Following Joe Biden’s decision on Sunday to end his re-election campaign and endorse Kamala Harris, Win With Black Women, a political collective, held its regular call to discuss that week’s agenda: the upcoming election. Only this time, the call swelled to include more than 44,000 people – forcing Zoom to lift capacity limitations – with an additional 30,000 joining in on a Clubhouse stream, and an unknown number of others connecting to unauthorized livestreams, organizers said. Even as late as 1am, people continued trying to join the call.
“We were so elated and pleased to see [Biden] fully endorse Vice-President Kamala Harris, and so we all got on that Zoom, united around our joy, united around our desire to be together in history,” Jotaka Eaddy, Win With Black Women’s founder, said. “But [we] also united around our support of Vice-President Harris and our commitment to do the work to make sure that she’s the next president of the United States and that we beat Donald Trump and the Maga agenda.”
The group first convened four years ago “around our collective outrage to the racism, the sexism that was taking place in the presidential process”.
While Sunday’s number of call attendees was unexpected, Win With Black Women was able to accommodate and mobilize them because of the extensive framework the organization has built.
“It is important to recognize Jotaka Eaddy, Holli Holliday, Chrisina Cue, Chantel Mullen, Edwina Ward, Hollye Weekes,” Sesha Joi Moon, who was present on the call, said. “These are the women that were responsible for 71,000 registrants, 44,000 and counting logging on … then helped to raise $1.5m in three hours [for] the first potential Black woman president in the United States of America.”
Moon was formerly the chief diversity officer for the US House of Representatives for the 117th and 118th Congresses. After her position was eliminated a few months ago, she recalls saying that it was “a very sad day for America”. Sunday night gave her a renewed sense of hope.
“Regardless of your race, your gender, your religion, your sexual orientation, your immigrant status, your military service status, your geographic location, your educational level, your ability status as it relates to being disabled – we said we want a country where everyone belongs,” she said.
Sunday’s Win With Black Women call featured prominent Black women including representatives Maxine Waters, Joyce Beatty and Jasmine Crockett; Danette Antony Reed, president of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority; actor Jenifer Lewis; and LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. The Zoom call included an intergenerational representation of Black women and girls along with Latino, AAPI and male allies.
“It was one of the best feelings ever,” Sophia Casey, who joined the Zoom call from Washington DC, said. “The sisterhood, I was just sharing with another colleague who didn’t get to make the call, that the sisterhood was just delicious.”
Tiffany Crutcher received an invitation to join from Debra Watts, with whom Crutcher has done social justice organizing, then used her own networks to invite hundreds of additional women, she said.
“We’ve carried this Democratic party for decades – we’re the margin of victory. This is our time, and that’s the energy I felt on that call,” Crutcher said. “All of the energy and the organizing that we’re doing on the ground … We’re gonna use that energy all the way into November.”
Eaddy said that “there is a fire in the country right now of excitement”. The Monday-night call had more than 5,000 women who were interested in joining, and following the Win With Black Women call, a coalition of several groups organized another under the banner of Win With Black Men.
In 2016 and 2020, 94% and 90% of Black women, respectively, supported the Democratic nominee. If Harris is successful in clinching her party’s nomination, for the first time, Black female voters will have the opportunity to vote for a Black woman representing a major political party for president.
“To see the breadth of Black women in joy, but also committed to the work that is ahead of us, it’s a feeling that I will never, ever lose,” Eaddy said. “I will take it with me for the rest of my life.”
