter education efforts and pushed back aggressively against GOP-led efforts to limit mail voting. Abrams, a former candidate for Georgia governor, said she saw the election as a critical moment to try to “mitigate harm” done under the Trump administration.
“It’s one of those few moments where we have this power to shape the future for ourselves, to insist upon at least attention to our plight,” she said. “And to demand behavior that meets this notion that we have as a nation that there should be justice for all.”
Organizers and activists are now pivoting to plans to hold Biden accountable for promises of economic investment, tackling systemic racism, policing reforms and improved health care.
The Rev. William Barber II, a civil rights leader, said he expects Black poverty — a rate of 18.8% worsened by the coronavirus pandemic — to be an immediate priority for a Biden administration.
“We’ll be expecting follow-through,” said Barber, a leader of the Poor People’s Campaign. “Biden needs to have a 50-day strategy, not a 100-day strategy, for addressing the issues.”
Swift action on Biden’s agenda, however, will be impossible without Democratic control of the Senate. That could be determined by the outcome of two Georgia runoff elections on Jan. 5.
Activists said they intended to keep up momentum and expected a flood of attention and money, giving Black voters another chance to demonstrate their power.
“We are going to put everything we have into them, just as much, if not more, than the presidential,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund. “The choice is clear and we don’t have a choice to sit this one out, and we’re going to highlight the fierce urgency of it.”
___
Morrison reported from New York; Kastanis reported from Los Angeles. Polling reporter Hannah Fingerhut in Washington also contributed to this report.
'This is proof': Biden's win reveals power of Black voters
DETROIT (AP) — Power. Respect. Finally. When Eric Sheffield first saw Joe Biden take the lead in the vote count in Georgia, the 52-year-old Black man immediately thought about all the years he spent urging his Black friends and family to vote and all the times he saw his preferred candidate lose.
apnews.com
Last edited:
How Black voters in key cities helped deliver the election for Joe Biden
"The fact that we have matched and topped white voter participation and done that while going through voter suppression in new and old forms every year, we are extraordinary," said organizer LaTosha Brown.
Joe Biden attends a service at Morris Brown AME Church in Charleston, S.C., on July 7, 2019.Demetrius Freeman / NYT via Redux file
Nov. 7, 2020, 5:24 PM EST
By Janell Ross
ATLANTA — In the way that one could on election night 2020, LaTosha Brown was making the rounds.
She was in a suite near the top of a luxury hotel so close to the airport that the balcony view overlooked a Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport airplane parking lot. Also there was Cliff Albright, who, with Brown, co-founded the voter mobilization organization Black Voters Matter.
After a Google Hangout with the field directors they had hired to register, engage and boost voter participation around the country, Brown sequestered herself in a bedroom, resting her body in a hotel chair, her tired feet — by then stripped to the socks — on the bed.
Between bites of food and watching election returns turn bits of the national map red or blue, Brown juggled calls, internet video sessions and texts, in each countering the conventional wisdom with journalists, political operatives and others that the election would come down to Donald Trump's mythical all-white suburbs filled with stay-at-home moms or Joe Biden's ability to convert them. Instead, it was decided in racially diverse urban centers and increasingly diverse suburbs in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia.
The Black people who make up 39 percent or more of the population in those areas chose Biden, with some exceptions. In fact, once the vote counts from Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee and Atlanta started to near completion, Trump's lead in their respective states disappeared. Biden — who would not have been the Democratic presidential nominee without Black voters in South Carolina — reached 270 Electoral College votes in large part because of Black voters in these cities.
Biden thanks Black supporters: ‘You’ve always had my back and I’ll have yours’
NOV. 7, 202000:42
But within minutes of starting an interview with the CBC/Radio-Canada, Brown ran headlong into the conventional and dismissive wisdom about American politics that conceives of white voters as more important or legitimate than Black and brown ones. It was the logic that perceives Black voters as an eternal problem rather than the solution.
