Minority leader in 2018 she became the democratic nominee for governor of georgia, when she won more votes than any other democrat in the states history. I was fortunate to join her Gubernatorial Campaign as an intern. I saw firsthand the strength and power of collective voices. Leader abrams was the first black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in the u. S. After witnessing the gross mismanagement by the secretary of states office, leader abrams launched fair fight to ensure every voter had a voice. I was inspired to join the fight for Fair Election as a campus manager for the Morehouse College campus, to ensure that the voices of College Students are heard in every election, by way of their most sacred and fundamental right as a citizen, their boat. Their vote. Leader abrams has found it multiple organizations devoted to Voting Rights and helping people of color and tackling social issues at the state and national levels. To ensure that the 2020 census is fair, accurate and counts everyone. She is a lifetime member of the council on foreign relations. The 2012 recipient of the new frontier award. Leader abrams has also written a written eight romantic novels. In addition to lead from the outside, a guidebook on making real change. Leader abrams received a degree from spellman college, the lbj school of Public Affairs at the university of texas and yale law school. Please join me as we welcome to our school, our speaker for the evening, leader stacey abrams. [applause] leader stacey abrams. [applause] ms. Abrams thank you. I would say you look good, but i can see almost nothing. [laughter] ms. Abrams but you feel good, so thank you. Much for the honor of being here today. To speak about not only the legacy of dr. King, but the future of his dream. My favorite speech by dr. King is not the i have a dream speech. My favorite speech was when he delivered on mothers day in 1966 in south carolina. It was a speech called march on ballot boxes. Yes,s a speech that said, we achieved a specific goal of getting the right to vote after centuries of trying. 15th and 16th amendment was made real through the Voting Rights act of 1965. And yet, the power was not real. The capacity to change our lives was not real unless we marched on ballot boxes. Boxes was aballot phrase i did not learn until a few years ago. I havebeen an ethos lived with most of my life. I am the daughter of two civil rights activists. Their names will appear in almost no history books because they were teenagers in mississippi during the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. They were teenagers that understood something was wrong in our country. My parents grew up in mississippi, hattiesburg. It, head likes to put grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and my mom grew up on the wrong side of the wrong side of the tracks. They were bounded together by race, by region, and also by racism that had been denying themselves access and opportunities for generations. 16 my age of 15 and parents understood that they had the responsibility to secure the right to vote. At the time, the right to vote would not be made real until they were 21. We had not got the 25th amendment yet. My parents understood the right to vote was tied to their right to opportunity. They helped register voters throughout hattiesburg, mississippi. My dad got caught and was arrested. My mom did the same but was smart enough not to get caught. Together they believed their actions were necessary, their actions were ordained. In 2018 i stood for governor of georgia. Despitefor governor coming from a family that had best been called working poor. I stood despite having a mother who was the only one of her seven siblings to finish high school. A father who was dyslexic. To finishh he managed high school and was the first man in his family to go to college, my father was denied access to real opportunity because dyslexia was treated as him being another dumb black kid. My father made his way to college and my parents made their way to wisconsin. They moved back to mississippi, armed with degrees in opportunities they believed could change their future. Yet, my mother was a College Library and who still sometimes made less money than the janitor who cleaned the college. Herpower does not entitle to equity. My father, despite being a brilliant man who studied history, and is one of the smartest people i know, because he cannot read and his dyslexia that went undiagnosed until he was 30, he was denied access to a job in an office. He worked on the shipyards. Noble work, but not the work he wanted. In a single generation my parents went from us being the we went from genteel poverty to being the progeny of parents who produced my older sister, who is a phd and cultural anthropology. A firstr leslie is black woman to be a federal judge in the state of georgia. Is a lot of there us, you might want to hold on. My parents were very prolific with their childbearing. [laughter] ms. Abrams my brother richard who works in social working and helps those who are left out and left behind. My brother walter who is figuring out something too. And my little sister janine who has a phd in microbiology. Mya single generation parents viewed what came as dr. King stream to create opportunity for their children that they could never have imagined. I decided to become the first black woman to get the nomination for governor in the history of the United States of america for a major party. [applause] and yet, as jordan did his very kind introduction, he did not call me governor abrams. There are reasons for that that we can talk about, but there is a court issue that i have focused on since that election. Not aboutare candidates winning office. That is what we have been taught to believe. Elections are not about candidates. Elections are about the people. Andt their dreams, hopes aspirations. About their identity and a politics that render their identities of poison as opposed to a prompt. In the