Building a Multiracial Democracy in Georgia in the Twenty-First Century

During the 2020 presidential and senatorial elections and once again during the 2022 midterms, progressives and mainstream Democrats applauded the grassroots organizing that turned Georgia from deep red to blueish purple. ¹ I sat down with two organizers deeply involved in this turnaround—John Taylor, of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and Nsé Ufot, of the New Georgia Project (NGP)—to understand the tactics and strategies responsible for accomplishing what many had viewed as impossible. ² Their experiences hold crucial importance for swing states in 2024 and, more broadly, for the possibility of building a multi-racial democracy in the United States.

John Taylor and Nsé Ufot are key nodes in the network that is rewriting the political rules of Georgia. John grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and spent the summers as a preteen and teenager on work crews hired to gut Section 8 houses that had fallen into disrepair. He absorbed the political conversations of precariously employed Black men, many formerly incarcerated, who struggled to find a solid footing in a gentrifying city. An unexpected school closure in his senior year of high school led to a transfer to a majority white school with vastly more resources and minimal security despite widespread drug use. The stark differences sparked a deep political awakening about classism. Today, John leads SEIU’s Unified Governing Campaign that is on the forefront of progressive labor unions joining forces with civil society. His work brings voting rights, immigration, climate justice, social justice, and labor organizing under a shared analysis of race and the economy. In addition, he co-founded the Black Male Initiative, a base-building organization focused on civic engagement, criminal justice reform, economic enfranchisement, Black mental health and wellness, and education.

Nsé was born in Nigeria and grew up spending a lot of time in the Atlanta airport “bullpen” washing windshields and hanging out with her taxi driver/graduate student dad where she absorbed lively political analysis of the U.S. and African countries over bowls of jollof rice. She left corporate law and started her social justice career as an attorney in the legal department with AFSCME Ohio Council 8 (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees). In 2013, Stacey Abrams co-founded the NGP with Nsé. NGP is a Black-led voting rights organization that invests in research with their long-term coalition partners—who represent disparate demographic categories (including Latinx and Asian). Each year, NGP organizers and volunteers hold millions of in depth, face-to-face conversations with young Georgians, Georgians of color, women, and femmes. Their efforts combine traditional organizing with an aggressive political research agenda, the incubation of bold leadership, and innovative leveraging of culture and cultural organizing, including the production of popular mobile video games. The result is a historic increase in voter participation that earned NGP credit for “flipping Georgia” in the 2020 presidential elections and helping Georgians elect their first African American and first Jewish United States Senators.

Demography Is Not Destiny

Alethia Jones (AJ): On January 6th, 2021, the crisis of rising authoritarianism burst onto the scene. For many in the South, it was the latest chapter in an anti-democratic playbook that has governed the United States for centuries. Georgia has long fought this brand of political and racial violence. ³ Unions are playing a key role in an era when winning individual elections cycle by cycle is not enough. It took a decade of work in Georgia to build this new political infrastructure. Take us behind the scenes.

Nsé Ufot (NU): A lot has been written about 2050, the year when the country becomes majority people of color. That date is 2025 in Georgia!!! It will be the first state in the deep South with a white minority. But we realize this demographic shift does not automatically overcome 20 years of unified Republican control in every branch of state government. By 2025, we will not instantly have the elected officials, policies, and the political environment that will support our ambitions to have our families and communities flourish. In 2010, we started dreaming together. We had made the case for some time that there needed to be an investment in the infrastructure across movement traditions—to bring together organizations from base-building, community organizing, civil rights, and labor—in order to meet this demographic shift. Ultimately, we built it ourselves by constructing several “tables” where different types of organizations could meet regularly, build trust, develop analysis, experiment, and play together. In this way, through meaningful and consistent engagement, we built new forms of civic engagement that blend our local knowledge and infuse it with research and new technology guided by our expertise and creativity.

Our coalition included labor and community organizations, such as immigrant rights, reproductive justice, and others, who were willing to experiment. Coalition members began with their day-to-day work (direct service, base building, advocacy in a range of constituencies in Asian, Latinx, white and Black communities) and learned to incorporate new skills in policy, politics, and elections. We worked diligently for over ten years: we talked to our diverse constituencies and built membership organizations. The result: we registered over half a million new voters of color in Georgia’s 159 counties by 2020.