"I would say that we have long participated at extraordinary levels and have to overcome extraordinary hurdles to do so," Brown said in that way a woman speaks when she aims to appear calm on the surface but is seething inside. The interviewer had dismissed the work of Brown, Albright, Georgia politician and organizer Stacey Abrams and many others who have registered and motivated voters for years, literally expanding the electorate and creating new swing states. In the interviewer's framing, Black Americans "have historically low turnout," so was that work really wise?
People march and celebrate after Joe Biden was projected to have won the presidential election Saturday.Eduardo Munoz / Reuters
Brown said: "The fact that we have caught up with white voters, white women in particular, who have historically reaped all the benefits of voting and even any slight level of political engagement, who can't get pollsters and parties to stop targeting them, to me says that we are extraordinary. The fact that we have matched and topped white voter participation and done that while going through voter suppression in new and old forms every year, we are extraordinary. That's what I know."
When the interview ended, Brown turned to say: "She wasn't ready for that. The truth. Don't ask me why Black voter turnout is consistently low when nothing could be further than the clear and obvious truth."
In the weeks before the election, about 63 percent of Black voters and 73 percent of white voters told Pew Research Center pollsters that they were "extremely motivated to vote in the General Election." About 54 percent of Latino and Asian voters said the same. In Georgia during the primary season, many voters, particularly Black voters, waited eight hours or more to participate. A surge in early and mail voting and other measures taken by Georgia's Republican secretary of state prevented a repeat on Election Day.
Picking presidents
If Brown's was the voice that may have reset the understanding of anyone watching BET or listening to CBC/Radio-Canada on election night, for others the truth about the election and how it was won arrived the next day in the poetic language of the Black church pulpit, when the Rev. Steve Bland Jr., pastor of Liberty Temple Baptist Church, spoke to MSNBC. He stood just outside Detroit's TCF Center, where Wayne County election officials tallied votes.
"As goes Detroit, will be done so ..." said Bland, wearing a black baseball cap with the words "Faith Over Fear." "We will determine the outcome, because we've gone from picking cotton to picking
The accuracy of his assessment only grew clearer as Election Day stretched into Election Week.
Initial voting data and exit polls point to a few patterns: Record numbers of Americans cast ballots for each of the candidates, with many more Democrats exercising early and mail-in voting options than Republicans.
According to exit polls, Trump claimed about 18 percent of the vote among Black men and 8 percent among Black women, increases over his performance among both groups in 2016. But Biden held 87 percent of the Black vote, performing better among Black voters than any other demographic group.
And, much like almost every other Democrat since the 1960s, Biden won about 42 percent of the white vote.
Many white voters simply fled the Democratic Party after President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, with a bipartisan collective in Congress pushed through landmark equity-building legislation, and President Richard Nixon coalesced white Republican political support with his "Southern strategy."
While some Democrats, like centrist Bill Clinton, have been able to attract a few more white voters, members of the group have remained a sort of elusive, most-sought voter. But Black voters have consistently proven essential in determining election outcomes and, when Democrats fail, these often disregarded voters appear to top many lists of those who are blamed.
"Just as in 2016, the presidential race is being decided in states where the robust or anemic turnout of people of color will determine the outcome of the election," Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science and director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University, said in a statement. "In close elections, Democrats can maximize the advantage of strong minority support only when those voters turn out in strong enough numbers."
Election cycle after election cycle, give or take a few points, about 90 percent of Black voters back Democrats, said Gillespie, who studies Black political behavior. About two-thirds of Latino and Asian American voters also vote for Democrats. But that strong Democratic advantage is less important if these groups do not show up to vote in high numbers.
For Cheetara Alexander, 34, the sense that this election, this presidential contest, was deeply consequential grew all year.
