Women are breaking the internet, and not because of their butts, but because of their power. It’s astonishing to see.
I was in London last weekend when the news dropped on Sunday that the game had changed.
Biden steps aside, Kamala Harris to the front.
You might have heard that within eight hours after the news dropped, there was an incredible gathering of 44,000 Black women on a Zoom call. This was a real-time grass roots calling of women through the powerful organization of Win With Black Women.
From all accounts, the news of the game shift started dribbling out while many in the community were at church. If ever there was a way to get a message out, it’s through your congregation. Black women organically spread the word among their friends and family, sharing the link so that they might bring their power to one space and direct it toward electing the first Black woman President. They had to create a custom Zoom portal to hold the record number of women showing up to be a part of the solution. They raised over $1.5 million.
The next day Win With Black Men followed suit with a 53,000 person call raising $1.3 million in four hours.
Last night, the baton in this relay race was handed to White women. Organized by Answer the Call 2024, the Zoom brought together over 160,000 (some stats say 200K!) women and raised nearly $2 million in two hours. Tens of thousands more couldn’t make it into the live stream, but you can watch it all on You Tube now. Zoom said that the call had more registrants than any other call in the history of the platform.
Everyone: Well. Done. You.
Dare we hope? There has been a whole new vibe this week since the game change, and some are spending their time “hopescrolling” on Threads, which is a much better use of your eyeballs than doomscrolling on TwitterX.
I will admit, leading into last weekend (with the assassination attempt and polls being what they were), I felt the familiar fear and low-bearing heaviness of 2016 and bought into the mainstream rhetoric that even if Biden stepped aside, there was no one who could handily beat Trump. I allowed myself to fear the worst and honestly I closed in on myself a bit, already making bargains with my mental health on how I would survive another Orange Reign. I felt like I was already beginning to hibernate.
How dangerous is that.
Even when Kamala was put forward, I couldn’t dream of facing another morning-after like the one in 2016. In London with Giant Baby, he reminded me how on that historic election night in his eighth-grade year, I sent him to bed before all the results were in. I couldn’t bear trying to explain what I was seeing, and I wanted to cry alone. That feeling is tangible, it bubbles up every time we lose a right to healthcare or hear that the right to love whomever we love is in jeopardy.
But as the woman I am, I refuse to be anchored by loss. Y’all re-set my compass.
Watching women come together with hope, inspiring each other to dream about cracking the patriarchy, feeling all 160,000 volts of lady power in that zoom last night, and mainlining the encouragement of thousands more on social media platforms across the world who are not willing to sit in the fucking cave of fear any longer …. LFG has never felt so amped.
“Democracy is a team sport” may be my favorite mantra, but what’s trending on the waves is “I Understand the Assignment”. And I do. The assignment is to show up and act, to take the baton handed to us by those 44,000 Black women and run like hell.
I wore my Chucks to vote in 2020, and I was lucky enough to be live on the radio when the final vote tally was called and I got to say “congrats Madame Vice President-elect”. That’s heady stuff.
Listen: we have 100 days. White women, who make up about 39% of the electorate, are the largest voting bloc in America, according to Shannon Watts, who also points out that “… we’re not a monolithic group; our voting patterns are typically divided along lines of religion, education, and marital status, and that division makes us not only a crucial voting bloc, but an unpredictable one — even small shifts in our voting behavior can have significant impacts on election outcomes. In other words, if we start doing the work right now, we can create a shift in voting momentum that will help Black women elect Vice President Harris as President in just 100 days.”
I made myself a tee shirt, as I am wont to do. But I thought I’d make it public if you want one, too. The amplification of this particular light has lifted my soul, and I am running toward hope as strong and as fast as I can.
WHAT TO READ/WATCH/LISTEN/COOK FOR WHEN you are lit with potential and also, the basil is going nutso in the garden. Plus, tomato season, yes?
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Yes!
Just bought the shirt, can’t wait to wear it because I do understand the assignment!