How do you overcome misinformation? Turn out your voters
A guide to winning in the New South
Welcome to the big Sunday edition of the Progress Report!
In this edition, we’ll talk with a top progressive activist and legislative candidate in Georgia about how her campaign and how Democrats can overcome the tornado of lies and bigotry uprooting southern politics in particular. And since this is a bigger story, I’ll follow up tomorrow with a news round-up filled with updates about big direct democracy campaigns, worker rights, and other big stories.
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Georgia has gone from solid red state to ultimate battleground. The Republican Party, now fully in thrall to the far-right, is engaged in a desperate tug-of-war with an ascendant progressive coalition powered by the state’s booming minority population and growing technology sector. Demographics are no longer destiny, making the future of balance of power in Georgia truly up for grabs.
Nabilah Islam, the daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants, has spent the past decade in the thick of the Georgia progressive grassroots, helping to turn Gwinnett County outside Atlanta into a Democratic powerhouse. Now, she’s running for State Senate in order ensure that a deep blue seat is represented by a progressive Democrat and to continue the hard work of turning the state into blue for good.
When she ran in the Democratic primary for Congress in 202, Islam’s vision, preternatural political savvy, and tireless leadership earned her frequent comparisons to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (and later AOC’s endorsement). The district ultimately chose its 2018 candidate, Carolyn Bourdeaux, who went on to win the general election but has proven to be one of the most frustratingly conservative members of the House caucus.
After falling short in the primary, Islam dove into working to ensure that Democrats swept Georgia’s electoral votes and both US Senate seats. She spent 2021 advising organizations like Matriarch, which helps recruit and train working-class women to run for office as Democrats, as well as consulting for progressive candidates such as Kentucky’s Charles Booker.
Islam’s candidacy comes as the Republican Party races to the far-right while clinging to power in the state government through a mix of culture war, voter suppression, and gerrymandering. She’s running with the support of an array of both mainstream and progressive Democratic figures, including US Rep. Lucy McBath, who is taking on Bourdeaux in a primary for a Congressional district that gerrymandered them together. Bourdeaux, as it so happens, is supporting Islam’s primary rival, drawing clear ideological battle lines in the race.
Islam has been a friend to the Progress Report over the past few years, and here, she offers some insight into her outlook on the upcoming election, how Democrats can fight back against Republican hysteria, and where local politics can deliver when the national government cannot. Voting in her primary election begins on May 2nd.
Progress Report: You ran for Congress in 2020, which was a landmark year for Georgia Democrats. How much were you involved after your primary?
Nabilah Islam: Right after the loss, I was a senior advisor for the Gwinnett Democratic Party. We put up a program that reached out to 100,000 low-propensity voters, and then also beefed up our poll workers at critical precincts. So I did that and then thought we were gonna have a break, but then jumped into the runoffs.
The past few years have been dizzying in Georgia, from the highs of sweeping the Senate and electoral college in 2020 to all the awful bills signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp over the past few years, from voter suppression last year to the “divisive concepts” and trans sports bans that just passed. Where are Democrats in terms of morale — do you feel momentum or discouragement?
Our results in the general election and results in the Senate runoff were definitely energizing. Everywhere else across the country, saw a lot of losses [down ballot], but in Georgia, we were able to inoculate ourselves with really strong grassroots advocacy groups that have been organizing since 2014 and 2016. They peaked in 2018, when Stacey [Abrams] was running for governor. We just had this amazing infrastructure in place.
Plus, demographics have been changing. You're now seeing more people that are Black and brown and are becoming of age, and they're voting and they're establishing voting habits. So I think now that it's 2022, we are really excited to continue to build on those wins, because we've already done it twice, back-to-back, and we know we can do it again.
Your district is basically entirely new, reconfigured by gerrymandering. What happened?
