July 18 – TIFTON – Stacy Abrams vowed to support teachers, secure women’s reproductive rights and bring Medicaid to more eligible Georgia residents during a weekend campaign stop in Tift County.
And several Tifton residents ensured the Democratic gubernatorial nominee received a welcome Friendly City Sunday outfit.
Abrams led a campaign rally at The Place just outside of downtown Tifton to discuss her campaign and reform plans and to hear the concerns of some Georgians.
With a room full of supporters, Tift County Commissioner Melissa Hughes welcomed Abrams. Hughes spoke at length about the strength of Abrams’ character and mission.
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader,” Hughes said. “And that’s what we have here today: a leader.”
Sharing the policies and practices she hopes to change when she becomes governor, Abrams criticized many of the current shortcomings in that policy, such as the inability of Georgia’s Medicaid services to support a significant portion of the state’s population and a lack of Mental health support and a current poor solution to deal with it through law enforcement and an apparent refusal to adequately fund education.
She opposes Georgia’s handling of education, saying the recent $5,000 raise Governor Brian Kemp gave teachers was little more than “an insult.”
“For the small raise they got, teachers are making less today in real dollar terms than they were in 1999,” Abrams said. “For 20 years Republicans have been slicing, slashing, and undercutting, and now that they’re giving you just a little, they hope you don’t realize they owe you a lot more.” I’ll make her pay for it up.”
Abrams said she wants to become “governor of public education,” outlining her plans to invest more in rural education, which she says needs urgent attention, and to focus more on gun safety laws to curb classroom “hardening,” and asserted that teachers should not be “guardians” of children but “guides”.
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She said she was a huge advocate for women’s abortion rights, noting how appalled she was that the issue would even need to be addressed in 2022.
Abrams pointed out numerous shortcomings in the current abortion policy in Georgia, such as: B. how much it discourages doctors from conducting the process, putting decisions in the hands of the doctors, and requiring a woman to make a decision about an abortion before she can realistically confirm that she is pregnant.
Additionally, she highlighted how many counties in the state lack adequate resources to support women’s health, family physicians and surgeons, and how determined she is to fix that when she becomes governor.
The gubernatorial candidate criticized the actions and decisions of Republican Kemp, who is seeking re-election. She said Kemp has opposed many of the reforms she is pushing that state residents have been seeking, adding that the governor says changes are impossible because of the high cost.
Abrams outlined several reforms, stating that not only do they fall short of the high price claimed by Kemp, they are even more affordable due to Georgia’s $6 billion budget surplus.
Her speech concluded with an anecdote about her grandmother, who on the first day she was allowed to vote was too frozen to do so — not out of fear of persecution, but out of fear of confronting a reality she was completely alien from was fooled into believing Leben was a lie: that she had the power to leave her own hold on government and change what was set in stone.
“We need to reach out across Georgia,” Abrams said. “We need to reach out and let people know their power is real, this opportunity is real, a Georgia is real. Because if we do that, a Georgia will rise in 2022, I’ll be governor and we’ll change the world.”
Following her presentation, Abrams opened the floor for questions.
Many issues touched on the policy, which she planned to implement massive reforms, such as increasing safety protocols, including an increase in background checks, and less emphasis on guns in the classroom.
Drawing on much of her own family experience for her answers, Abrams recounted the dichotomy of her two brothers – one who had been arrested, jailed and released but went back to jail due to understaffing in the prison system; the other, a social worker who still had to deal with being pulled over just because she was black — and her 16-year-old niece, whom she shuddered at when she introduced herself to a class with a teacher who wasn’t just carried a weapon but was also expected to use it to protect her.
The rally ended with Abrams assuring Tifton residents that not only would she keep working to become governor and pass reforms, but that she would make sure the reforms would benefit everyone in Georgia.
“We live in a state of opportunity,” Abrams said. “But unless the leader of this state believes the opportunity belongs to all of us, we’re only going backwards.”
