Activism in suburban Atlanta: Grassroots progressives hope to power a Georgia Democrat to victory
FRIDAY, APR 14, 2017 08:59 AM EDT
Activism in suburban Atlanta: Grassroots progressives hope to power a Georgia Democrat to victory
John Ossoff hopes to win a reliably Republican congressional district thanks to a network of local activists
SIMON MALOY
TUCKER, Ga. — To the 50 or so people who filled up the back room of Piccadilly Cafeteria in this Atlanta suburb on Wednesday night, Democratic congressional candidate Jon Ossoff is a godsend. The 30-year-old Ossoff is threatening to snatch away the reliably Republican congressional seat recently vacated by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. This special election in Georgia’s sixth district has become a fully nationalized referendum on the Trump presidency, with outside spending groups and national party committees dumping money and resources into the contest. The people who came to Piccadilly to meet and greet Ossoff felt an urgency that borders on desperation to send him to Congress.
Ossoff is the consensus Democratic candidate running against a splintered field of Republican challengers, and he’s polling in the mid-40 percent range heading into the April 18 election. If he clears 50 percent of the vote, he’ll win outright and avoid a runoff election in June. “The intensity and the momentum here is driven by the grassroots at the local level,” Ossoff said in an interview at the Piccadilly. A win on April 18, he said, “would be a demonstration of the potential of grassroots organizing, a renewed emphasis on field [organizing] and grassroots fundraising.”
You can hardly stumble three steps in the 6th Congressional District without hearing the word “grassroots,” and the Piccadilly meet and greet was as grassroots as it gets. The event was co-sponsored by Indivisible Marching Buddies and Indivisible Progressive Action Group for Atlanta, two of the many Indivisible-linked activist groups that have sprouted like mushrooms since President Donald Trump’s election. Everyone there filled out postcards to mail to voters reminding them to get out and cast a ballot.
Margie Lee-Syzmanski, a 64-year-old retired social worker from Chamblee and founder of Indivisible Marching Buddies, attended the Women’s March on Washington in January and returned to Georgia imbued with a feeling of activist vigor. “I have not been an activist since the Vietnam War,” Lee-Syzmanski told me, adding that she felt Trump’s election was “more than I could accept without standing up and saying something.”
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http://www.salon.com/2017/04/14/activism-in-dixie-grassroots-progressives-hope-to-power-a-georgia-democrat-to-victory/
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