At Stoney Wines, we believe in celebrating individuals who have made the world a better, safer & more innovative place. This week, we raise our glass to Stacey Abrams, a voting rights activist, political leader, and organizer whose relentless work has transformed electoral engagement and proven that democracy is something you fight for—one voter at a time.

In 2018, Stacey ran for governor of Georgia in a race that made national headlines. She came closer than any Democrat had in decades, losing by fewer than 55,000 votes in an election marred by allegations of voter suppression—including purged voter rolls, closed polling locations, and malfunctioning machines disproportionately affecting communities of color.

Many people would have walked away bitter or defeated. Stacey got to work.

Instead of conceding quietly, she founded Fair Fight Action, an organization dedicated to combating voter suppression and ensuring every eligible American can vote. She refused to let that loss be the end of the story. She turned it into the beginning of a movement.

Through grassroots organizing, Fair Fight registered hundreds of thousands of new voters in Georgia—particularly young people, people of color, and those who had been systematically excluded from the political process. Stacey and her team knocked on doors, made phone calls, and built coalitions across the state. They didn't just talk about democracy—they organized it, block by block, voter by voter.

The results spoke for themselves. In 2020, Georgia flipped blue in a presidential election for the first time in nearly three decades. Then, in a stunning double victory, the state elected two Democratic senators in runoff elections, shifting control of the U.S. Senate. The Georgia political transformation wasn't magic—it was the direct result of years of intentional, strategic organizing led by Stacey and the infrastructure she built.

But Stacey's impact extends far beyond Georgia. Fair Fight has become a national model for voting rights advocacy, fighting voter suppression laws in courts across the country and pushing for federal legislation to protect access to the ballot. She's shown that when you invest in organizing, when you show up for communities that have been ignored, and when you refuse to accept voter disenfranchisement as inevitable—you can change the entire political landscape.

As a Black woman political leader, Stacey has navigated spaces designed to exclude her while never shrinking herself to fit in. She's been the first Black woman to be a major party's nominee for governor. She's been the minority leader in the Georgia House of Representatives. She's been a democracy advocate on the national stage, speaking truth about the systems that make voting harder for some Americans than others.

And she's done all of this while also being a novelist, a businesswoman, and an advocate for economic justice. She's written romantic suspense novels under a pen name. She's spoken openly about student debt and economic inequality. She's proven that you don't have to be one-dimensional to be effective—you can be fully yourself and still lead a movement.

Stacey's work continues. Fair Fight is still organizing, still fighting in courts, still registering voters. She's still speaking out, still building coalitions, still refusing to accept that democracy should be easy for some and impossible for others.

She proves that power isn't just about winning elections—it's about building the infrastructure that makes democracy accessible. That organizing is long-term work. That losing a battle doesn't mean you've lost the war.

So as we pour a glass of Stoney Wines this month, we honor Stacey Abrams for her vision, her persistence, and her unwavering belief that every voice deserves to be heard.

🥂 Here's to Stacey—an organizer, a strategist, and a woman who turned a setback into a blueprint for change. Cheers to her ongoing work and the democracy she's fighting to protect.

Know someone organizing for change in their community? Drop their name in the comments—we'd love to raise our glass to them too.