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LThe morning after the people of Georgia voted to send Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock to the United States Senate in 2021—twin victories that secured Democratic control of the chamber, a boon for President Joe Biden—the activist and organizer Nsé Ufot leveled with CNN: The margins had been small. But the results were decisive, she pointed out. The elections were evidence that each vote did matter.
“Black voters got that message,” Ufot, who serves as the CEO of the New Georgia Project, said. “Black voters recognized that we need to complete the task.”
That task is securing true, unfettered access to the ballot, and Black voters have been working to complete it for decades. The surge in voters in Georgia who helped elect Biden and then handed him a Democratic-led Senate is the result of groundwork that was laid in the lead up to the Civil Rights Movement. Since then, generations of Black women in particular have encouraged voter registration, organized their communities to turn out at the polls, and battled near-constant voter suppression efforts. Their tireless commitment has started to attract more attention, but their work is not done.
In the months after their triumphs in 2020 and 2021, Republican-led state legislatures nationwide have passed laws to limit who is eligible to vote and placed absurd limits on how activists can help their fellow citizens exercise their constitutional rights. An omnibus bill signed into law in March 2021 in Georgia has made it a crime to pass out a bottle of water or a snack to people waiting in line to vote. Ballot drop boxes once placed in convenient and central locations have now been moved inside early-voting sites. It should not fall to Black women to beat back these antidemocratic measures, but over and over, it’s Black women who step up. To recognize their contributions, we’re honoring three of them as Glamour Women of the Year: the indefatigable and aforementioned Nsé Ufot, Black Voters Matter Fund cofounder LaTosha Brown, and Helen Butler, the executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda.
These women are pillars in their communities. On a national level, their organizations have modeled new strategies in voter outreach, centered on an ethos of respect and transparent communication. And while their focuses are each a little different, their message is the same: It’s time to get involved.
To celebrate them and to share how we can all support the work of democratic engagement, we asked the actor, producer, and activist Kerry Washington to sit down with our honorees for a wide-ranging conversation about activism, organizing, and hope. —Mattie Kahn, culture director
To read the full article go to www.Glamour.com
