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All eyes were on Georgia Tuesday night as Senator Raphael Warnock swept to an historic re-election victory. The pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church became the first Black Georgian to win a full six-year Senate term. Elated Democrats celebrated Warnock’s victory across the country. But in Tulsa, residents had an added reason to take pride in the news.
Greg Robinson, Jr., a local Tulsa organizer, played a pivotal role in the runoff as the Coordinated Campaign Director for Georgia’s Democratic Party.
Robinson, who himself made an historic run for office when he launched a bid for Tulsa mayor in 2020, utilized his campaign expertise to help send Raphael Warnock back to the US Senate.
According to Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, who was also helping on the ground, the Georgia team had knocked on over 150,000 doors and made more than 400,000 phone calls by 2 p.m. on Election Day alone. All told, between November 8th and December 6th, organizers across Georgia knocked on over 6 million doors.
This Herculean effort to save democracy was far greater than any one person or one organization. The re-election of Reverend Warnock to the US Senate was the result of a multi-racial, multi-generational, multi-lingual and multi-faith coalition built up through years of intensive and purposeful organizing.
Leaders like Stacey Abrams, Congresswoman Nikema Williams and organizer Deborah Smith spent decades laying that groundwork to make Georgia the center of the political universe. They established a foundation that organizers like Greg Robinson and so many across the state were able to build upon.
Robinson’s organizing work has helped shape Tulsa and the country as a whole
Greg Robinson’s work in community and political organizing has been ongoing for years before the Warnock campaign. Robinson, a Tulsa native and Booker T. Washington graduate, helped lead organizing efforts on Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign and later on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
After moving back to Tulsa in 2017, Greg was instrumental in helping to launch Greenwood Leadership Academy and build the community organizing arm of the Met Cares Foundation. There, he established the PCAT fellowship; a grassroots organizing intensive giving community members the skills to advocate for change. This effort sparked multiple programs to build wealth, improve health outcomes and enhance education opportunities for North Tulsa families.
Now the founder of Standpipe Hill Strategies, Greg helps other organizations across Tulsa drive community-centered change efforts of their own.
In an election night video posted by Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, Greg Robinson addressed Warnock campaign staffers at a victory party.
“You do not do things by yourself,” Robinson said to the room. “It is not about being perfect, it is about being collective.”
“‘I’ loses”, he continued,”‘we’ wins. And we won.”
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