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Title: Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America
Author: Stacey Abrams
Genre: Politics, Social Justice, Southern Literature
Audience: Adult
My Review:
Five stars for content and three stars for editing means four stars overall. The book could have done with another round of editing for clarity and to eliminate some repetitiveness. Otherwise…
Reading Our Time is Now in the wake of the 2020 election felt a bit like a victory dance.
Anyone who isn’t outraged by voter suppression doesn’t have a good concept of what “government by the people” means. As a white woman, I’ve never experienced anything like what Ms. Abrams details in these pages. This review keeps turning into a book report because I want everyone to be aware of the issues that she brings to light. Just getting registered to vote in some states is almost impossible. Casting your vote when polling places change without warning and there are only a handful of aging machines to serve a large community turns into an hours-long ordeal. This makes voting impossible for those who can’t take that kind of time off of work.
She points to the overturning of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 as a turning point in voter suppression. The Act, signed into law in 1965, ensured federal oversight of voting practices in states that had a history of voter suppression. States have been free to act with impunity since then and many of them have.
After detailing many of the ways in which voter suppression occurs, Ms. Abrams addresses gerrymandering. She does point out that both parties are guilty of arranging district lines to promote their own interests. This only reinforces that things should be supervised by independent commissions who are as free as possible from outside influence.
She then outlines the purpose of the census and how it directly impacts communities. Minority communities generally have low response rates because they they tend to distrust the government. She points to education as the key to this vital process. Numbers of representatives, infrastructure spending, school locations, public transportation and more rely heavily on these numbers.
The most important section, in my opinion, detailed Ms. Abrams’s ideas for combatting all these anti-democratic practices. Voter education and outreach are the biggest components. She gives evidence from her own campaign of the large impact minority voters can have if they know their rights, fight for them, and show up at the polls rather than giving in to pressure and giving up. Once these communities elect candidates who are sympathetic to their causes, government can start setting some of these wrongs to right.
Knowing that Georgia, long considered a true red state, voted blue in 2020 shows how much difference one determined woman can make. She reached out to minority voters and made sure they knew their rights. Legal advisers were on standby throughout the election to help with suspected voter suppression. And these communities, which so many have tried to silence for so long, raised their voices and were heard. I get chill bumps just thinking about it.
I highly recommend this book for all voters. Government policies could strip any of us of the right to vote. Those of us who are less likely to experience voter suppression (generally white voters) can learn the obstacles that others face and how to be advocates for change. The book didn’t shy away from tough issues but it did leave me with hope that, working together, we can continue to steer our country toward the ideal we know it can be.
My Synopsis:
After losing the 2018 Georgia governor’s race by a slim margin in a questionable election (her opponent was Georgia’s chief elections officer and refused to step down during the campaign), Stacey Abrams decided to change the voting landscape in her state. She set up Fair Fight America to register voters and protect their rights at the polls. She later founded another organization called Fair Count in an effort to include under-represented communities in the 2020 census. In Our Time is Now, she details the many insidious ways that governments suppress voters, the importance of the census in securing needed infrastructure and representation in communities, and ways to address all these issues.
Similar Books:
If you liked Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America, you might also like my reviews of
- A Promised Land by Barack Obama
- Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen
- True or False: A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Spotting Fake News by Cindy L. Otis
Reading Challenges:
Purchase:
Buy Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America from Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville, NC or
8 Comments
Years ago, I read this essay by Jonathan Glover called “It Makes no Difference Whether or Not I Do It”. He basically makes a case about how EVERY single vote counts. The moment one person gives up on voting (for personal preferences or due to loopholes in law), that’s the most crucial moment. Because eventually it leads to a downward spiral because everyone starts thinking their vote is just ONE vote and doesn’t matter… I’ve said a lot here but not sure whether I could explain it well.
Anyways, this looks like an important book from that angle. As I’m into policy, might give this one a try, thanks!
Yes, Abrams addresses that issue. She called it self-suppression or maybe self-selection. Part of her voter education initiatives included education about how much each vote does matter, especially recently when so many elections are won by narrow margins.
I listened to it and so it felt like she was having a conversation with me. I’d recommend the audiobook. But it’s also harder to highlight the facts and figures in an audiobook…But I just love her!
What an amazing woman she is. I bet she runs again. She made such an impact with her voting efforts; it shows what can be done with focus.
I truly hope we see even more of her in the years to come.
Great review! Though yeah, I hate when a good book is let down by poor editing.
I wouldn’t even go so far as to say it was poor editing. Just one more quick pass to clarify and eliminate repetition is all it needed. I was just disappointed that it was so close to being perfect and this is all that held it back.
Oh no, that almost makes it worse. 🙁