Republicans that were on the edge of losing their seats last cycle, they now live in comfortable red districts. There's not much competition anymore. They packed all the people of color in certain districts and made all the Republican districts redder. So, unfortunately, we're not going to see those competitive general elections where voters really have a choice. At both ends, the candidate that wins the primary will probably win the general election.
My district was represented mostly by Sen. Dr. Michelle Au, the first Asian woman to get elected to the State Senate. She was very effective and outspoken. And they basically put her into another State Senate seat that was impossible for her to win. [ed note: Au is now running for Georgia State House.]
And so this district, which happened to be where I lived, they basically made it all Gwinnett County. Before it had a mix of Fulton County and Gwinnett County. It’s a safe blue seat and it's actually one of the most diverse State Senate seats in Georgia. It's about 22% API, 21% Black, and like 18% Hispanic.
Growing up in the South, I never really saw representation of our diverse communities, and it's why ran for office in the first place. When I ran for Congress, it was to make sure that this very diverse district had a voice at the table that understood their lived experiences. The State Senate is the same, we need to make sure that we have representation that understands our lived experiences.
I’m the daughter of immigrants. I was raised in this in this county. My dad was a union worker. So I understand why we need to make sure we have good-paying union jobs. My mom worked in places that didn't have health care, so that's why I'm fighting to make sure that we expand Medicaid. And I'm a proud product of our public school system here, so I understand why we need to have fully funded schools and make sure their teachers have competitive pay and smaller classroom sizes.
We have a system where most of our money for education comes from the state budget, but it’s based on a formula that was created in the ‘80s, and has yet to be updated. So that's why you're seeing a lot of disparities in our school systems in Georgia. Teachers are not being paid competitive wages, there are low-income schools that are struggling. And classroom sizes are huge. Students are not getting the quality of education that they should be receiving.
I had a good education when I was younger, and I want to make sure that I pay forward. And we need to make sure that no matter what zip code you live in, it shouldn't affect the quality of education you get. We have the money to make sure that every kid gets a good education, we just have to prioritize it.
It seems like that’s not what school-related discussions are about though, at least for the most part. You’re in a more progressive area, but have you seen much discussion about “critical race theory” or any other wild conspiracy?
I've been to a number of school board meetings where you have these parents walk up and give a public comment to the school board crying about CRT. It’s absolutely ridiculous. We need to be focusing on the teacher shortage. We need to be focusing on making sure that we have small classroom sizes. Let's look at the discipline inequities in our public school systems. What they're trying to do is gaslight people into thinking that this is a problem, and then they're trying to distract them from actual problems. And they're creating a hysteria where it doesn't exist to gin up their voter base.
How are we going to talk about colonialism [in the classroom]? How are we going to talk about slavery if we don't want to “hurt the feelings” of white children? We need to be able to accurately teach history and inform people. I went to a public school and none of my white classmates felt bad about their ancestors, they didn't feel like [slavery] was their fault. They learned something. But I think it's a disservice when we don't teach history accurately. This is all politician-led, none of this is teacher-led.
Does that drive more rational people crazy? Is there a sense of being overwhelmed by it?
People are starting to feel very frustrated, because it is clearly not true. Teachers are saying that this is not true. School administrators are saying this is not true. You can look at the school curriculum, they're making up things out of thin air, so how do you respond to things that are not real, other than telling them the facts? How do you combat misinformation when in the Republican Party, facts are biased?
I think we've come to a point where Democrats have realized that we just need to really turn out our voters, no matter how hard they're making it for us to go vote. We need to go vote. If anything, the Republican fight to take away our voting rights has deepened our commitment to go vote. You can't take this away from me. I understand that you’re trying to make it harder for me to vote, but I'm not going to let you win.
So how do you do that?
Georgia is ground zero when it comes to voting rights. Republicans are constantly trying to make it harder for Black and brown people to vote, because they've come to a point where they need to cheat in order to win. People don't like their policies, their party is not growing. So they're trying to minimize the number of people that can vote on the Democratic side.
