Stacey Abrams Wows Future Voters

State government is by far the least understood in our system, and in many ways the most important to get right if we want to achieve the goals of democracy.

Former Georgia state rep and gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams made those remarks, by turns trenchant yet largely apolitical, at the Hopkins School Monday afternoon before no fewer than 1,200 enthusiastic, applauding young people.

The entire student body of the elite private school on the western side of the city were in attendance at the capacious gymnasium (some kids in gym shorts, others in team uniforms).

And they were joined by about 400 New Haven Public Schools students, who were Hopkins’s invited guests, along with their teachers and staff.

The event was part of a series of lectures for the entire school on aspects of democracy, occasioned by the fractious national political atmosphere, and also a reflection of a new strategy at Hopkins, said school spokesman Dan Altano, to have their campus more connected with the Elm City. 

Thus the representation by kids from all ten New Haven public high schools comfortably spread out in chairs and bleachers that ranged out across at least four shining basketball courts.

A star of Democratic politics, who barely missed becoming the first Black governor of Georgia, and a tireless activist against voter suppression, who helped tip the state to Joe Biden and Dems in 2020, Abrams was interviewed on Monday about democracy, civic engagement, civil discourse, and how to identify reliable news sources 

Her interlocutor was New York Times Magazine writer Emily Bazelon. Bazelon is the mom of a Hopkins grad (Downtown/East Rock Alder Eli Sabin), and was a colleague of Abrams when they both attended Yale Law School.

“There’s lots of turmoil now in the U.S.,” said Hillhouse sophomore Jason Thomas, in the moments before Abrams entered the cavernous and noisy space.

He said he hoped she’d talk specifically about what steps she’d take, if she were in a position of power, to make ordinary citizens’ lives better.

And Hopkins sophomore Gus Witt said he’d read Abrams’s books about the voter enfranchisement work she did, tilting, Witt said, the state of Georgia to the Democrats in 2020.

“That one person can rally a whole state, that really impresses me,” he added.

Abrams entered, to the entire assembly rising in appreciative applause, and then smoothly fielded an hour’s worth of wide-ranging questions from Bazelon and the students.

Because the event was billed as non-partisan, and rather a kind of pep rally to become involved in the grassroots of politics, Abrams stayed away from specific predictions about the upcoming presidential election; yet of course her sympathies and interests were evident.

“What worries me most is how states are making it harder for young people to vote,” she said, speaking to the specific concerns of her audience.

“In Texas, for example,” she said, ​“you can use your gun license as ID but not your school ID.

“You young people can fix that. Your vote can’t change everything, but it can change something. Voting is like medicine. If you don’t take it,” she said, ​“then the problems return.”

Abrams did say that Vice President Kamala Harris’s candidacy for president represents ​“an extraordinary degree of progress” and her policies are a reflection of Abrams’s values, and that is the criterion by which you should make the decision of whom to vote for, she urged the kids.

“I need to like their vision and values. It comes down to — when nobody’s watching, who will look out for me? So that’s why I’m voting for her.”

Abrams tried to expand the students’ sense of what politics is and what it means and to shake the myth that it’s only about two people facing off and one winning.

“If you’re interested in peoples’ lives being better, that’s politics.”

To those who say “‘I’m not into politics,’” she went on, ​“politics is already into you! And it’s far larger than who is president.”

That’s why when a student questioner asked Abrams how she would change schools’ curriculums should she have the power, her answer was startling, and refreshing:

“I’d love to see more conversations about who’s in charge. Even from an early age, from kindergarten, how government works should be discussed early, like who is paying for the school lunch? Is it the mayor or the governor who does that?

“Or what exactly is a D.A. [district attorney] and why you should never meet one!” 

When another student questioner asked if there were an ​“empathy gap” between the Dems and the Republicans, Abrams turned the question around: ​“The question is not if you feel empathy, but advocacy. The Democrats are more likely to connect empathy with policy and advocacy.”

And, finally, toward the end of the hour, when another student challenged Abrams that perhaps by her lights there should be no need for people to register to vote, since that itself could be viewed as a kind of impediment, she agreed with him.

“The right to vote actually is not in the Constitution,” she said. ​“What we’re doing” in campaigns to have Indigenous people, ex-felons, and others who are disenfranchised ​“is that we’re adding those who can’t be excluded. 

“So I agree. I don’t think it should be the responsibility [of a citizen] to register. It should be automatic, and you should not lose it by not using it.

“I don’t exercise my second amendment rights, but I don’t lose them. No, voting should be automatic, sacrosanct, and really hard to take away.”

The next three lectures in Hopkins’s series on democracy include presentations by a Yale Law School professor on the foundations of the constitution; by a Hopkins grad who served as the first female field artillery officer in Afghanistan on the significance of Veterans’ Day; and another Hopkins grad will speak on his campaign running as a Republican for an open Congressional House seat in Florida.

These events are not open to city public school students, although Hopkins hopes to do more partnerships with NHPS in the future, said Altano.