Black voters were integral in the Democratic vote in Georgia during the 2020 election cycle; Stacey Abrams is a political figure who was instrumental in mobilizing the vote. What does that have ANYTHING to do with athletic training?
The methodology that Stacey used to create change in her state can be used as a case study for any industry in how to disrupt long-held beliefs about what works and what doesn’t. When she entered office in the mid-2000s the Democratic party had spent the past decade trying to recreate previous campaigns or borrow from the Republicans in order to be successful. Stacey had a completely different approach: let’s pause to evaluate who we really are and then build from there. She used textbooks on how to start a church from her parents’ theology degrees to inform where to start building back the democratic party. Her methods were rebuked by her own party, as the logic said, “Keep doing what we’re doing, eventually the tide will turn” and her process was arduous, she wanted to reach one voter at a time.
We see parallels to what Stacey did and where we are at with the athletic training profession. We’re in a time of change: a degree change, a racial change, an economic change, a socioeconomic change, a healthcare change; and I feel a rift happening between ATs who want to try a new approach and other ATs who are hopeful that the tide will eventually turn and thereby maintain status quo. We are the Georgia democratic party of 2010 and I wonder if we can become the GA democratic party of 2020 by following the footsteps of Stacy Abrams.
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