I am Nabilah Parkes and I’ve spent years trying to get working people a seat at the table.

I’ve worked at it as an organizer, as an elected member of the Georgia State Senate, and this year as a candidate for Lieutenant Governor. I have learned that sometimes you have to ruffle feathers to get anything done. I am the daughter of working-class Bangladeshi immigrants who grew up on free and reduced lunches, the first in my family to graduate college, and now raising three kids with my husband Bryan in a blended Bengali and Jamaican household.

I didn’t win my race for Lt. Governor—but the work doesn’t clock out at the end of a campaign.

Today I’m telling you where it goes next, and invite you to join me as we continue this fight to protect democracy.

Introducing Let’s Address Georgia

I am launching Let’s Address Georgia—an independent, people-powered media platform built for Georgians, by a Georgian, answerable to no one but you. This is part of a larger framework of the Let’s Address This media family, launched by human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid in 2024. Since launching, Let’s Address This has become one of the top human rights and political analysis media platforms online, with more than 200,000 subscribers.

Let’s Address Georgia seeks to further expand this platform.

Gallop polling shows that trust in national corporate media is at an abysmal 28%.

Likewise, research shows that local media has been decimated by 75% since 2002. And meanwhile, too much of media is behind a paywall.

For example, consider what is traditionally known as the biggest name in Georgia news. The Atlanta Journal Constitution. It claims to have 100,000 plus subscribers and locks its actual reporting behind a paywall. So the people who most need to know what their government is doing to them have to pay for the privilege of finding out.

Let’s Address Georgia has no paywall. The only supporters we ask to become paid subscribers, are those who can do so without financially pinching themselves. We do not believe in restricting access, we believe in expanding it.

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Why We Need Independent Media

Local news in Georgia is almost gone. Did you know that 16 of our 159 counties have no local news at all? Or that five million Georgians live somewhere without enough coverage, more than any other state? And what’s left of the national press is being bought up and bent to please Trump. This is why independent media matters more than ever. When billionaires and Trump-aligned corporations decide what gets covered and what doesn’t, we need voices that answer to readers. That’s the whole point of building something like this.

And here is my confirmed promise to you: Everything I publish will be free to access, always. We will never have a paywall to our reporting, interviews, and content. Go paid only if you’ve got the budget and want to help out independent voices.

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Why Become A Supporter?

Of all the reasons I can offer, the one most important is because you believe we must continue to demand accountability from those in power, and you trust me to do so.

If you’ve been a supporter of mine, thank you for trusting me. I ask you to become a paid subscriber if in your budget, and help me continue that fight—because I cannot do it without you. You know that I have spent years working on campaigns before running for Congress myself in 2020. A few years later, my Federal Election Commission petition allowing candidates to draw salaries from campaign funds became nationwide policy, opening federal candidacy to working-class Americans who previously had to be independently wealthy to run.

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In 2022, I was elected to the Georgia State Senate as the youngest woman and the first Muslim woman in the chamber’s history. I also became the first Senator to give birth while serving in office.

In the Senate, I sued Governor Kemp over an election board that broke our laws to subvert our democracy; pushed our Attorney General on the record after Adriana Smith was kept on life support without giving her family a choice because of Georgia’s draconian abortion laws; took on insurance companies for fleecing consumers; and fought to eliminate the sales tax on menstrual products, baby products, and school supplies. I have spent years building a bigger table so Georgia’s working-class families can have a seat and a voice and together, we will keep growing that table.

Subscribe. Free or paid. Let’s go ruffle some feathers.

In solidarity,

Nabilah