Kamala Harris’ supporters are saving democracy one Zoom a time

In the days after President Joe Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor, Black women and white men, cat ladies and content creators, LGBTQ folk and Latinos, turned to Zoom to connect, coordinate, and donate, raising more than $300 million for Harris’ campaign, injecting new hope into the 2024 presidential election.

“It was phenomenal. It was inspiring. It was galvanizing,” said TaRessa Stovall, a Mount Laurel writer and one of the 44,000 people on the historic Win With Black Women call, kicking off the virtual fundraising trend ignited by Harris’ possible ascension to the presidency. “It was like church, a full tent revival, and pep rally all at once. There was an immediate sense of community.”

Just when we thought we were over Zoom, the meeting app has come into its own as an indispensable political tool. Fascinating, yes. But not far-fetched, as social media and easy-to-use apps continue to shape how we protest, politic, and advocate.

Galvanizing support for candidates is as old as politics itself, said Sergei Kostiaev, assistant professor of political science at Drexel University. Politicians are and always will be searching for effective ways to talk about themselves, the issues, and prove their opponents wrong, he said. “The nature of politics doesn’t change; it’s how we mobilize and communicate that changes, Kostiaev added. “Zoom is the latest tool.”

Thanks to the pandemic, most of us are well-versed with Zoom. We know how to have side convos in the chat and how to turn off the camera for bathroom breaks. Organizing Zooms can take less than a minute and hopping on one, seconds. We have Zoom in the background while washing dishes and tucking in the kids.

And it’s a lot easier to show up to a virtual event and make a donation than find a babysitter, get gussied up in sparkles and heels, and make said donation. “People don’t have to leave their house and they still feel like they were in the political trenches,” Kostiaev said. “It provides access, satisfaction, and convenience.”

Zoom’s impact on Harris’ race has been astounding. Win With Black Women raised $1.5 million on its first VP Harris for President call. Fifty-three-thousand Black men raised $1.3 million on Zoom the following evening. That same week, 160,000 white women met on Zoom and raised $8.5 million and to Fox News’ chagrin, 180,000 White Dudes for Harris raised $4 million. Cat Ladies for Kamala hosted a Zoom Call to Action on Sunday evening, and according to Instagram, raised $320,000.

Harris secured enough votes on Aug. 2 from Democratic delegates to officially be named the party’s nominee for president. Her campaign raised $310 million in July, more than double what was pledged to the Trump campaign. In less than two weeks, political pundits say, Harris has reset the race, up by 1 point in the polls.

Now, we need this Zoom momentum to translate into votes.

» READ MORE: I’m not interested in your Kamala Harris memes. I just want you to vote.

Those of us tired of Trump and vice-presidential nominee JD Vance talking to Black people, Latinos, Asians, Jewish folks — heck, women who don’t have children — as if we are not American, nor do we deserve to be, are turning to Zoom not just to raise money, but to vent. We are finding two truths: We are not alone and there is strength in numbers.

Jotaka Eaddy founded Win With Black Women during the 2020 presidential election to support then vice-presidential candidate Harris. Her goal: to ensure when Trump attacked — and he did — that Harris had a force field of millions of Black women supporting her. Rep. Joyce Beatty (D., Ohio) mentioned the July 21 Zoom on MSNBC and by the end of the night, Black women were getting text alerts to come to the meeting — I got at least five and was one of the many women who tried but couldn’t access the call.

If we wanted to save democracy, we had to get busy.

“The Right has worked really hard to redefine this concept of identity politics as something bad,” said Sarah J. Jackson, an associate professor in the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and expert on Black and feminist media and activism. “The truth is affinity groups are all invested in the same project of saving democracy this election. This is something that’s kind of beautiful, something that a functional, multiracial democracy should look like.”

Trump will continue to run his ugly divide-and-conquer plays. He will continue to say untrue things about people of color — like suggesting there is such a thing as Black jobs — to unite his racist followers. Last week, Trump stooped to a new low, questioning Harris’ Blackness at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention in Chicago, never mind Harris attended Howard University, an HBCU, and pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, the country’s oldest Black sorority. Never mind Harris, whose mother is Indian and father is Jamaican, has always identified as a proud Black woman — her late-1980′s Salt-N-Pepa asymmetrical cut speaks Gen X Black woman volumes.

In addition to creating safe spaces for affinity groups, Zoom is creating a platform for our allies to raise money and speak out in large numbers. During the “White Women: Answer the Call! Show up for Kamala Harris” call, white women admitted to failing when they did not vote for Hillary Clinton, pledging to elect — and persuade other white women that they should elect — the first woman of color as president. Now they know their reproductive rights and those of their children depend on it. White Dudes for Harris doubled down on the idea that Trump doesn’t speak for all white men, proving the must vulnerable of us have more allies than we realized.

That warms my heart more than the millions of dollars raised for Harris’ campaign.

Harris sloughed off Trump’s comments as his same old show of “divisiveness and disrespect” in her response to Trump’s NABJ tirade. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us — they are an essential source of our strength,” Harris said.

MAGA Republicans are counting on a divided America to distract us so much that Trump can easily slide into a second presidency. Harris’ candidacy is giving us a shot at saving our democracy, one Zoom call at a time.