26-year-old georgia official takes her oath on malcolm x’s autobiography

Now THAT’s our kind of oath. Meet Mariah Parker, who has just been elected in the U.S. as Athens-Clarke County (Ga.) commissioner, District 2.
While many take their oath on the Bible or the Quran, Parker took hers with a Black Power fist up on Malcolm X’s autobiography. The book was held by her mother! (‘Autobiography of Malcolm X’ as told to Alex Haley)

Hopefully this strong symbol is a sign that she’s in it to agitate and disrupt the systems in place. Mariah Parker told The Red & Black: “My platform centers around economic and racial justice. The policies of this town have been structured, deliberately, to ensure that a certain class of people will continue to thrive and a certain class of people will continue to not.”
Her advocacy includes fighting for living wages and access to better education, including adult education programs. She is also a big proponent of criminal justice reform: “We need to stop putting people in jail because they can’t pay cash bail. We need to stop people feeling threatened in their own communities because police officers are targeting them based on the color of their skin or where they hang out.”
Parker is from Louisville, Kentucky, worked as a teaching assistant, and is also a hip-hop artist, stage name Lingua Franca!

Let’s wish her the best and hope she fights for real progressive and radical ways to dismantle the systems in place.