From New York Times bestselling author of Lead From The Outside and political leader Stacey Abrams, a blueprint to end voter suppression, empower our citizens, and take back our country. “With each page, she inspires and empowers us to create systems that reflect a world in which all voices are heard and all people believe and feel that they matter.” –Kerry Washington A recognized expert on … —Kerry Washington
A recognized expert on fair voting and civic engagement, Abrams chronicles a chilling account of how the right to vote and the principle of democracy have been and continue to be under attack. Abrams would have been the first African American woman governor, but experienced these effects firsthand, despite running the most innovative race in modern politics as the Democratic nominee in Georgia. Abrams didn’t win, but she has not conceded. The book compellingly argues for the importance of robust voter protections, an elevation of identity politics, engagement in the census, and a return to moral international leadership.
Our Time Is Now draws on extensive research from national organizations and renowned scholars, as well as anecdotes from her life and others’ who have fought throughout our country’s history for the power to be heard. The stakes could not be higher. Here are concrete solutions and inspiration to stand up for who we are?now.
“This is a narrative that describes the urgency that compels me and millions more to push for a different American story than the one being told today. It’s a story that is one part danger, one part action, and all true. It’s a story about how and why we fight for our democracy and win.” – Stacey Abrams
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Stacey Abrams shows us how voter suppression ,gerrymandering and the electoral college erode our democracy .The author informs us The rise of populism is a direct threat to our political ,social and cultural fates.The author explains the persistence of Trumps style of populism has an effect on us both economically and physically.For example during most of 2018 and 2019 the US president launched the largest trade war in a generation.Economically struggling Americans face stagnant wages that have not grown despite lower unemployment .The average American cannot recover from a trade war with the same resilience that a corporation can.With harsh divisive rhetoric that casts immigrants as the enemy , we undermine our national security by weakening our economic security.The author leaves us with an important question in the midst of these destructive and dangerous times are we to vote out of fear or shall we choose to vote out of Hope.
Informative and compelling
After losing the 2018 Georgia governor’s race by a slim margin in a questionable election (her opponent was Georgia’s chief elections officer and refused to step down during the campaign), Stacey Abrams decided to change the voting landscape in her state. She set up Fair Fight America to register voters and protect their rights at the polls. She later founded another organization called Fair Count in an effort to include under-represented communities in the 2020 census. In Our Time is Now, she details the many insidious ways that governments suppress voters, the importance of the census in securing needed infrastructure and representation in communities, and ways to address all these issues.
Five stars for content and three stars for editing means four stars overall. The book could have done with another round of editing for clarity and to eliminate some repetitiveness. Otherwise…
Reading Our Time is Now in the wake of the 2020 election felt a bit like a victory dance.
Anyone who isn’t outraged by voter suppression doesn’t have a good concept of what “government by the people” means. As a white woman, I’ve never experienced anything like what Ms. Abrams details in these pages. This review keeps turning into a book report because I want everyone to be aware of the issues that she brings to light. Just getting registered to vote in some states is almost impossible. Casting your vote when polling places change without warning and there are only a handful of aging machines to serve a large community turns into an hours-long ordeal. This makes voting impossible for those who can’t take that kind of time off of work.
She points to the overturning of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 as a turning point in voter suppression. The Act, signed into law in 1965, ensured federal oversight of voting practices in states that had a history of voter suppression. States have been free to act with impunity since then and many of them have.
After detailing many of the ways in which voter suppression occurs, Ms. Abrams addresses gerrymandering. She does point out that both parties are guilty of arranging district lines to promote their own interests. This only reinforces that things should be supervised by independent commissions who are as free as possible from outside influence.
She then outlines the purpose of the census and how it directly impacts communities. Minority communities generally have low response rates because they they tend to distrust the government. She points to education as the key to this vital process. Numbers of representatives, infrastructure spending, school locations, public transportation and more rely heavily on these numbers.
The most important section, in my opinion, detailed Ms. Abrams’s ideas for combatting all these anti-democratic practices. Voter education and outreach are the biggest components. She gives evidence from her own campaign of the large impact minority voters can have if they know their rights, fight for them, and show up at the polls rather than giving in to pressure and giving up. Once these communities elect candidates who are sympathetic to their causes, government can start setting some of these wrongs to right.
Knowing that Georgia, long considered a true red state, voted blue in 2020 shows how much difference one determined woman can make. She reached out to minority voters and made sure they knew their rights. Legal advisers were on standby throughout the election to help with suspected voter suppression. And these communities, which so many have tried to silence for so long, raised their voices and were heard. I get chill bumps just thinking about it.
I highly recommend this book for all voters. Government policies could strip any of us of the right to vote. Those of us who are less likely to experience voter suppression (generally white voters) can learn the obstacles that others face and how to be advocates for change. The book didn’t shy away from tough issues but it did leave me with hope that, working together, we can continue to steer our country toward the ideal we know it can be.