When Shannon Watts saw 44,000 Black women rally around Vice President Kamala Harris, raising $1.3 million in one night over Zoom, she knew it was time for white women to meet the moment too.
On Thursday night, nearly 200,000 people set a record, attending a call Watts organized, “White Women: Answer The Call.”
In an update Friday afternoon, Watts urged followers to help bring donation totals to $10 million. “We’ve raised over $8.5 million so far! All from last night’s Zoom of nearly 200,000 women answering the call for Kamala Harris,” she wrote. “Thank you @WinWithBLKWomen for showing us how it’s done.”
The group set a clear agenda of getting Harris elected as president of the United States.
It’s part of a larger trend of different affinity groups meeting up to show their unified support for Harris, including Latinas for Harris, Win With Black Men, and last night’s Black Gays and Queer Men for Kamala Harris, which drew leaders such as Emil Wilbekin, Rashad Robinson, Alphonso David and Keith Boykin.
“After [Win With Black Women organizer] Jotaka Eaddy had this amazing call with women, Black women, a lot of people were tagging me on Twitter and saying, ‘Okay, when are white women gonna step up?’” Watts told theGrio.
Watts, a gun violence prevention activist, had recently written an article called, “White Women Have 100 Days to Save the World.” After seeing no one else jump in, she took it upon herself to organize the meeting and reached out to Eaddy for guidance.
“I would have not known how to do it without her advice — and how to do it the right way for white women because we have different work to do, and she was very supportive,” Watts said.
The idea that white women voters have different work to do to support a Democratic candidate is backed up by statistics, which show that 53% of white women voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016, compared to 94% of Black women who voted for Clinton over Trump. By 2020, even more had cast votes for Trump over Joe Biden. Women, in general, overwhelmingly register to vote and vote at higher rates than men, despite only having voting rights since the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920.
“When you have two Republican candidates who are calling women ‘cat ladies’ and mocking them for not having children and threatening to take away abortion and even IVF, it is hopefully a wake-up call to the white women who have been voting in favor of white supremacy and patriarchy,” Watts tells theGrio, referencing recent remarks by Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, who called Kamala Harris and other Democratic leaders like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez “childless cat ladies.”
Watts hopes last night’s Zoom meeting serves as that wake-up call. The virtual gathering brought out many high-profile figures such as author Glennon Doyle, actress Connie Britton, singer P!nk and soccer star Megan Rapinoe. For Watts and other supporters of Harris, the vice president’s appeal goes beyond her history-making candidacy or potentially being the first woman president.
“She has the experience. She has brilliance. She has the compassion. She has the vision for the future. It isn’t just that it is a stark choice between fascism and democracy,” Watts says. “She’s one of the most qualified presidential nominees in history. And she’s laying out and we’re starting to see her lay out what her agenda for the future is. And it’s inclusive of all people.”
That inclusive appeal undoubtedly helped the “Answer the Call” Zoom attract so many attendees that it spilled over into YouTube streaming and other tech platforms.
“The energy is so off the charts,” Watts told theGrio. “You know…I’m old enough to remember what it felt like with Obama was gathering momentum,” says Watts. “This is light years beyond that.”
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As individual donations continue to process, the money raised will help fund outreach efforts to voters, particularly women in swing states who are on the fence about supporting Harris.
When asked what her message would be to white women who are undecided about where to cast their votes in 2024, Watts is unapologetically clear:
“It is explaining to white women who might be on the fence what the stakes are… and trying to get them off of the sidelines to do the right thing for democracy,” says Watts.
“Kamala Harris is a fresh face to many people in America… I also feel like maybe we think we never imagined we’d get a chance to elect a woman again so soon. It sort of just fell out of nowhere, and we don’t want to f*ck it up. We have a real chance to elect the first woman president, the first Black [woman] president, the first AAPI president of our lifetime. And we don’t want to squander that.”
Natasha S. Alford is VP of Digital Content and a Senior Correspondent at theGrio. An award-winning journalist, filmmaker, and TV personality, Alford is the author of the book “American Negra: A Memoir” (Harper Collins). Follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @natashasalford.
