After Biden’s exit, Zoom led by Black women mobilized 44,000 for Harris

One woman was putting her toddler to bed in Baltimore when her phone pinged. Another in Washington saw it while doom-scrolling. A third sat on the deck of her Connecticut home talking about chores with her husband when the WhatsApp message came.

They were all hearing about the same thing: a Sunday night Zoom call organized to support the nascent presidential bid of Vice President Harris — who could be the first Black woman elected president — after President Biden announced the end of his candidacy earlier that day.

More than 44,000 people logged onto a Zoom call to support Harris and raised more than $1.5 million for her campaign in three hours, according to Win With Black Women founder Jotaka Eaddy.

“Anybody that does not think that Black and Brown women are the backbone of this party, they don’t know us,” Star Jones, the lawyer and former talk show host, told The Washington Post. “[Harris] has already been leading by example. We are going to support her, we’re going to raise money for her, and we’re going to get out the vote for her.”

The call shows the ways in which Black women, a key Democratic voting bloc, plan to galvanize and organize to support Harris. The call, which attracted several celebrities and political figures, was off the record and everyone spoke in their personal capacities, but many attendees described to The Post that it felt like church, a family reunion, a rally or the online hangouts from the height of quarantine.

Even though they were told not to, people streamed the Zoom on other sites such as Clubhouse, Twitch and YouTube.

Eaddy organized the Zoom call the same way in which she has hosted most Sunday night calls for Win With Black Women since August 2020. The organization says it aims to elect Black women nationwide and speaks out against racism and sexism. At the height of the 2020 election, she said the most attendees she had on one Zoom call was 1,500 people. Eaddy was expecting a few hundred last night.

But she realized something was different around 2 p.m., when she got a message that 50 people were in the Zoom waiting room. The call was set to start at 8:30 p.m.

By 7:50 p.m., the Zoom was at capacity with 1,000 people. Members contacted Zoom, which moved the group to a webinar, giving them unlimited capacity to expand their attendees.

“I am forever grateful to the leadership of Zoom for what they did,” Eaddy said.

She said “allies” who identify as Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Black men joined the Zoom to show their support. But the majority of the call focused on Black women’s collective power to elect Harris.

“What happened last night was historic,” Eaddy said. “It really is the culmination of so many Black women for years and years and years that have been working, cultivating and creating for this moment. And last night was also a homage, a work to them and their sacrifice.”

Bernice King, the youngest child of Martin Luther King Jr.; 85-year-old Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the most senior Black woman in the House; and Donna Brazile, the two-time acting chair of the Democratic National Committee, each spoke during the call. Jones, actress Jenifer Lewis, first lady of Maryland Dawn Moore, radio host Angela Rye, U.S. Senate hopeful Angela D. Alsobrooks and author Luvvie Ajayi Jones also joined.

Many representatives of the nine Black sororities and fraternities that exist under the National Pan-Hellenic Council, known as the Divine Nine, also spoke. Alpha Kappa Alpha, of which Harris is a member, formed the first Black sorority in 1908.

Naima Cochrane, a music industry executive and writer, spent the early part of her Sunday afternoon shocked about Biden’s announcement. She said she was not confident in American voters, though she was confident about Harris. But the call lit a fire under her.

“There was no conversation about doubt. There was no ‘what if we can’t’; it was ‘this is what we’re about to do,’” Cochrane said. “People needed to know directives. That there is a strategy, that we’re unified in messaging, and their next steps. We can go forward confidently and strongly now to combat misinformation and combat naysayers.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who has endorsed Harris, said she got at least 10 messages from people telling her about the Zoom call. Bowser told The Post on Monday that she was at an event celebrating Washington’s restaurant scene when she joined the call. When other women heard she was stepping out to log on, they asked if they could come. So a dozen women huddled around an iPhone outside the event and listened.

Bowser said there was “collective anxiety about what is coming.” She said the women are expecting sexist attacks against Harris from political opponents. She logged on again on her way home. After putting her daughter to sleep and walking the family’s dog, she logged on for a third time. The call, Bowser said, “is indicative of what these women are going to do over the next several months.”

The founder of Black Girls Vote, Nykidra “Nyki” Robinson, said she received the Zoom link about 15 times, starting at 3 p.m. After putting her 2-year-old to sleep, she joined the call at 9:40 p.m.

“Sometimes we work in silos, but I felt a sense of community being on the call and feel better equipped to mobilize young voters,” she said.

“I hope Joe Biden feels the love. We’re grateful for him,” Robinson said. “We’re also really excited to support Harris in this moment in history. The call was very much about sisterhood, unity and love.”

Jane, a Black woman in Connecticut who spoke to The Post on the condition that only her first name be published because she feared retribution from her employer, spent last night watching the Zoom call from her kitchen island on speakerphone as one of her 11-year-old sons listened in. He asked her whether Harris would be president, and she explained to him how the nomination process works.

She said she was glad her son saw a group of Black women come together so quickly to support each other.

“This is a message to the world,” she said. “Don’t underestimate Black women in this country and the reach we have. Sometimes we’re ignored, but you would want to be our friends because that’s how fast we were able to get that information out. It was lightning speed.”

Mariam Sarr logged on to the Zoom at 10 p.m. determined to make sure the Democratic Party does not “skip over Harris.”

“As a young Black woman in corporate America, I know what it feels like to be passed over. I feel energized in a way like I did in 2008. I actively campaigned for Obama when I was in college and hit the streets campaigning. Last night felt like the same way.”

On Monday night, political commentator Roland Martin will host his own online discussion with the Win With Black Men group.

Star Jones, who has known Harris for several years and is a founding member of Win With Black Women, was tasked with fundraising. As the creator of the Brown Girls Fundraising Collective, Jones told The Post that she spent last night at a dinner with people working to see how they could fund Harris’s campaign. She got a fundraising link together but had no graphics. Leaders of the Zoom call told her to join around 11:43 p.m.

She told the attendees the challenge was to raise $1 million over the next 100 days. She dropped the fundraising link at 11:50 p.m. “Within 100 minutes we raised $1 million,” Jones said.

The money will go directly to the Harris presidential campaign, according to Jones.

“People don’t tend to think we actually have the power of the pocketbook,” Jones said. “So in addition to what we spend as consumers, we actually do give in a political climate when we feel we have skin in the game.”

As of 1:30 p.m. Monday, Jones said they had raised more than $1.6 million dollars from more than 13,000 donors.