As a professional violence interrupter, Alexander works to prevent gun violence and murder in some of the Atlanta region's most dangerous and underserved communities. It is the kind of work often overlooked when questions of police misconduct are met with calls for Black Americans to care about so-called Black-on-Black crime.
It is also work that made her particularly attuned to the tolls that unchecked police brutality and the pandemic have exacted on Black Americans. Alexander said the political, policy and rhetorical failures of the White House have been so intense this year that she abandoned her usual plan to vote early. She decided to vote on Election Day.
Cheetara Alexander, 34, is the last to cast her vote at Barack Obama Elementary School in DeKalb County, Ga.Janell Ross / NBC
"There is just too much, too much going on that need not be, too much not happening that should be, to sit this out or even avoid what I had assumed would be crowds on Election Day," Alexander said.
After a long day of work, Alexander arrived at the door of her polling site in DeKalb County, which includes about 10 percent of the city of Atlanta. It was 7:01 p.m. Poll workers there told her they had to close at 7 sharp. She could drive to another DeKalb polling site at Barack Obama Magnet Elementary School of Technology and cast a provisional ballot until 7:45 p.m.
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The polling site at Obama Elementary, already serving two precincts because its multicolor cafeteria and assembly spaces could allow for social distancing, was ordered to remain open until 7:45 p.m. on Election Day because of earlier technical issues that were confirmed to NBC News by two poll workers and an election monitor, a white man in a mask bearing the words "SPEAK LIFE." The extended time meant Alexander got to cast her vote in person, one of the last in metro Atlanta.
When she began to exit at 7:43 p.m., a poll worker offered to snap her picture with Obama's portrait, which hangs, at all times, on the school's front office wall. The former president had done a last swing through Atlanta to motivate Black voters the previous day.
"I didn't plan to be the last vote, but if this Black woman in Georgia winds up being the one that gives that man in the White House his walking papers, that will be just," Alexander said, pantomiming a chef's kiss.
As Alexander spoke, a Black man with a bald head and a gray beard who declined to give his name overheard the conversation and said to no one in particular, "I claim that in the name of the ancestors and the late, great John Lewis."
Lewis, a longtime member of Congress from Georgia and civil rights activist who was nearly killed in the push for Black voting rights, died in July. Trump, unlike many other Republican and Democratic government officials, declined to attend memorial services for Lewis, describing him as "not impressive" and saying, "Nobody has done more for Black Americans than I have."
While many Republicans and Democrats praised Lewis at his death and expressed reverence for his life's work, Republicans in the Senate — including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — have continued to block efforts to restore the intent of elements of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court invalidated in 2013. Now, part of Lewis' district, an Atlanta area that Trump described as "in horrible shape and falling apart," may have delivered key votes to swing Georgia into Biden's column, although NBC News has not called the state for either candidate yet, due to the closeness of the race.
In the days after the election, election officials in the key states of Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina made it clear. The election would, indeed, come down to cities with large Black voter bases and even, possibly, provisional ballots like Alexander's.
But for every Alexander, there are also Black voters disillusioned by American politics.
Brian Keith, 43, a truck driver, is registered to vote in North Carolina. He is in a long-distance relationship with a Black woman who lives and votes in Georgia. That is not the only difference between them.
In the hour before the polls closed at Obama Elementary, he stood in a hallway waiting for his girlfriend to cast her vote. She planned to vote for Biden, Keith said. He skipped the top of the ticket on his own North Carolina ballot and participated in elections for state office on down.
"To me, when people can, one way or another, pump a million dollars into a race, that's just legalized bribery, and so the election becomes a sham," Keith said about congressional and presidential races. "Those folks, whoever wins, are bought and paid for at that level."
Keith described himself as someone who was often offended by things Trump said but who also agrees with some of his ideas and demands. But because of the way national politics has been riddled with donations from wealthy donors and lobbyists, he would not back Trump, either.
"I don't believe either of the parties, either of the candidates," Keith said. "Honestly, if I had my choice, I would coup the federal government, because nobody really helps us, not the average person, not the average Black person, for sure."
