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BAM!

Stacey Abrams, welcome to the Daily Social Distance Show.

Thank you for having me or not.

Yeah, that's a great way to put it.

Having you and not at the same time.

We're living through a very strange time where, you know, it felt like coronavirus was the biggest issue affecting America.

And very quickly we've come to realize that there is a much longer standing issue that America has had, that people are now standing up against and fighting about in the streets.

And that's, you know, racial disparity, police brutality, the lack of justice for black people in this country, for brown people who are oftentimes oppressed.

You have lived that life in more ways than one, you know, as a black woman and as someone who's been in politics.

You've experienced America in a very unique way. How do you feel about what America is going through right now?

I think that we do ourselves a disservice if we actually separate these moments from one another.

What has happened with COVID-19 is that it exposed the fractures and the inequities in our healthcare system.

And the expectations we have, we're essential workers, essentially we're the people we work protecting, but we demand it there obeisance to our needs anyway.

And then what we saw happen with George Floyd and Brianna Taylor and Amad Arbery and Ray Shard Brooks just in the last months or so, what happened to Tony McDade is that we see that part of the dehumanization that we experience with COVID translates into how we are viewed by those who are charged with protecting us.

That police brutality, that systemic injustice, that systemic inequities are all the part of the original sin of America, which is the devaluation and the dehumanization of people of color primarily and most clearly black people.

Atlanta has become a hotbed of these conversations. Georgia has become a hotbed of these conversations.

Everything from Amad Arbery to Ray Shard Brooks, as you just mentioned, has thrown Atlanta into turmoil. You know, you've had police officials resigning, you've had the mayor coming out and condemning the violence.

And it feels like Atlanta is more an edge than we've seen, I mean, almost ever.

When you look at what has happened, what is happening and the conversations around it, where do you think America needs to go? Where do you think Atlanta needs to go? Where do you think Georgia needs to go?

I approach this in a different space because my first major activism on my own was in the 92 Rodney King protest. It was being a part of a community separated by gates to college on one side, housing projects on the other, but we were all cordoned off and tear gased by the city of Atlanta.

By the state of Georgia, I understand the outrage and the pain that is discomforting to some and offensive to others because I understand where it begins.

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