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

by Stacey Abrams

It’s no secret that political and economic power tend to be distributed unevenly in even the most democratized nations; however, the U.S. census ostensibly offers a cure to the problem. It’s designed to count everyone and let the data tell the story. A bad census count steals from the communities that are not included. Federal dollars are distributed based on the number of people affected, and if a neighborhood is undercounted, the residents will not receive the funds allocated to solve their problems. And if they cannot elect representatives to speak up for them, they are victimized again. Consider a low-income neighborhood with high birth rates and tragic rates of infant mortality. Decades ago, we decided to intervene by providing public health programs like Medicaid and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, otherwise known as WIC. Each state receives an allocation based on a formula derived from census information. In places where at-risk mothers and babies are left out of the census, the missing information means a decrease in the amount of money the area receives. I have served communities undercounted in the census. During my career, I worked in local government for the City of Atlanta, at the state level as a representative, and in the federal government in the Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of Management and Budget. Because of those jobs, I possess a granular understanding of what an undercount can mean, like t...