What do you do about it, just functionally, to combat the impact of changes that are supposed to do make it harder to vote?
It's a responsibility for candidates to make sure we're informing voters about all the changes that have been made, whether it's new rules around voting or having a new district. A lot of people don't know what's going on, because we just signed these maps on January 1st and are doing the local political maps.
So a lot of what I'm doing is knocking on doors and meeting people where they are. We're also phone banking and doing meet and greets. And we're also meeting with different communities all across the district, the AAPI community, the Hispanic community, and the black community, My team and I are attending mosques. I am a Muslim American, but I'm also going to church on Sundays and talking to the Black community.
I'm one of two candidates in my own primary, but I am talking to people and letting them know that, hey, I understand you, I know where you're coming from, I understand the struggles that you're going through. I'm able to recognize these problems. And that's why I'm going to be the candidate that's going to be able to come up with the solutions to solve them.
Let’s talk about your primary race — you’re taking on State Rep. Beth Moore, who was endorsed by Rep. Bourdeaux.
I would say the difference between me and my opponent is that I'm going to be a strong Democrat, a strong fighter in the State Senate who will fight against Republicans. There have only been two other Democrats that vote more with Republicans than my opponent. She does not reflect the values of this new diverse district. Based on her voting record, I don't believe that she shares our lived experience within this majority-minority district. I am the only person of color running for a district that is 65% Black and brown. And I'm the only person in this race that has attended public schools.
The cost of housing in Georgia is skyrocketing, which I would imagine is something that conservatives can’t really pin on conspiracies… though I guess I shouldn’t doubt them.
Democrats have a problem with messaging. It hasn't been until recently that people have really talked about how we don’t really have affordable homes. Gwinnett County just did its first study ever on affordable housing. It’s an issue that we're now coming to terms with, but we should have a long time ago. The problem was that all levels of government were predominantly controlled by Republicans who didn't want to highlight the fact that we had a housing issue because it was predominantly affecting Black and brown people.
This is something that I talked about on the campaign trail. I was actually at this bipartisan event and I was talking about how we need to build more affordable housing and I had Republicans that were getting really angry with me because they thought I was talking about public housing. It’s very convoluted and I myself didn't even realize I had to actually define what I meant by affordable housing. I just thought that was understood.
The way that we solve this is by building more housing, whether it's single-family homes or multifamily homes. It's going to have to be a partnership with the state government and the county government and city governments, identifying places where we're able to build affordable homes. Affordable means that it won't cost you more than 30% of your income.
The federal government doesn’t seem very keen on doing anything about it at the moment — or at least there’s not much the Senate can pass on affordable housing at this moment, anyway. So what can be done on the more state and local level, beyond things like rent control?
We can look into tax incentives at the state level, we can look into how changing how developers who want to build affordable homes work with the county and figure out zoning laws. What I've heard repeatedly from developers is that the ones that actually want to build more affordable housing is that it's traditionally very toxic at the county level to even get through the process of getting a permit to be able to build. That doesn't create an incentive for people to even want to build houses in the first place.
I’ve written about this somewhat extensively, but I really think housing costs is going to be a key driver of the election. No one’s really defined the cause of the problem yet and I feel as if Democrats could, especially in Republican states where prices have skyrocketed, really make an issue of it and pledge to do better.
We should be leading on this but it’s not something I've really seen [Democrats] talk about it. I am, however, talking about this, because I am paying high rent, I am seeing my friends being priced out of living here. And I want to make sure that we talk about these issues because they are actually affecting people.
I will say that for Republicans, for their base, it's all ideological, whether it's the CRT or the making up stuff about like the election was rigged or something. These are not things that actually affect you on an everyday basis. They're not talking about real issues that affect you on a day-to-day basis. They are just going after like the boogeyman and riling up their base while Democrats are actually talking about real issues.
For my campaign, I'm just going to continue to talk about the issues that affect people and turn them out to vote.
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