I grew up in a family where my parents worked full-time and still found themselves and their six children trapped like so many of the working poor.
— Stacey Abrams
We live in a nation that spent centuries denying the right to vote to the poor, to women, and to people of color.
I'm proud to be a member of the creative class, particularly here in Atlanta where the entertainment and creative industries form such an integral part of our economy, our culture, and our community.
'First things first' might be a cliche, but it's a useful one that means prioritizing what matters most to you and believing there is no wrong answer. When it comes to figuring this out for yourself, the careful binary of work or life entirely misses the point.
We cannot expect systemic success when our teachers are underpaid and under-resourced, or when they split time being caretakers and counselors for our children as well.
Regardless of their parent's income or zip code, every child in Georgia deserves access to a high-quality, affordable education.
I do not Google myself, I do not read comments, and I barely look myself in the eye when I look in the mirror.
As a writer and former elected official, I believe in the power of words.
My life has always been about making certain I accrue the skills necessary to make my ambitions real.
There are racial and gender implications to how we think about what leadership looks like in the country.
Facebook captures examples of inequality and makes them available for endless replay. Twitter links the voiceless to newsmakers. Instagram immortalizes the faces and consequences of discrimination. Isolated cruelties are yoked into a powerful narrative of marginalization that spurs a common cause.
In Georgia and around the country, people are striving for a middle class where a salary truly equals economic security. But instead, families' hopes are being crushed by Republican leadership that ignores real life or just doesn't understand it.
Let's be clear: Voter suppression is real.
I got into my first fight, Democrat versus Republican, in second grade. I won.
Money dictates nearly step of social mobility from the very first moments of life. How much our parents make often determines whether we go to college. It affects the jobs we get offered and the ones we can afford to take.
While my parents both worked full-time, we still grappled with the scourge of working-class poverty. But my entrepreneurial mother used her research skills to consult. And, along with my dad, she even ran a soul food restaurant for my great-aunt.
Do not allow setbacks to set you back.
Our ability to participate in government, to elect our leaders and to improve our lives is contingent upon our ability to access the ballot. We know in our heart of hearts that voting is a sacred right - the fount from which all other rights flow.
Progress is possible, but it is fragile - and across our country, the battles for our most basic civil rights rage on.
Georgians understand obligation, love of family, and payment plans.
Writing fueled me, and my task was to make it fit into my life. I practiced my trade as an attorney, and on weekends and holidays, I typed away. I assumed a nom de plume, Selena Montgomery, to separate my fiction from more academic publications.
To build a truly diverse economy with a pipeline of skilled labor, technical college in Georgia should be free, and students should be able to graduate debt-free from the public institution of their choice.
I like solving problems that seem intractable. That's how I thrive.
Discriminatory legislation emboldens those who seek to make us afraid while giving those communities it hurts a concrete reason to fear. We must stay away from anti-immigrant legislation as well as so-called religious freedom legislation that harms our LGBTQ communities.
My primary goal is to eradicate poverty; I believe it is immoral and a stain on our society. And so when I despair or get angry, I take the time to think about how I can best achieve that goal - and then I get to work.
I do not believe in taking jobs just because the job is available. You have to want to do that job, and you should plan to be there for a while.
Antiabortion rules disproportionately harm women of color and low-income women of every ethnicity, affecting their economic capacity and threatening their very lives.
When marginalized groups finally gained access to the ballot, it took time for them to organize around opposition to the specific forms of discrimination and mistreatment that continued to plague them - and longer still for political parties and candidates to respond to such activism.
We must reject the cynicism that says allowing every eligible vote to be cast and counted is a 'power grab.' Americans understand that these are the values our brave men and women in uniform and our veterans risk their lives to defend.
Where I think historians can help preserve and actually restore democracy is to remind us of how we got it.
I finished my higher education deeply in debt and with seven years of bad credit in my future.
One of the traditional rites of passage for political candidates is the revelation of financial status - a catechism-like recital of money mistakes made and debts owed.
My mother grew up in abject poverty in Mississippi, an elementary school dropout. Yet, with the support of women around her, she returned to school and graduated as class valedictorian - the only one of her seven siblings to finish high school. She became a librarian and then a United Methodist minister.
I like to solve problems. I know it is a skill set, but it's also an obligation. I grew up with parents who believe that you don't simply complain: you try to find solutions and fix what's in front of you.
I grew up hearing my parents' stories about how they had to fight for their right to vote in the Jim Crow South.
Writing is a side hustle that had previously enabled me to pay for rehab for my brother, purchase a car for my parents, and help friends out when they fell on hard times.
At any given moment, we each face a barrage of obligations, often disparate and distinct from what we thought would happen when we woke up. From the tragic to the common to the extraordinary, life refuses to be divvied up into careful slices of time. No technology can manage to overcome the realities of reality.
I reject the idea of work-life balance. The phrase is a bald-faced lie, designed to hang over the human psyche like the Sword of Damocles, because balance presumes an even distribution of weight, of value. But anyone who has ever lived understands that no set of tips or tricks can create a lifestyle equilibrium.
By fully committing to our public education system and engaging holistically from cradle to career, we can guarantee that all of our children in Georgia, no matter their needs, have the kinds of teachers and neighbors in their lives that my mother had.
To make a good decision, you actually need to think about it, the contours and the consequences.
We must use words to uplift and include. We can use our words to fight back against oppression and hate. But we must also channel our words into action.
The formerly incarcerated - returning citizens - often face a cruel irony in America. Having paid their debt to society, too many are banned from the ballot box that could help them dismantle policies that essentially extend their sentences.
I am driven by a desire to see poverty end and economic security be a guaranteed capacity for every person. Most of the impediments or solutions are state-driven, not federally driven.
The marginalized did not create identity politics: their identities have been forced on them by dominant groups, and politics is the most effective method of revolt.
The basis for sustainable progress is legal protections grounded in an awareness of how identity has been used to deny opportunity.
From making it harder to register and stay on the rolls to moving and closing polling places to rejecting lawful ballots, we can no longer ignore these threats to democracy.
Part of the reason voter suppression works is we've created this culture that says you don't challenge the outcome of elections unless the act is so egregious as to be absolutely clear on its face.
I grew up one of six children with working-class parents in the Deep South. My mother was a college librarian, and my father worked in a shipyard. I never saw them balance a checkbook, but they kept a roof over our heads and got all six of us into college.
My parents never ceased to struggle, but in witnessing their lives, I learned more about natural industry and leadership than in any classroom.
In her second career as a minister, my mother defied a legacy of chauvinism to become a leader of our community, overseeing a church that served as a hub, offering parenting classes, a food pantry, after-school programming, and - in the wake of Hurricane Katrina - a lifeline to those ravaged by loss.
