The “Unite for America” rally showed just how many different constituencies Harris has. Now, the challenge is turning their enthusiasm into organizing.
Vice President Kamala Harris arrives at a “Unite for America” rally hosted by Oprah Winfrey in Farmington Hills, Michigan.(Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)
“Hello, President Harris,” Meryl Streep said.
“Not yet,” Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris answered with a smile.
I didn’t expect how surprisingly moving Oprah Winfrey’s online and real-life “Unite for America” rally with Harris in Detroit would be. It was billed by its primary organizers, Win With Black Women, as “Historic. Welcoming. Mobilizing.”
Historic, as in there’s never been such a widespread recognition that not only are Black women the Democratic voting base; they are one of the party’s organizing juggernauts.
Welcoming, as in there’s never been such a wide net cast for the party’s varied constituencies: Win With Black Women begat Win With Black Men, White Women Answer the Call, and White Dudes for Harris, all of which begat fun spin-offs like Deadheads for Harris, Cat Ladies for Kamala, Chefs for Kamala, Comics for Harris, Swifties for Kamala, Jewish Women for Harris, Caregivers for Harris, Republicans for Harris—at least 100 groups.
Mobilizing: Well, that was my question as I tuned in. I don’t want to seem cynical; Win With Black Women knows how to mobilize, but would this gathering of the new groups help them turn fun Zoom calls, and even great fundraising, into organizing?
That’s still not clear. But, I figured out, that wasn’t really the point Thursday night.
“Tonight, for the first time, we are uniting all of these groups in one place for a single purpose: to elect Kamala Harris,” Oprah said in her introduction. “It’s hope and joy rising.” She gave credit to Jotaka Eaddy, head of Win With Black Women, whose first call drew at least 47,000 women and famously broke Zoom when more couldn’t sign on.
Eaddy called WWBW “a collective love letter to ourselves,” started by Black women “long before we were born, who knew that we would see this moment.”
Initially, I misunderstood what “this moment” was about. It was a town hall, with 1,000 people in the auditorium, and almost 300,000 online, hosted by Oprah. For a while, it featured the affinity groups WWBW had launched. Asked by Oprah to talk about “White Dudes for Harris,” Ross Morales Rocketto explained:.”I haven’t seen anything like this since 2008. An exuberance and excitement you only get from hard-fought wins, and hard-fought losses.”
“Thank you, white dude!” belted Oprah.
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We also saw a multiracial, mostly young set of questioners asking mainly about the economy.
Soon, Kamala Harris came out. “There’s so much that I love about our campaign,” she said. “I look around at these screens in the room, and this is America.” She referenced “forces trying to divide us. This movement is about reminding us we have so much more uniting us than dividing us…. In the face of a stranger, you see a neighbor.”
Harris credited Eaddy for getting these affinity groups to take off. “Jotaka started it—she said, ‘Let’s open the door and let everybody in.’ And they came. Organically!”
Then the mood shifted, as families telling horrific stories about the lack of abortion access and prevalence of gun violence in post-Trump America took the stage. Among the stars of the night were the family members of Amber Nicole Thurman, 28, who died and left her 6-year-old motherless after a medication abortion resulted in rare complications and she couldn’t get care.
“People around the world need to know that this was preventable…,” her mother said. “I want you all to know she wasn’t a statistic. She was loved. I lost strength. I lost hope. You are looking at a mother who is broken. The worst pain ever that a mother could ever feel.”
“I’m just so sorry,” Harris answered, a little bit broken herself, speaking for everyone watching (unless JD Vance took a break from slurring Haitian immigrants in Ohio to tune in).
“You just recently learned how she died,” Harris added. “Amber’s mom shared with me that the word over and over in her mind is ‘preventable.’”
More “preventable” deaths are coming in states like Georgia and more than a dozen more with these cruel abortion bans.
A student from Georgia’s Apalachee High School, identified as Natalie, explained that she was shot along her upper arm and wrist area in a school shooting two weeks ago. She and her parents sat in the front row of the town hall.
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“What are we doing?” asked Natalie’s mother, Marilda. “We have a job, that job is to protect our children. We have to stop it.”
Harris recalled the countless stops on her college tours where she asks how many students have endured “active-shooter drills” in elementary or high school—and the “bone-chilling” sight when almost every hand shot up.
The celebrities and well-known organizers in the audience also moved the crowd. “As a 52-year-old childless woman, I want to say [this] to the people who think that a woman’s worth is measured in her baby count,” said Black-ish star Tracee Ellis Ross. “I mean, shout out to all the amazing mothers, but the childless women have been mothering the world and elevating culture.”
Oprah tried to get Harris to talk about something she doesn’t enjoy: her evolution over the last year, and certainly the last two months, to become the leader her closest allies knew she could be, and that the country now needs. (She didn’t love this line of questioning coming from me, but then I’m not Oprah.)
“Something happened to you the moment Joe Biden abandoned his candidacy,” she said. “You stepped into your power.” Harris seemed to agree: “I felt a sense of responsibility, to be honest with you, and with that comes a sense of purpose,” she admitted. Having observed Harris a long time, I would argue that sense of purpose first surfaced in the spring of 2022, as we learned the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade—except I would never argue with Oprah.
The line that could get the most attention came when Harris was asked about her recent account of owning a gun (which is not unexpected when you’ve been a controversial district attorney and attorney general). “If somebody breaks into my home, they’re getting shot,” she told Oprah. It made me bristle a bit, but I’m sure it thrilled others.
But Harris also said that she’s in favor of an assault weapons ban and universal background checks.
So it wasn’t what I expected, but it was impressive and often moving nonetheless. Still, I want to know that someone has a plan to feed the information and emotion of the 100 affinity groups who participated into organizing: registering voters, persuading ambivalent voters in your Chefs or Comics or Swiftie cohort to back Harris, and getting them to the polls. I don’t want to ignore the mobilizing power of a moving night like this. But we can’t exaggerate it either.
Joan WalshTwitterJoan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America.