A reflection on Stacey Abrams’ September 11, 2019 speech at Agnes Scott College.
In 2018, Stacey Abrams was on the verge of being Georgia’s first Black woman governor. However, she lost the election. This did not affect her goals, but rather her journey towards accomplishing them. Since her loss, Abrams has established organizations focused on voter’s rights and the census in Georgia. During her speech, Abrams repeatedly reminded her audience that, “failure is not fatal [or] a flaw.” Through her speech and her explanation of her journey, it is clear that Abrams focuses less on the authoritative, governmental position and rather on leading through action. She made a point to emphasize, “leadership looks like me leading”. She works towards her goals of making every vote count by creating her organizations. Abrams also emphasizes that leaders should be connecting to all of their constituents and not only those most likely to vote for them. Leadership, based on Abrams’ speech, is doing the work to move towards your goals no matter your position and essentially is “standing up so other people have the courage to stand with you.”
During her speech, Abrams’ began to describe the challenges and goals for future leaders. Her main challenge is that leaders need to be able to compromise. This does not mean compromising values, but rather future leaders must learn other’s values to marry both sets of values and come to a solution. In politics, major political parties are not always in agreeance and compromise is essential to making the difference that our leaders were elected to make. In the end, Abrams’ message stressed that you should be involved in issues that matter to you and that as a leader, you have to be ready to persuade and connect with all people.