The years of organizing led to this moment
Pushing back against narratives like Keith's was the work that organizations like Black Voters Matter took on, years before the 2020 election. Brown and Albright, Abrams and many other grassroots organizers have collectively registered tens of thousands and encouraged many more to vote, while also contending with the reality that Black voters, typically loyal Democratic voters, have a limited list of political and social rewards for their votes, Brown said.
Abrams, who formed the organization, Fair Fight, after narrowly losing her 2018 bid for Georgia governor, declined to comment this week. The organization battled various policies and practices that suppressed the Black vote in Georgia and other states and worked to register about 800,000 new voters since 2018, Abrams told Vogue in an interview published Thursday.
Expanding the electorate to include every eligible person and engaging Black voters is key to creating a more equitable and just country, she has said. Abrams, who lives and votes in Georgia, also insists that she lost her bid to become the country's first Black female governor after her opponent, Brian Kemp, then Georgia's secretary of state, disqualified an unusual number of Black voters. Kemp, a Republican, won the election by 54,723 votes, or 1.3 percent of all the ballots cast. Abrams never conceded the race. Instead, she said at the time, "the law currently allows no further viable remedy."
And Abrams made her feelings about the central role of what she describes as the new American electorate known on Twitter on Friday morning as the work of Georgia vote counters stood on the precipice of deciding the presidential election. The political groundwork she and others did in once-deep-red Georgia was on the verge of turning the state blue.
On election night — before the sweeping and definitive influence of Black voters had seeped into the space of the undeniable for even those uncomfortable with overt discussions of race in politics and those who have made a living decrying "identity politics" since 2016 — Brown had a few moments to reflect. As Brown and her assistant scanned Brown's digital calendar for her remaining election night obligations, Brown described what would come next.
"Having been through the Obama years, I think many of us have learned and are prepared now to demand and keep demanding some policies of significance to the Black community, should there be a Biden administration after tonight," she said. "That, too, is real. That's just where we are."
How Black voters in key cities helped deliver the election for Joe Biden
"The fact that we have matched and topped white voter participation and done that while going through voter suppression in new and old forms every year, we are extraordinary," said organizer LaTosha Brown.
she's thanking the same JOHN LEWIS that punkass loser Tyreek insulted and some of y'all were laughing along with it !!
They are only saying that in certain states. Other states they are saying keep counting lol lol...
wtf?
That really is his speech pattern, and he even started moving his hands like Trump towards the end of the video.
Lets not forget he literally got caught doing this in the early 90's when he called a reporter under a pseudonym to hype himself up.
I can’t breathe!!!! LMBAOOOO!!!!
sidenote: say mayne, did you ever get your van and glock back?
That really is his speech pattern, and he even started moving his hands like Trump towards the end of the video.
Lets not forget he literally got caught doing this in the early 90's when he called a reporter under a pseudonym to hype himself up.
We went from Obama winning Nobel Prizes to trumps bitch ass in disguise on Fox. Fuck cacs
Alright fellas, it's not real. I was just fucking with y'all. I came across this on my Twitter feed and cracked the fuck up.
It is a real video, but it isn't Chump. Well it is his audio, the video itself was supposedly a woman but someone added Chump's audio to the video and masked his voice.
Check the comments on the Tweet.
It is a real video, but it isn't Chump. Well it is his audio, the video itself was supposedly a woman but someone added Chump's audio to the video and masked his voice.
Check the comments on the Tweet.
The fact that you even have to tell us this shows how far we've fallen.
My fav pic
Trump loyalists elevated to powerful roles at the Pentagon after firing of Defense Secretary Esper
The Pentagon on Tuesday elevated Trump loyalists to powerful positions a day after the sudden termination of Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.www.cnbc.com
Get ready..
What’s this pic
Seems like Trump is on some bullshit.Similar threads
