U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock took the Democratic National Convention to church Monday night with a powerful speech emphasizing the stakes in the 2024 election — for the nation and particularly for Georgia, a key battleground state.
“A vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and our children, and our prayers are stronger when we pray together,” said the Georgia senator, drawing applause throughout his opening night speech.
Warnock, senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once presided, took a swipe at Trump’s 2020 Bible photo-op, quipping, “He should try reading it.”
He condemned Trump, who has maintained unfounded claims that Democrats stole the 2020 election, as a man “too small” for the White House, and blamed him for instigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in the U.S. Capitol.
“The lie and the logic of Jan. 6 is a sickness,” he said. “It is a kind of cancer that then metastasized into dozens of voter suppression laws all across our country.”
Warnock added: “These anti-democratic forces are at work in Georgia and all across our country.”
As of late, new laws and rule changes passed in the key battleground of Georgia have raised concerns about potential voter suppression in the upcoming presidential election. Senate Bill 189, which went into effect last month, has made it easier to challenge voters’ eligibility en masse based on claims about their place of residence. Unhoused people are especially at risk of being disenfranchised.
Additionally, a Georgia Elections Board rule change passed earlier this month requires a “reasonable inquiry” prior to certifying election results. This rule would give members of county election boards — the bodies that effectively run Georgia’s elections at the local level — a pretext to challenge election results.
Warnock ended his speech with a powerful call for unity, focusing on the well-being of young people.
“I need my neighbor’s children to be OK so that my children will be OK,” he said. “Poor inner city children in Atlanta and poor children of Appalachia. I need the poor children of Israel and the poor children of Gaza … I need those in the Congo, those in Haiti, those in Ukraine, I need American children on both sides of the track to be OK.”
His message resonated with many, especially in Atlanta, as he linked local struggles to national issues. Yet Gerald Griggs, president of the Georgia NAACP, insisted that he’d like to see those words backed up with action.
“It was a very eloquent summary of what we now face. But my question to politicians would be, aren’t they the surgeons that are supposed to remove the cancer from the federal level that is metastasizing in the states?” Griggs told Capital B on Tuesday.
“As much as I respect our senator from Georgia, whom Black voters sent [to Capitol Hill] in 2021, it’s time for the politicians to make good on their promises,” he added. “What we need our elected officials to do is less sermons and more legislation.”
Watch a clip of Warnock’s speech below.
