Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America

by Stacey Abrams

Over the course of our history, the right to vote had to be purchased by blood and protest in each generation. The Revolutionary War included enslaved patriots and Native Americans who would be denied citizenship once the nation became official. The savagery of the Civil War had no clearer argument than whether Blacks were property or human beings capable of self-governance. Even the suffrage movement tangled with complex issues of gender and race, where white women would benefit from obtaining suffrage while working to deny the same to the Black women who helped power the movement. But the right to vote is not simply a request for voice in the conduct of the affairs of state. People have sacrificed their lives in pursuit of the most profound currency of citizenship: power. Because, let’s be honest, that is the core of this fight. Power is the right to be seen, the right to be heard, the right to direct the course of history and benefit from the future. In the United States, democracy makes politics one of the key levers to exercising power. Simply put, the struggle for dominion over our nation’s future and who will participate is a battle royal for America’s power, full stop.