COMMUNITY

By Charles King • America in Black and White (AMIBW) • americainblackandwhite.us • August 24, 2026 Every single day, I hear it. On social media. In barbershops. At dinner tables. In church parking lots right here in Douglas County, Georgia. People are talking, loud and long, about how broken this country is. About how Congress needs to change. About how democracy is under threat. About how the working class is getting crushed while billionaires run the government. About how Black people are being targeted through budget cuts, policy rollbacks, and a federal government that is being dismantled, agency by agency, piece by piece, in plain sight. People are LOUD about it. So I have one question, one simple, uncomfortable, non-negotiable question, for every single person who has opened their mouth in 2026: When November 3rd gets here, will you actually show up? Because talk is cheap. And November 3, 2026 is where the receipts come due. “Black America is showing up. The question is whether everyone who said they cared will show up with us.” We Said We Wanted Change — Black America Is Showing Up Let me start with what I know. Black voters right now are breaking D+56 on the generic congressional ballot. Fifty-six points. That is not blind loyalty. That is not the Democratic Party being perfect, Lord knows they have not been. That is not every promise having been kept, Lord knows they have not been. That is Black people doing what Black people have always done: reading the room. Understanding what is actually at stake when you don’t show up, when you sit it out, when you decide your vote doesn’t matter. We have watched DOGE gut the federal workforce and 18.5% of that workforce is Black, more than double our share of the private sector. We have watched Medicaid get targeted and 21% of Medicaid enrollees are Black. We have watched the FDA, the Department of Education, and civil rights enforcement offices be hollowed out, dismantled, defunded, and staffed with people who see Black Americans not as citizens to be served but as problems to be managed. And we have watched all of that happen while people on social media argue about whether voting even matters. Black America answered that question. Black America is putting its money where its mouth is. The Accountability Moment After 2020, after the marches, after the murals, after the “we stand with you” posts and the performative profile pictures, this midterm is the accountability vote. Not for Black America. For everyone else who said they stood with us. This is the moment we find out if you meant it. Why This Election Is Not Normal — The Stakes Are Different I need you to understand what is structurally possible right now, because the numbers are not abstract, they are a roadmap. Republicans currently hold the House 222–213 and the Senate 53–47. Democrats need just five House seats and four Senate seats to flip both chambers. Five. Four. That is it. Indicator Current Number What It Means Generic Ballot (D advantage) D+6 to D+7 Historically enough to flip 20–40 House seats Trump Approval Rating ~38% Below historic midterm danger threshold for incumbent party “Right Track” — Country ~21% Near record low; strong anti-incumbent environment Democratic Enthusiasm (“Very Motivated”) 71% vs. 54% Republican — mirrors 2018 pre-wave structure Gender Gap 26 points Largest in Gallup history; women D+18 House seats needed to flip 5 The president’s party has lost House seats in 7 of the last 9 midterms — avg. 28 seats lost The structural conditions for a Democratic wave exist right now. The history is there. The polling is there. The enthusiasm is there. The only variable, the only one, is whether people actually vote. And I want to be clear about what happens if Republicans keep both chambers: no check on executive overreach. Continued targeting of Medicaid. No federal protection of voting rights. No federal reproductive rights legislation. Unchecked DOGE budget cuts to every program that Black and working-class Americans depend on to survive. That is not a hypothetical. That is the stated agenda, it is already happening and another two years of an unchecked Congress means it becomes permanent architecture. What “No Change” Actually Means — Let’s Be Honest I am going to say something that people will not like, and I am going to say it anyway because that is what this platform is for. If Republicans hold the House and Senate after this election, after everything that has happened in the past two years, that is not a polling failure. That is not a candidate failure. That is a participation failure. If you have been posting about change and you do not vote, that is a choice. And choices have consequences. If the House and Senate do not flip despite a D+7 environment, despite 71% Democratic enthusiasm, despite 79% of the country saying we are on the wrong track, it sends a signal to every elected official in Washington that the people who complain the loudest are not willing to do the most basic, foundational, non-negotiable thing that democracy asks of them. What the Status Quo Looks Like for Black Americans Continued underfunding of Black schools. Continued targeting of Black federal workers. Continued maternal mortality disparities that kill Black women at three times the rate of white women. Continued mass incarceration without reform. HBCUs defunded through grant freezes. And a federal government that does not, will not, see Black citizens as full Americans deserving of equal protection and equal investment. I am not willing to accept that without naming it clearly. If the House and Senate don’t flip, it will not be because the votes weren’t there. It will be because people chose to stay home. And Black America will know. We will know who made that choice. Why Every American — Not Just Black Americans — Should Want This Change This is where I speak to everyone. Every demographic. Every geography. Every voter who

