Georgia dreams: another blue peach autumn harvest?

In the fifth episode of “Talk It OUT: LGBTQ Voices In A Queer Election Year,” we focus on Georgia, a state that swung to the Democrats in 2020 for the first time since President Jimmy Carter ran for reelection in 1980.

Just two months after Joe Biden’s victory there, Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won special runoff elections to the US Senate, giving their party control of Congress’ upper house.

I first speak to Rebecca DeHart, the CEO of Fair Count, a non-profit grassroots organizing group founded in 2019 by Stacey Abrams that works in rural counties across Georgia with Black and other communities of color.

Rebecca says that the foundation of the group’s work is based in ensuring a more equitable count during the federal Census every 10 years. Historic undercounting of Black communities across the South, she explains, has deprived those communities of public resources and contributed to voter disengagement.

By mobilizing these communities around the Census, Fair Count helps build a civic infrastructure that counters the historic gap between White and Black voter turnout.

I also speak to Chanel Haley, the director of education & community engagement at Georgia Equality, that state’s LGBTQ advocacy group.

Chanel highlights the importance of reproductive freedom, which she says is part and parcel of the LGBTQ community’s struggle for bodily autonomy, and she emphasizes the crucial role that Black women play in Georgia elections.

Chanel also makes some surprising observations about which prominent surrogates are most likely to spur enthusiasm for the Biden-Harris ticket among Black and Black LGBTQ voters.

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