time i stood for office, iran my campaign that if you centered communities of color and talked to the needs of the marginalized and disadvantaged, that you could resonate with communities that did not see themselves in the body of politics. I believe my responsibility was not simply to get a job, but to do the work. So i ran a campaign that tried to have conversations everywhere. I started my campaign in albany, georgia, but i found myself in the area where they filmed deliverance. I went to communities that had never seen a candidate and communities that did not want to see me. My marching on ballot boxes meant that i could not only talk to those who already agreed with me. The promise of our nation is not made real by only talking to those who show up, and its talking to those who dont believe they have a right to be there. Talking to those who see themselves as less than the cousin have been lied to by politicians. Because the votings rights act was gutted not because racism is dead, but because racists are getting more power. We live in a time where we have the responsibility not simply to march on ballot boxes, but to make those marches make sent make those boxes make sense and make them real. To make the policies that lift up our communities, not tear us apart and tear us down. I ran for governor because i thought i had something to say. I ran for governor because i makingto do the work of the promise of hope real. It did not work. In the aftermath i had a few days off. Between election day and my nonconcession day. On november 6 i stood up at a podium where people waited to hear the results of the election, only the Associated Press had not called a decision because of the malfeasance and incompetence and concerns that had run rampant through the state of georgia around our election. Because they cannot say for certain who had won, my responsibility was not to go downstairs and say oh well, my job was to go to the ballroom, stand at that podium and say i would keep fighting until every vote was counted. Myselfwas not to make governor, my job was to make my promises real. I promised to make sure people would be heard. Over the next 10 days we did our best. We filed lawsuits and sent people to all 159 counties to ensure provisional ballots were counted. Collecting stories of people being purged from the roll. Including a young woman at the age of 92 who is a cousin of dr. King. Place and the polling was told that since voting since 1968, for the first time her name was not on the roll. She was told she did not exist for the purposes of our election, even though she could tell you how that election came to be. Across the state of georgia we talked to folks because we wanted them to know the election was not about whether i won, it was about whether they were heard. And we found out they would not be heard. Some because they never made it to the starting line. Having been held hostage by a system called exact match, that the Obama Justice department that the Obama Administration told the Justice Department should not be used. Purged frompeople the rolls and precincts were shutdown. Done estimates that between 60,000 georgians cannot be heard in the 2018 election because the place for them to vote was too far away. Something that seems small and insignificant to those of us with cars and Public Transit becomes an impossible barrier when the only precinct is 10 miles away and you have a car. Or worse, when your job is to hours away and you dont get time off to vote. They let you have the time, but they take your money. That is not real. I spent a lot of time thinking about what could happen if i did not become governor. With all due respect to the jewish population, there is a term i learned while i was in law school. The notion of mourning. Not simply being upset and saddened by the passage of a loved one, but really sitting with that and understanding why the hurt is so deep, why the anger is social wrong, why the grief is overwhelming. I like to think that for that so iteriod i sat took 10 days instead of seven. As i wentt time, through what we were fighting for and i heard the reports day lawsuits. We won four thatlize that winning fight did not necessarily mean winning that election. My job, the job that i learn watching and listening and learning about the Civil Rights Movement was recognizing that victory to his not mean you get what you want. The wet john lewis and Maynard Jackson and others have taught us with their words and actions is sometimes the fight is enough. Sometimes the fight is the victory. Desperatelynt most is for us to shut up and sit down. So in those 10 days, i discovered that in addition to the seven stages of grief, there were there was an eighth stage no one told me about. I like to call it plotting. I started thinking about what could i do to do the work of justice. State. He work of the to do the work i struggled so hard for almost two years to convince people to let me try. If i could not be the governor, could i do the work without the title . The answer is, you cannot do that much. Its helpful to have the budget and the office and a really nice house. But you can do something. So my first something was called fair fight. I believed i could expand on the work that i did in Spelman College in 1991, when i march in 1992. L call their work i did as a student registering people to vote for the 1992 elections, as one of the happiest 18yearold in america because i could vote for the first time. Following my friends and trying to get them to sign up to vote, then coming back in training get them to pick my candidate. The work i did that took me to austria as part of the Youth Civic Engagement workshop to wee people understand how could make it real and engage communities that felt left out. Their fight is not new for me. It is a new name and new project and has more money than i did when i was in college. The mission is the same. The mission is the mission my parents raised me to understand when they took