An open-seat race with historic stakes for the Peach State | General Election: November 3, 2026 For the first time in nearly a decade, Georgia voters will choose a governor without an incumbent on the ballot. Brian Kemp, who has helmed the state since 2019, is term-limited and constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term. That single fact transforms November 3, 2026 into one of the most consequential elections in modern Georgia history, an open seat, a purple battleground state, and two candidates who could not be more different in background, funding, or vision for what Georgia should become. This is not an abstract civics exercise. This race will determine whether Georgia expands Medicaid to cover hundreds of thousands of uninsured residents, whether public school teachers finally get the economic respect they deserve, whether reproductive rights are protected or further curtailed, and whether the values of Black Georgia, which have powered Democratic victories from the statehouse to the U.S. Senate, translate into the highest office in the state. Let’s break it all down. DEMOCRAT Keisha Lance Bottoms Attorney | Former Mayor of Atlanta | Senior Advisor to President Biden | FAMU & Georgia State Law Keisha Lance Bottoms is, in many ways, the embodiment of Black Atlanta’s rise. The daughter of R&B legend Major Lance, she grew up steeped in the culture and community that defines the city. Her path to this race is as credentialed as it gets: she served as a magistrate judge, won a seat on the Atlanta City Council, and then made history as the 60th Mayor of Atlanta from 2018 to 2022, navigating the city through a global pandemic, a racial justice uprising, and the constant pressure of leading one of the most scrutinized cities in America. After her mayoral tenure, she served as a senior advisor in the Biden White House, deepening her federal policy experience. She’s a graduate of Florida A&M University (HBCU-proud) and Georgia State University College of Law. When Bottoms entered the Democratic primary for governor, she didn’t just win, she won decisively, capturing approximately 57% of the primary vote and avoiding a runoff entirely. Perhaps most telling: roughly 92% of her donors gave under $100. Her campaign is not bankrolled by corporate PACs. It is powered by people, real Georgians investing small amounts in a candidate they believe in. REPUBLICAN Rick Jackson Founder & CEO, Jackson Healthcare | Faith-Based Philanthropist | Former Foster Child Rick Jackson’s biography is a genuine American story of hardship and success. He grew up in the foster care system, built Jackson Healthcare into one of the nation’s largest healthcare staffing companies, and has parlayed that business success into philanthropic ventures, including significant work supporting foster youth. His personal story is compelling, and he tells it well on the campaign trail. What is also a fact: Rick Jackson is a billionaire who chose to self-fund his entire primary and runoff campaign, spending over $108 million of his own money to win the Republican nomination. He defeated Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones in the Republican runoff on June 16, 2026, with 52.7% of the vote. Since securing the nomination, he has announced an additional $87 million TV and digital general-election ad buy beginning August 1, 2026, potentially making his total spend of approximately $195 million the largest ad buy in Georgia political history. He received a high-profile endorsement from former President Donald Trump, which Democrats have already begun leveraging as an attack line. Where the Race Stands: The Polling Picture Independent forecasters unanimously rate this race a Toss-up. The polling average as of August 4, 2026 shows Bottoms with a modest lead but the race is absolutely within striking distance for either candidate. Here is what the data shows: Pollster Poll Dates Sample Bottoms (D) Jackson (R) Undecided/Other AARP / Fabrizio-Impact Research (Bipartisan) July 23, 2026 1,060 LV ±3% 48% 46% 6% State Navigate July 10–13, 2026 448 LV ±4.6% 51% 44% 5% Wick Insights June 30–July 8, 2026 1,175 LV ±2.9% 43% 43% 14% Fox News / Beacon Research June 27, 2026 1,002 RV ±3% 52% 47% 1% Echelon Insights (R-leaning) April 9–21, 2026 407 LV ±6.5% 49% 43% 8% Sources: 270toWin, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Pollsmax. Polling average (Aug. 4, 2026): Bottoms +6.1 (D 50.5% / R 44.4%). All polls subject to margin of error. Race rated Toss-up by Inside Elections, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and The Cook Political Report. Bottom Line on the Polls: Bottoms leads in the majority of recent surveys, but the AARP bipartisan poll, the most methodologically rigorous, shows a two-point race within the margin of error. The 14% undecided in the Wick poll is the most critical number on the board. Those voters will decide this election. And in Georgia, we know exactly which communities hold the key to moving those numbers. Where They Stand: A Policy-by-Policy Breakdown A side-by-side comparison of each candidate’s positions on the issues that matter most to Georgia voters Forget the ads. Forget the spin. Here is what each candidate has actually said and proposed on the issues that directly affect Black Georgia families, workers, students, patients, and voters. Read this table carefully and share it with someone who needs it. Issue Area Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) Rick Jackson (R) Education Free technical and community college pathway for all Georgians. Eliminate state income tax for teachers to invest in and retain classroom educators. Boost early literacy programs. Increase overall public school funding. Expand access to Pre-K. Freeze state income tax now; work toward full elimination. Free tuition, room, and board at public colleges for Georgia foster youth. Ban DEI curriculum in public schools. Strengthen Georgia Parents’ Bill of Rights. Limited specifics on broader K–12 funding levels. Healthcare Expand Medicaid fully — covering an estimated 300,000+ uninsured Georgians. End Georgia Pathways (the work-requirement program). Launch a rural healthcare access initiative. Invest significantly in maternal health. Protect and expand reproductive healthcare access. Market-based healthcare reform. Has not committed to Medicaid expansion. Advocates use of technology and AI to improve

