Stacey Abrams Explains Her Work, and Remembering Mike Davis

Stacey Abrams Explains Her Work, and Remembering Mike Davis

Stacey Abrams Explains Her Work, and Remembering Mike Davis

On this episode of the Start Making Sense podcast, we talk with the Georgia gubernatorial candidate and play an interview with the late author and friend of The Nation, Mike Davis.

Jon Wiener and Start Making Sense
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Stacey Abrams, running for governor in Georgia, is behind in the polls of likely voters, which the pollsters define as people who vote regularly, and especially those who voted in the last midterm races, four years ago. But her whole strategy is to organize and mobilize people who do not vote regularly – to expand the electorate with young people, people of color, and those the political scientists call “low-propensity voters.” She explains in this interview, from April 2019, after her first campaign for governor.

Also: Mike Davis, author and activist, radical hero and family man, died on Tuesday, October 25. After talking about his life and work, we play part of an interview with him on this podcast from November, 2016, one week after Trump was elected.

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With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.

As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Nation elevates progressive ideas, movements, and elected officials achieving real change across the country into the national conversation. At the same time, our journalists are exposing how crypto and AI-funded super PACs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to knock out candidates they oppose, reporting on the devastating impact of the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, and sounding the alarm on attempts by red states to quickly redraw electoral maps, disenfranchising Southern Black voters.

We can play this critical role because of support from readers like you. This June, we’re raising $20,000 to power The Nation’s independent journalism in the run-up to November’s immensely consequential elections.

It’s in our power to build a more just society, and your support at this critical moment brings us closer to that bold vision. I hope you’ll donate today.

Onward,

Katrina vanden Huevel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

Jon Wiener Jon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


Start Making Sense Start Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.  


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