Elections are opportunities for us to test and flex the power that we’re building over the long term. The untold story about the Warnock and Ossoff senatorial victories is the deep, long commitment to the people that are in the community. No one believed that Georgia, a red state, would be competitive in the 2020 presidential election, yet we elected President Biden and nine weeks later, there was a runoff election with party control of the U.S. Senate at stake.Traditionally, campaign money floods in from the dominant political parties at the last minute. The organizing model typically employed by Democratic Party operatives treats Black voters as a mobilization universe who don’t need persuasion. They start talking to people on Labor Day—or even worse, Halloween. While outsiders scrambled to figure out how to turn out the vote again in nine weeks, Georgia organizers were ready. We engaged our respective bases, which are full of members who understood what was at stake for our communities and for the nation. Members kicked into high gear and engaged their friends, family, and neighbors. That’s how Georgia elected our first Jewish (Jon Ossoff) and our first African American (Reverend Raphael Warnock) U.S. Senators. ⁴

John Taylor (JT): Because of pushback from visionary leaders like Nsé, we didn’t have the scenario where labor flew in a thousand organizers to run a campaign and magically save Georgia. Yes, new folks arrived and committed months of their lives to support and help. But we didn’t need to be saved. We needed local base-building organizations on the ground to be resourced. When we did that properly, Georgia saved America . . . and maybe democracy around the globe. That is a major shift in thinking. It has taken forty years for people, particularly in the Democratic Party and its allied organizations, to understand that we in the South have the skill, knowledge, and the ability. And you don’t have to come in to save us. But you do have to work your tail off and help us because it is the responsibility of all of us to save this country.

Labor Unions Invested Early to Build New Infrastructure

AJ: What is labor’s role in constructing this alternative infrastructure?

JT: Let’s add another twenty years on top of the ten years of the NGP and put labor at the top of that list. Before this newest generation of independent expenditure, labor’s electoral infrastructure was there and it was proven, well-resourced, and effective. Its activities provided the baseline upon which these newest organizations were able to build. Labor fueled the initial base-building work that existed before grassroots community organizations had the infrastructure that they have today. Large progressive unions—both public and private-sector—understood the value of transforming the political landscape. They did geographical density and market-based analysis of how we grow power. They moved strategically and targeted city council races and mayors in small municipalities and school boards, and they ran candidates for governor.

Then there is Reverend James Orange whose work spanned over fifty plus years. ⁵ He comes from the civil rights movement and organized with Martin Luther King Jr. Then he joined the labor movement and spent decades as the community political organizer for the AFL-CIO. His work targeted southern regional campaigns and strengthened grassroots progressive movements. He funneled the federation’s financial and political resources into communities that otherwise would not have had the dollars to undergird the movement. When we are being visionary and risk-taking, labor is a place where you can try and fail. We can innovate, grow, and leverage our members on the ground in churches, community organizations, and social clubs. SEIU’s work with the NGP and other coalition and community partners did just that.

Committed Coalitions with Clear Vision

AJ: What enables the successful building and maintaining of an effective broad-based, statewide, multiracial coalition?

NU: Clarity of mission and a clarity of your base. Successful elections give us an elected official to negotiate with as we seek to raise the minimum wage, protect women’s health, protect our environment, reduce carbon emissions, etcetera. The economic justice organizations are clear that Georgia’s $5.15 minimum wage has not moved for twenty years and want a Governor Abrams to deliver that. Our clarity about our concrete goals makes it easier to bring Mijente (which represents Latinx and Chicanx people seeking racial, economic, gender, and climate justice), Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Nigerian American Chamber of Commerce, the Association for Black Studies, and labor to the table. Each organization is clear about their identities, their demographics, their constituencies, and what it is that they’re trying to win.

JT: Unfortunately, while we’re saving democracy, democracy is not saving us. Black voters delivered Warnock but what we asked for in return in infrastructure, nationalized programs, and supportive resources didn’t come back. Every progressive policy tied to President Biden’s Build Back Better package—the American Jobs Plan (the infrastructure bill), American Rescue Plan (Covid relief), the American Families Plan (paid parental leave and other social safety net enhancements)—was watered down or blocked by Senators Sinema (AZ) and Manchin (WV). ⁶ Combined with our state-level efforts to protect voting rights and pending Supreme Court decisions that might limit the Voting Rights Act, the United States is not the governing democracy that we aspire to be. When the voting base sees this, they naturally experience disappointment, disengagement, disenfranchisement, and apathy. Because we have long-term relationships with our members, we are able to process these feelings, remember our history in this nation and what we have overcome, and we support each other to keep moving forward.

Construct Diverse Coalitions

AJ: Share a tactic that could turn the tide?

