Georgia on my mind

We had missed America. The America that voted after taking to the streets against the blind violence of ICE and the vicious litany of “remigration”. This blue America, a wave stretching from Texas – won by a 37-year-old seminarian, James Talarico – all the way to Keisha Lance Bottoms’ Georgia. A Democrat and former mayor of Atlanta, she is the first African-American governor in the United States. A state historically on the cusp, where the challenger, the Republican billionaire Rick Jackson, was the favourite. Instead, Keisha won, backed by Obama, and after 24 years she has managed to change the colour of her homeland. Yes, the homeland. Georgia is known as ‘the kingdom of peaches and cotton’, a harvest entrusted for centuries to Black slaves. In her campaign speeches, Lance Bottoms often recalled that her ancestors came from the fields, that they entered Atlanta’s mansions through the back doors and had to take the stairs, forced to leave the lifts to white people. The ninth child of a talented but wayward blues musician, Major Lance, Keisha worked as a lawyer and justice of the peace before being elected as an Atlanta city councillor in 2009. She then served as mayor from 2018 to 2022, during which time she had to manage the Covid-19 pandemic and the anger of hundreds of protesters who took to the streets demanding justice following the murder of George Floyd. On 12 June 2020, in Atlanta, Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old Black man, was shot dead by police officers. “I am furious and deeply saddened. It could have happened to any one of us,” Keisha said on television. And, immediately following the killing, she overhauled the Atlanta Police Department’s (APD) guidelines on excessive use of force. Her more than 2 million voters know they can trust this proud, steadfast woman who wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, expand the public healthcare scheme Medicaid and repeal the ban on abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy. A new tune: ‘Georgia on my mind’.