I’ll be traveling across Georgia for the next few days with the Black Voters Matter bus tour. They’re doing voter registration and outreach, trying to influence elections across the South. Follow here for updates! 
After black voters mobilized to help @DougJones win a special election in Alabama last year, @BlackVotersMtr decided to use the same organizing tactics to turn out voters across the South thinkprogress.org/black-voters-a…
This week, they’ll be in Georgia, where the GOP gubernatorial candidate faces a lawsuit for blocking 53,000 voter registrations. Georgia is just over 30% black, but roughly 70% of the pending applications are for black voters thinkprogress.org/georgia-republ…
Voter suppression is alive and well in Georgia, congressional candidate @LucyWins2018 told me. She is the first person of color to be the Democratic candidate in Georgia’s 6th district
On today’s agenda: Canvassing and distributing information about early voting across the Atlanta area. Early voting in Georgia starts tomorrow, October 15th
Cliff Albright, Black Voters Matter cofounder, fires up kids who are going to canvass in Atlanta today. “When I say black voters, you say matter!”
Rhonda, an organizer, is reading kids the literacy test questions she says their grandparents had to answer in order to vote
Not old enough to vote, but old enough to canvass
These 12-year-old boys are chanting “Black voters bladder” but tbh they’re still more mature than many in politics these days
All eyes are on black organizers in the South. @BlackVotersMtr stops for a photo shoot with @NewGAProject for @TIME
Morning of my second day with @BlackVotersMtr’s bus tour. Someone asks cofounder LaTosha how she’s feeling.
“We’ve got 22 more days. Ain’t no time for feelings.”
“We’ve got 22 more days. Ain’t no time for feelings.”
We’re headed to rural Georgia for the next few days. Some of the towns have a deep-rooted history of voter suppression. Others were hit hard by the hurricane, and @BlackVotersMtr is prepared to hand out water and supplies.
Black Voters Matter cofounder LaTosha Brown walks into a senior center in Louisville, Georgia and starts singing.
“We know that sometimes you’re forgotten,” she says, “but we want you to know that you matter.”
“We know that sometimes you’re forgotten,” she says, “but we want you to know that you matter.”
LaTosha Brown tells the black senior citizens about Kemp’s voter purges. “We already went through this in the 60’s. We’re not going back.”
92-year-old Martha Harmon of Louisville, Georgia says she she often feels like black voters don’t matter, but Stacey Abrams makes her feel differently. “I love her,” she said. “I think she’ll be a wonderful governor.”
These senior citizens just got on the @BlackVotersMtr bus to go vote, but someone in Jefferson County called the commissioner and said the bus didn’t have the proper license to drive people to the polls. The seniors, who were fired up to vote, won’t be casting ballots today.
“This is live voter supppression,” said Kayla Marshall, a Black Voters Matter organizer
‘This is live voter suppression’: Black Voters Matter blocked from taking Georgia seniors to vote. My story: thinkprogress.org/georgia-black-…
The senior center was down the street from a historical plaque marking where a slave market once stood. “This is how they maintain power,” @BlackVotersMtr cofounder LaTosha Brown said. “They intimidate. This isn’t a new thing.” thinkprogress.org/georgia-black-…
@BlackVotersMtr “We have to shift hats from activists, mad as hell, to training,” Black Voters Matter cofounder Cliff Albright says as the bus pulls up to do community training in Sparta, Georgia thinkprogress.org/georgia-black-…
Marion Warren, an activist in Sparta, says Brian Kemp’s voter purges feel familiar. “This is 1960 again,” he said. “Believe me, I was there.”
To clarify, no special license is needed to drive people to the polls. But Black Voters Matter was told someone complained to the county commissioner and they didn’t want to cause trouble in this small town.
Local leaders in rural Donalsonville, Georgia say @BlackVotersMtr is the first group to bring supplies to people here. Co-founders Cliff and LaTosha presented the church with a generator, which they say they can use to feed 400 people.
Donalsonville, Georgia is where Hurricane Michael’s only death in Georgia occurred. Trees are down, power is still out, and the destruction is widespread
In rural Clay County, Georgia — one of the worst places hit by Hurricane Michael in the state — people sing “Hold on, everything’s going to be alright.”
Rev. Ezekiel Holley of Terrell County, Georgia helped save Randolph County’s polling places this year when the county tried to close 7 of 9 locations. But he says poll closures are an issue across the black belt.
.@BlackVotersMtr hands out water in Albany, Georgia which is over 90 degrees today and where many people still don’t have power, a week after Hurricane Michael
UPDATE: @ajc spoke to Jefferson County administrators who said he made the call to stop @BlackVotersMtr from taking senior citizens to the polls because he felt “uncomfortable” politics.myajc.com/news/state--re…
I reached out to Jefferson County’s administrator, Adam Brett, multiple times yesterday and he did not return my calls.
The @NAACP wrote a letter to Jefferson County today demanding an immediate investigation into this voter suppression thinkprogress.org/georgia-black-…
Local activists in Louisville, Georgia (where the county administrator intimidated elderly black voters) are holding an anti voter suppression rally tomorrow at 9:30 am with @staceyabrams thinkprogress.org/georgia-black-…
Here’s Jefferson County, Georgia’s administrator (the official who told @BlackVotersMtr they couldn’t take elderly people to the polls Monday) writing on Facebook in 2016 that he doesn’t think his “belief in limited government will change anytime soon.” (via @BartBuff)
This letter is actually from @NAACP_LDF, not @NAACP!
One day after they were blocked from bringing elderly black people to the polls, Black Voters Matter switched gears and distributed aid to hurricane-ravaged Georgia thinkprogress.org/hurricane-mich…
