I am working my way through the 2021 Best Documentary short list for the Oscars this year. If the past repeats itself some of my very favorite documentaries for the year are on the narrowed list of fifteen movies out of which the final five will be chosen. So I have made an effort to see many of them before the final picks are known. That way I have an opinion.
Stacey Abrams is the star of this story, and also of thise election cycle. Her steadfast devotion to access for all people to vote is inspirational, and in this film she gets to highlight her backgrouend, where she is from and what made her into the effective activist that she is today. It is scary story well told. It slowly builds and enforces its thesis that history is repeating itself. THE GOP believes it cannot win a fair election. They have to cheat. Gone are the days of blatantly unpassable literary tests and poll taxes prohibiting non-White people from the ballot box. Instead, the new voting prerequisites come wrapped in concerns about fraud. These new requirements—extra identification, removal from voter rolls for supposed inactivity and closing of polling places—were for your own good, we are told, so that democracy can function fairly and correctly. The Republican thesis is without facts, plays on fears, and is bound together by lies. The only way to fight them is to treat this as what it is, the new civil rights frontier, and in Georgia this year we got a chance to see what the future could hold, which is a democracy where all votes count. Scary and inpiring at the same time.
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