By Charles Zackary King|Changing Trends and Times|Healthcare Series, Part 4 The night was July 9, 1893. The city was Chicago, Illinois. A man named James Cornish, a laborer, an ordinary working man, was brought into Provident Hospital with a stab wound that had penetrated within a fraction of an inch of his heart. His physician was Dr. Daniel Hale Williams. And what Dr. Williams did next changed the recorded history of medicine: he operated. He sutured the pericardium, the fibrous sac surrounding the heart itself, in what has been documented as the first successful open-heart surgery in recorded medical history. Think about what that means for a moment. The first successful open-heart surgery in recorded human history. And it happened at Provident Hospital, an institution Dr. Williams had helped found just two years earlier, in 1891, for a specific and infuriating reason: no hospital in Chicago would grant admitting privileges to Black physicians. When the door was closed, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams did not stand outside it and wait for someone to let him in. He built another door. He built the entire building. And then, inside that building, he performed one of the most consequential medical procedures in human history. This is the tradition Part 4 of the Changing Trends and Times Healthcare Series is asking you to remember, carry, and continue. Not as nostalgia. As architecture. When We Were Told No, We Built Yes The history of Black medical self-determination in America is one of the most remarkable and fundamentally under-told stories in the entire sweep of American history. It is a story of extraordinary construction under extraordinary constraint and it did not begin with Dr. Williams, though his legacy is as vivid as any single moment in it. After the Civil War, the Freedmen’s Bureau established hospitals, dispensaries, and medical infrastructure across the South specifically to serve formerly enslaved Black Americans who had been entirely excluded from antebellum medical care, except as unwilling subjects of it. At its peak, more than forty Freedmen’s Bureau hospitals were operational across the South, training Black physicians and nurses and building the groundwork for a public health infrastructure that the nation had never previously extended to Black Americans. When Reconstruction ended and the Bureau was dismantled, much of that infrastructure was deliberately destroyed or allowed to collapse. But the institutional determination that had built it could not be dismantled as easily. What survived was the will to keep building. In 1867, Howard University was established in Washington, D.C. Its College of Medicine became one of the primary pipelines producing Black physicians for over a century, training the doctors who would serve communities that private, white-run medical institutions routinely refused. In 1876, Meharry Medical College was founded in Nashville, Tennessee. Together, Howard and Meharry trained the vast majority of Black physicians in America for generations during the era when white medical schools maintained policies of racial exclusion as official institutional practice. In 1895, just four years before the turn of the twentieth century, the National Medical Association was founded, because the American Medical Association had closed its doors to Black physicians. The NMA became not merely a professional organization but an advocacy institution: it fought for civil rights, for hospital integration, for healthcare equity policy, and for the recognition of Black medical professionals across more than a century of American history. The pattern is so consistent that it becomes its own kind of evidence. Exclusion produced institution-building. Denial produced construction. Closed doors produced new buildings entirely. This is not a story of victimhood. This is a story of extraordinary, sustained, documented genius under pressure. This is heritage. This is the blueprint. The Blueprint That Already Exists: What Works Right Now Let me be direct with you, because this series has always been about telling you the truth straight. We do not have a knowledge problem. We do not have a solutions problem. What exists in this country, right now, as a working, evidence-based, replicable model of community-anchored primary healthcare for underserved communities is extraordinary and it is called the Federally Qualified Health Center. Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), are the most documented, most studied, and most proven model of primary care delivery in underserved communities operating in the United States today. There are more than 1,400 FQHC organizations operating approximately 15,000 service delivery sites across all fifty states and U.S. territories, collectively serving more than 30 million patients annually. The majority of those patients are uninsured, low-income, or covered by Medicaid. No patient is turned away for inability to pay, that is not a policy choice at individual centers; it is a statutory requirement of the federal program. A sliding-fee scale is applied based on income, so that the cost of care is tied to what a patient can actually afford to pay. But here is the structural feature of FQHCs that I want you to sit with, because it is unlike almost anything else in American healthcare: by law, the governing board of a Federally Qualified Health Center must be composed of a majority of patients, the people being served. The community being served has structural governance power over how the center operates, what services it provides, what languages it speaks, what hours it keeps. This is not a suggestion. This is not a diversity initiative. It is the law. The community runs the clinic. And when the community runs the clinic, the clinic serves the community’s actual needs. The documented outcomes are compelling and consistent. FQHC patients demonstrate better management of chronic diseases including diabetes and hypertension. They have higher rates of preventive cancer screening. They have lower rates of avoidable emergency room utilization compared to uninsured patients who lack FQHC access. This model is not theoretical. It is not a pilot program. It exists, at scale, right now, in communities across America. It needs to be funded at the scale of the need it serves and that is where political will becomes the variable. “The solution to the

There is something clarifying about a solo show. No guest to lean into. No co-host to share the weight. Just you, the microphone, and the responsibility of filling the silence with something worth saying. This Friday, July 31, 2026, I step into that space for Episode 120 of America in Black and White and I’ve been thinking about what that number means. One hundred and twenty episodes. Four seasons. Hundreds of conversations, about race, culture, sports, identity, politics, and the endlessly complicated experience of being Black in America. And yet, if anything, I feel more urgency now than I did when we started. Because the landscape we’re covering hasn’t simplified. If anything, it’s gotten more layered. On Media: The Difference Between Visibility and Power One of the themes I dig into on this episode is something I think about constantly: the gap between Black cultural visibility and Black institutional power. In 2026, Black creatives are everywhere, on screens, on stages, on streaming platforms that would not exist without their talent and their story. And yet, the ownership structures, the boardrooms, the IP portfolios, those spaces remain strikingly, stubbornly narrow. This is not a complaint. It is a data point. And as a media professional, I think the business community, particularly brands and institutions that profit from Black culture, needs to be more honest about the difference between celebrating Black creativity and investing in Black creative infrastructure. Sponsoring a Black podcast is not the same as building equity with a Black creator. Both matter. But they are not the same thing. On Sports: The Cost of Having a Voice The sports commentary on Episode 120 goes deeper than the offseason moves and the preseason hype. Ryan Clark was fired by ESPN on July 21st, mid-show, during a commercial break, after the news had already leaked. A man who joined ESPN in 2015, who spent over a decade building credibility and cultural connection, who was never afraid to bring his full self to the desk, shown the door while the cameras were still warm. Clark himself was clear: he was fired. Not laid off. Fired. And the reporting suggests it was not purely financial. His willingness to be vocal, in his contract negotiations, in his on-air moments, on social issues, made the wrong impression on the people with the power to make that call. That story is the lens for the entire sports segment on Episode 120. Because what happened to Ryan Clark is what happens at every level of sports, on the field, in the front office, and now visibly in the media booth, when a Black voice gets too real, too public, or too much itself. At AMIBW, we refuse to compartmentalize. Sports are culture. Culture is politics. Politics is life. And if your network, your league, or your institution cannot reckon with that honestly, we will name it. In Honor of Nolan Wells Episode 120 is dedicated to the family of Nolan Wells. I want to say that plainly and with the weight it deserves. We opened the show with a formal tribute, not as a formality, but as a commitment. Because what we do on this platform matters most when it serves people. And in this moment, serving the Wells family means saying his name, honoring his memory, and surrounding those who loved him with the warmth of a community that cares. Rest well, Nolan. To Brands and Partners: The Conversation Is Already Happening If you are a brand, institution, or organization that is serious about authentic, credible engagement with Black American audiences, I want to hear from you. America in Black and White has built something real: a loyal audience of engaged, thoughtful, culturally invested listeners who trust this platform. That trust is the most valuable asset in media right now. Season 4 is in full swing, and we are selectively opening partnership conversations. Reach out to us directly through our social channels or drop us a message at AmericaInBlackAndWhite.us to start the conversation. Episode 120 drops Friday, July 31, 2026, at 6:00 PM EST — on YouTube and wherever you listen to podcasts. I hope you’ll be there. Please click the play button at 6pm EST tonight and watch the show live: — Charles Zackary KingHost, America in Black and White