Statement from Valerie Hill Rawls, MAPT, Founder & CEO, on the Historic 2026 Midterm Elections in the Southeast
Atlanta, GA —My father was the son of a Mississippi sharecropper. He worked land he did not own, for people who counted his labor but never his voice. He raised me to believe in liberation, and he taught me that freedom is something you tend, season after season, like a field. This week, I watched the South tend its field.
A Georgia that made history
On November 3, Georgia voters elected Keisha Lance Bottoms governor, the first Black woman elected governor of any U.S. state. In her victory speech, she spoke of her great-great-grandmother, born about twenty years before emancipation, and of standing on "shoulders made of steel." Those words belong to every Black woman who prayed, organized, and voted without being promised anything in return.
She was not alone. Georgia voters elected at least eight women to statewide office, among them Penny Brown Reynolds, the first Black woman elected secretary of state, and Tanya Miller, the first woman elected attorney general. Seeing women lead the offices that guard the vote, the law, and the public's trust is a sign that what our ancestors planted is finally coming up.
The race closest to our work: Georgia's agriculture commissioner
Of all these victories, the one that speaks most directly to EWISE's mission is the election of Katherine Juhan-Arnold as Georgia's commissioner of agriculture. She is a farmer, the founder of a nonprofit that brings fresh food and gardening to low-income communities, and the first woman and first Black person to lead the nation's oldest state agriculture department.
Land is where our story with this country began, as a site of cultivation and a site of suffering. Black farmers have lost land, access, and power for generations. The commissioner oversees farming and food safety, forestry, school nutrition programs, and the policies that decide who gets to stay on the land and who does not. About 3,000 of Georgia's roughly 67,000 farmers are Black. That office matters. A woman who has worked the soil and fed her neighbors now sits where those decisions are made. For those of us working in regenerative agriculture and rural self-determination, this is an opening, and we intend to walk through it.
The South, together
Black women across the region carried this moment, and we are proud to be counted among the Black women voters who understood the assignment. I also honor the candidates in Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama who put their names on the ballot, and the organizers, canvassers, and volunteers who made it possible. Not every candidate will take office, but every person who stepped forward to serve did sacred work. A candidacy is a seed, even when it is not harvested the first year.
Now the real work begins
An election is not the finish line. Winning an office is one thing, and governing with the community is another. That is why EWISE's Power in Small Places initiative exists. Whether we have clean air, clean water, healthy food, affordable energy, and a say in what happens to our land is decided in offices that rarely make headlines: agriculture commissions, public service commissions, county boards, and soil and water districts. Doing nothing changes nothing.
We invite you to join us:
Voters and neighbors: Learn who holds the small-place offices where you live, and show up for them in between elections, not only on Election Day.
Black farmers and land stewards: Connect with EWISE so your needs are heard as new leaders take office in January.
Elected officials and public servants: Meet with us. Build policy for land, water, food, and energy with the communities most affected.
Funders, institutions, and partners: Invest in the civic and agricultural infrastructure that turns an election into lasting change.
Our ancestors worked this land when no one asked what they dreamed for it. Now we are being asked, and we will answer together.
It is a new day. Let us get to work.
Valerie Hill Rawls, MAPT
Founder & CEO
EcoWomanist Institute Southeast (EWISE)
About the EcoWomanist Institute Southeast (EWISE)
Founded by Valerie Hill Rawls, EWISE empowers women and girls of color to heal and lead through land-based practices, community development, and environmental justice. Through programs rooted in eco-spirituality and sacred activism, EWISE helps build resilient and just communities by reconnecting people to the earth and to each other.
Comments