NU: Number one, coalitions. It’s our relationships. Consider the awesomeness and the beauty of what we built in Georgia that produced these historic electoral wins, and the attacks that came, not only from white Christian nationalists but from within our organizations (such as moderate Democrats). So much of what we know and understand about the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, and others has been focused on the heroics of individual leaders. When individual leaders are personally attacked, that effort can dissipate. We never really hear the stories about the infrastructure that was built and the organizers, advocates, and ordinary folks behind the scenes who helped sustain the energy of a particular movement. We built that infrastructure and sustain it through powerful relationships.

Number two, when we say multiracial democracy, it will take all of us to build it. Africans, Caribbeans, Afro-Latinos, and Black Americans are almost 40 percent of the population. What gets us to 51 percent are Latinos and Asian Americans. Consequently, our relationships matter. In NGP’s model, we found research into the “Asian American voter” unhelpful: our Indian American auntie, who immigrated from a democratic nation tends to vote very differently and occupy a different spot on the ideological spectrum than our Chinese uncle, who fled communism. We dispensed with labels that were useless for our organizing and invested in understanding how to move people to action in a broad diversity of communities. The organizations in our coalition are seen as credible actors and leaders because of our relationships, which extend beyond a single election or issue (like Cop City). ⁷ We are in long-term, year-round conversations with their members and are constantly learning, building, and educating a diverse network of Georgians through dialogue about building a new future.

AJ: How do we keep these coalitions in action?

JT: Our potential to win depends on heavy and focused investment to build a unified base in Georgia and across the country now and in the future. Labor plays a critical role because it is a melting pot and a multiracial coalition already. Its caucuses provide a structure for Black, Latinx, women, LGBTQ+ and other members to come to the table as union members. You don’t get to choose who gets hired at the job. But you do get to fight for each coworker to have equal representation under the contract. Labor can smartly partner with ground-based organizations, allies, NGOs, and others, allowing us to grow a base. In the coalitions for voting rights and corporate accountability, the messaging and the angles weren’t just about Black and/or white folks. There was a lot of work done on immigration and with the Latinx, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and the LGBTI+ communities on framing and messaging that studied and targeted multiple groups and affinities. Labor understands that it doesn’t win alone. Labor is trying to smartly excavate the multiple identities and voices that exist and create one table. In contrast, others are trying to streamline and get to one message, one point, one voice.

Build a True Multiracial Democracy

AJ: The idea of democracy has inspired millions. What is your secret sauce to make it a reality?

JT: Our secret is love. Our secret is that our beloved community exists in a different space and resonates at a different frequency. We are happy to see each other. We are proud to lift each other up. We sing each other’s name because there is love and honor and hope in that. And what’s so dope about it is when you see us constantly get knocked down, when you see victory that is followed by failure and defeat, when you see moments that are so dark, we come and lift each other up. Our secret sauce is love because love fuels will. And it is the will of the people that is stronger than any other bond that exists. And that is solely because we have something to fight for. In my darkest moments, I know that I can ring Nsé’s phone.

I know that our Amen corner is growing stronger while our enemies grow weaker. And as our enemies grow weaker, guess what—we nourish them with love and comfort. That is the amazing thing about this space and this entity—we don’t wish ill on anyone. I wish grace, love, forgiveness, peace, growth, tolerance, understanding, and most importantly, love. We have to re-imagine what it means to be in a civil society. If we succeed, we will all benefit, and Georgia’s coalition becomes a powerful prototype for how we re-create democracy. Dr. King said that hate can never drive out hate, only love can.

NU: This is not the end of a functioning democracy because the United States actually hasn’t ever had a representative and inclusive democracy. The prevailing prototypes were steeped in racist, sexist, and classist politics. We are witnessing and experiencing the birth of a democracy for the first time ever in centuries. Institutions are trying to change their practices to match their rhetoric around democracy, inclusion, and participation.

It takes organizing. Each of us should have a political home. We registered over 500,000 people of color in 159 counties in coalitions and in communities while under attack. Our organization has eighteen offices across the state, hundreds of staff that grew to thousands by election day. We had millions of face-to-face conversations each year and encouraged people to find their political home. It may not be NGP. If you care about reproductive justice, we connect you to SisterSong. We don’t rely on an individual messianic figure or superhero to sustain the energy that our campaigns need. Nor do we rely on party or other operatives dropping in at the last minute to save us. We love ourselves, our families, and our communities—that’s a renewable resource that we tap into to power our campaigns and movements. And we know that we are not the only ones innovating ways to amplify what works as we advance toward something that has never existed before. ⁸