RIVERDALE, Ga. When union canvasser Tracey Thornhill walked up to a one-story home on a bright, cloudless day here in a working-class city of 15,000 people south of Atlanta, he found a receptive ear to his pitch about making sure to vote for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in the November election.

Trump made a lot of mistakes that his whole camp is just like, it never happened, a young African American man said through a crack in his screen door, ticking off complaints about the GOP presidential nominees first term in office. Im not an idiot. I dont forget things very easily, he added.

Thornhill one of 260 members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) knocking on doors in Georgia this month and urging voters to support Harris thanked the man, reminded him to have a plan to vote, and then set off for the next house in Clayton County, a predominantly Democratic and majority-Black county that is the fifth most populous in Georgia.

People are always taking the Black community for granted, but now were letting them know we can be taken seriously, the 59-year-old former truck driver from nearby Hampton remarked as he hit the pavement in a pair of white and black Nike shoes. I dont think its as close as they say it is, he added in regard to polls showing an extremely tight race in the state.

Four years ago, Black voters in Georgia helped flip the state blue for the first time in decades, electing Joe Biden president and winning Senate seats in a pair of upset runoff elections that gave Democrats control of the U.S. Senate a resounding rebuke of Trumpism and his handling of COVID-19. As a result, the party was able to pass a historic list of achievements, including pandemic relief, lower drug pricing reforms, massive investments in green energy and manufacturing, and the appointment of the first Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.