I’ve always known voting is important. However, naively I thought voter suppression was more of a thing of the past and not that prevalent today. I thought the headlines and stories I would read were random occurrences; they were not something I paid much attention to. Shame on me.
Boy, did Stacey Abrams give me an education. In her book Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America (Henry Holt, 2020) she doesn’t hold back in laying out how widespread voter suppression is in the United States, how it occurs, and why it is important to stamp it out completely.
I listened to her book, which she narrates. This made it all the more enjoyable. There was a lot to take in, though. I had to stop for a while in order to digest everything that was being thrown at me.
This book made me think. It made me understand the subtleties of voter suppression as well as the blatant disregard for everyone’s rights. Abrams then explains the consequences; what it means when whole groups of people are not heard from, are not represented, when they are silenced.
While Abrams delves into her plight as a candidate for governor of Georgia in 2018, this is not a memoir, it is not a woe-is-me retrospective. Instead, it is a call to action.
She clearly makes the case that without giving voting access to all, democracy anywhere is threatened. While this might seem obvious, she delves deep into this belief with evidence to prove her point.
This is a book for everyone who cares about democracy—in the United States and throughout the world.
