INTERVIEW
‘It’s Not a Sprint, It’s a Marathon’ Kevin Alexander Gray on the importance of organizing between elections. BY JAN MIYASAKI
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evin Alexander Gray, a contributor to and longtime friend of The Progressive, was Jesse Jackson’s South Carolina campaign manager in 1988 and Tom Harkin’s Southern campaign coordinator in 1992. He is the former president of the ACLU of South Carolina, where he still lives.
Gray is the co-editor of Killing Trayvons: An had window stickers that said “Vote, we’re in this Anthology of American Violence and the author of together,” for when people walk into those stores. Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of And of course, here in South Carolina with Jaime Black Politics and T h e Decline of Black Politics: From Harrison, I had written an article in The Nation Malcolm X to Barack Obama. We spoke in a live in- and said that Jaime had to get Obama numbers, terview on WORT-FM, a community radio station in which he did, but the downward trend of LindMadison, Wisconsin, on the day after the November sey Graham’s voters would have had to keep going 3 election. Here’s an edited transcript. down, too. His last election, he won with 665,000 votes, this Q: What did election day look like for you in South time he got 1.3 million votes. Even if Jaime Harrison Carolina? had gotten all the nonwhite registered voters, which is right at 1.1 million, you would still have to have a Kevin Alexander Gray: Well, I had gone out and significant white vote for Harrison. did a little project in some select counties with an Now, there are a couple of things that happened Indian American friend of mine that focused on in this election. One is the coronavirus, the other is neighborhoods serviced by Indian American or organizing. The Democrats did the responsible thing. Arab American businesses. You have a lot of poor They weren’t doing door-to-door canvassing, and communities and you have all these little stores in they didn’t have a lot of big rallies. Trump came into those neighborhoods, so we just put out signs that the state and [Graham’s supporters] weren’t afraid to said “Vote, our lives depend on it.” And then we meet with their people despite the virus. 56 | DECEMBER 2020 / JANUARY 2021
Jan Miyasaki hosts a weekly morning talk show on WORT-FM community radio in Madison, Wisconsin.