me and my five siblings to vote. Only trailed outside of the voting booth. Aswe watched every election they went in and voted. Fair fight is about ensuring that Voter Suppression finally meets its end in america. A fight we have been fighting since the inception of this nation, when black people recalled 3 5 of humans. Technically is that we counted for three out of every five. They countedty is, our bodies but not our souls. Voter suppression existed when you looked at the language and it not only desecrates the notion of being black, the indians cannot be counted if they are not taxed. Even though we had taken their land, they were not allowed to be a part of the nation that they preserved and build. Americansfrican became citizens, technically under the 13th amendment, native americans did not get citizenship in the u. S. Until 1924. As a nation, we have had a long history of Voter Suppression. Of saying only certain communities are worthy of being heard, and only certain ideas are granted access. Fair fight is about saying for the first time in the 21st century that that cannot stand. That we will not allow our voices to be silenced as our democracy changes, as our nation changes. We have the obligation to demand more from our leadership. Time, ing my shiva decided to launch an like the Civil Rights Movement had. That would move us where we needed to go in 2020. I started fair fight 2020 to make sure Voter Protection is in aace in every state that is swing state for the presidency, u. S. Senate, and down ballot races like secretary of state. That is the work we are doing. [applause] ms. Abrams as i said, i had 10 days. I came up with an Organization Called fair count. Of us whothose believe in progress and look to the work of dr. King, forget he did more work after 1965. We forget the poor peoples campaign. We forget his conversations about who we are and who we can be. And the senses is one of the most important instruments for telling that story. Yet, for so many reasons we pretend that we just remembered it every 10 years. Is the notion of the senses a counting of who we are as america. It is a story that we tell. My the first time in lifetime, stories are intentionally trying to lie about the answer. The Citizenship Question that tries to terrify the only latinos, but asianamericans, blacks, communities of color, communities of immigrants, attempting to force people into the shadows is telling a lie about who we are. This is a town of americans. Anyone who is here needs to be counted. Anyone within our borders and on our sure. Because of the story we tell we allocate 1. 5 trillion every year to those communities. Our school districts, to our hospitals, to our roads. We decide whether communities are lifted up or whether they because we down count prisoners where they are incarcerated and not where they come from. The senses decides whether or forward as a nation, or whether we stagnate and move backward. It also allocates political power for the next decade. It is not just about our congressional districts, although that is critical. Our School Boards are decided by the census. Our county commissions and city councils. The Electoral College votes allocated comes from the census. An Electoral College that is nothing more in the joining together of racism and classes and to create something that is an abomination to the notion of democracy. [applause] ms. Abrams i started a group called fair count because we are committed to ensuring that hard to count communities are counted in the 2020 census. We started in georgia, focusing on the fact that in georgia, the likely undercount of black people would cost over state 300 million per year. If we go nationwide, the cost is numeral. ,ut the opportunities are great if we do the work. If we count black and brown bodies, if we count our children, if we reach out to communities that will be cut off because the census is done online and they dont have access to the internet. Our is why our Industry Organization is putting in wifi to ensure that no matter where you live, you have access to the 2020 census. [applause] in fair count we Just Launched with Ayanna Pressley in massachusetts. We will go anywhere we are called, because i believe the census is a story of our future. We have to stop treating it as an event and treating it as a project. We have to think about it in 2020 one on we are portioned, 21 when they updated and planning 33. 2030 and 20 we have to believe we deserve to be a part of america, because if we are not counted, we do not count. Startedd organization i was called the southern Economic Advancement project. It is one of the closest that adheres to the call of dr. King. I hear about progressive policies and space were they have leadership that wants to see progress. I have these arguments with my friends who live in the north or the midwest, or on the east coast, who live on the west coast and say, you are not progressive because you are not pushing for this. I say i am trying to get this. I cannot fight for all when i cannot get some. One of our responsibility, especially in the deep south and southern regions, is to recognize progress belongs to us as well. We are just starting a little further behind the finish line. I started an organization because i believe that we can translate progress into something. That we can fight for change buying knowledge and the bridges that need to be built between idea and action. By investing in the small groups that do work, like helping the incarcerated get banking access when they get out. To talk about black farmers losing up to 90 of the land. Who liveg young people in the poorest parts of our state and were never asked about their future. We are going to do the work of policy because that is the work of justice. Where do we go from here . We go forward. 16, when inovember stood at another podium and said that i acknowledged the election, i also sent i cannot condone a system, that on its face, is wrong. If it is not true, right an