Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight is one of the major players in the broader infrastructure of Georgia’s burgeoning progressive movement.
On November 3, it made a difference—President-elect Joe Biden narrowly but decisively won the state, making him the first Democrat to win the state since Bill Clinton in 1992.
On January 5, the new progressive bloc delivered the state's two Senate seats to Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, winning Democrats the Senate
Abrams, who narrowly lost the governor’s race in 2018, spent two years mobilizing voters with Fair Fight. Her group is one of a number in Georgia fighting to change the state’s longtime rightward bent and find a new progressive majority. Here are six to watch heading to the midterms.
Fair Fight
Founded by Abrams in 2018 in the wake of her defeat—which she blamed in part on a lack of robust voting rights in Georgia—Fair Fight works to address voter suppression by registering people and lobbying lawmakers to provide more equitable access to the ballot box. Abrams also runs a sister organization, Fair Fight, which she founded in 2014.
With a mission focused on improving ballot access in Georgia, Fair Fight has joined with a number of other groups in the region, like the Georgia NAACP and Black Voters Matter Fund, to push for real substantive change in how the state handles voting issues.
The King Center
While the mission of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change is vast and encompasses a number of issues, the institution has put an emphasis on “repositioning to meet the challenges and opportunities of today.”
That includes a major voters’ rights push. The center pulled out all the stops to get Georgians registered and activated for the general election, and worked with Fair Fight and Oprah Winfrey’s Own Your Vote to get the vote out.
It’s all part of a shift the center said will be an ongoing process.
“The King Center is embarking on a major transformation into a more energetically engaged educational and social change institution,” the institution said in a statement.
Georgia Coalition for People’s Agenda
The Georgia Coalition for People’s Agenda joined with the Georgia Citizens’ Coalition to develop the Vote Connection Center, a resource for other nonprofits and organizers to help them with get-out-the-vote tactics and techniques.
It’s just one of the ways the People’s Agenda is working to change how Georgia votes. The group also used registration drives, candidate questionnaires and town halls and forums to raise voter awareness.
New Georgia Project
Perhaps the biggest fundraising powerhouse of the quartet, the New Georgia Project, drew on the largesse of its donors to get out the vote in a massive push for the election.
The group’s funding has come from a mix of sources—in 2020, for example, New Georgia Project received $600,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and $75,000 from the Ford Foundation. In 2019, the Democracy Fund gave $200,000.
An infusion of $1,415,559 from NEO Philanthropy in 2018 also provided a shot in the arm for the group and its effort to turn out the new majority voter.
The investments paid off in 2020 with an average of a half-million calls and texts to voters every week, CEO Nse Ufot told Politico in October.
“People are understanding that they are doing what they have to do, that the stakes feel extraordinarily high,” said Ufot.
Asian American Advocacy Fund
A statewide group that mobilizes progressive Asian-American and Pacific Islander voters, the Asian American Advocacy Fund is "dedicated to building a politically-conscious, engaged, and progressive Asian American base in Georgia."
A smaller group than its peers in the get out the vote sphere—reporting only $337,400 in operating income in 2018—the fund nevertheless is one of a number of organizations devoted to making the AAPI voice a mover and shaker in the state.
The group's director, Aisha Yaqoob, put that mission in perspective in an interview with the New York Times in December.
"We got the victory that we wanted at the state level to to flip Georgia blue," Yaqoob said, adding that turning out voters again for the special election was “going to be our big mission Explaining that and really breaking it down for people—making it feel real to them that they could be the deciding vote.”
Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights
The Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights worked with other Latino groups like Mijente to get voters to the polls and add to the state's rising multiracial working-class progressive base.
Founded in 2001, GLAHR has worked to inspire the state's Latino population at the grassroots level and "educates, organizes and trains the Latino community in Georgia to defend and promote their civil and human rights."
Working with a 2018 budget of $617,214—helped by a $400,000 boost from the Foundation for a Just Society—GLAHR advocates for the state's Latino community on issues from immigrant rights to protections for civil rights.
GLAHR knocked on half a million doors with Mijente for Biden in November, the latter group explained in a press release celebrating the outcome and promising to engage in the Senate fight.
"In the last seven weeks, we have made more than 760,000 attempted voter contacts—including knocking on nearly 280,000 doors," GLAHR executive director Adelina Nicholls wrote on Tuesday.
