How Americans are Zooming in on Kamala Harris, getting her the moolah

Black Women for Harris. White Women for Harris. White Dudes for Harris. Disabled Voters for Harris. Cat Ladies for Harris.

Kamala Harris started her presidential campaign with a bang and saw a groundswell of support from various identity groups. They are gathering in support, raising funds, getting volunteers. Many are reminded of the Obama campaign in 2008.

But this era is different. Republicans under Donald Trump have made attacks on the intent of identity politics. At this time, the presidential campaign of the first Asian-American to be nominated for president by a majority party in the US brought identity politics to the fore.

It started with the night when President Joe Biden ended his bid for re-election. He endorsed his running mate, Kamala Harris. On that night, black women gathered on a Zoom call raised $1 million for the Harris campaign.

In a few hours, black men came together to show support for Harris and they also raised similar funds.

Then came white women. This mobilisation led to the largest Zoom call in history and raised more than $8.5 million in less than a day.

‘White Dudes for Harris’ is the latest in the series of Zoom gatherings to support the Vice President.

The voters are ecstatic to rally behind Harris in the final months leading up to the elections.

This gathering on the basis of identity makes one thing clear: people across the US see glimpses of their identity in Kamala Harris.

The Zoom calls ended up collecting over $10 million for Kamala Harris’s campaign.

BLACK WOMEN COME IN SUPPORT OF HARRIS

In 2020, a Zoom meeting to support Kamala Harris attracted just 90 people. On July 21, 90,000 Black women and allies came online to show support for Harris for her presidential campaign.

Zoom permits 1,000 participants at a time, but an executive had to step in to increase the capacity to 40,000, Aimee Allison, who is an active member of #WinWithBlackWomen, told the Associated Press.

“It was thrilling,” she said.

“It wasn’t chaos. The infrastructure was there amongst black women to be able to scale and meet the moment. And I think this is the difference-maker Kamala Harris is injecting into the race.”

It was a revival of the campaign. Women discussed the next course of action, reports AP.

“We’re together. We’re beautiful, we’re strong, we’re capable. We’re ready. We have incredible power in this group,” said Allison, who founded ‘She the People’ to support women of colour in politics.

These women are more hopeful now.

“People were just so hungry for that community and for that feeling of hope,” she added.

BLACK MEN FOR HARRIS

On July 22, Black men showed support for Harris in an online streaming event co-hosted by #WinWithBlackMen, a network for groups of Black men. Here, thousands of Black men showed support for Harris, AP reported.

The event also had speeches from Black leaders with elected offices belonging to the business and the civil rights community.

Over 53,000 people registered for the online Zoom call, according to Roland Martin, a Black media person who moderated the Zoom call event.

It raised $4 million in total.

Black voters were also key to Biden’s win in the 2020 US elections.

“This wasn’t just policy people or legislative people or elected officials. This was across the board. Everybody came with their toolbox and was like, okay, so how do we pitch in?” Angelique Roche told AP, a writer and consultant who said the zoom call was powerful.

“These were different generations with different education levels, different jobs, different backgrounds, different industries, all coming to the table and saying, we’re ready, we’re in,” she said.

‘WHITE WOMEN: ANSWER THE CALL’

‘White Women: Answer the Call’ was a Zoom call inspired by Black women. ‘White Women for Harris’ saw 164,000 white women on the call. It set a record for the largest Zoom meeting in history and $2 million was raised in less than two hours, reported The Guardian.

Shannon Watts, a gun control activist, had organised the event. Actor Connie Britton, former US soccer star, Megan Rapinoe, the US House representative Lizzie Fletcher and Singer Pink attended the event.

In total, $8 million was raised in less than a day, Watts tweeted.

This is surprising as exit polls found out in 2016 that 52% of white women had voted for Donald Trump. He was running against a woman, Hillary Clinton. In 2020 again, more women voted for Donald Trump.

“A majority of white women have voted for the Republican candidate since the 2000 presidential election when white women were almost equally split between Democrat Al Gore and the Republican victor, George W. Bush,” according to the Centre for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Watts hopes that history does not repeat itself.

“Fellow white women: we can and have to fix this, and that starts with mobilising like Black women,” Watts wrote on Instagram before the call.

“White women voting for Republicans, even when it appears to be against their best interests, is a complex phenomenon influenced by privilege, systemic racism and sexism, religious affiliations and, of course, the patriarchy,” she wrote in Substack post.

‘WHITE DUDES FOR HARRIS’

‘White Dudes for Harris’ attracted more than 180,000 participants participants, even Hollywood superstars like Mark Ruffalo, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sean Astin, Mark Hamill, and Josh Gad.

Actor Jeff Bridges, who played ‘The Dude’ in the 1998 fil, The Big Lebowski, also made an unexpected appearance on this call.

He was heard saying, “I’m white, I’m a dude, and I’m here for Harris.”

It also saw top Democratic officials, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, also present.

The call was a mix of important matters being discussed and light humour taking swipes at the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

Governor Walz, a prospective running mate for Harris, said it was the right occasion for white men to show that Trump did not represent all white men.

Actor Josh Gad said that ‘White Dudes for Harris’ call was the opposite of the testosterone-heavy Republican National Convention. “They have Kid Rock, Kevin Sorbo and a dolphin aficionado, and we have the Hulk, Samwise Gamgee, Luke Skywalker and Mayor Pete just on the Zoom,” he said.

Governor Pritzker joked about joining a call called “Couches Against Trump, better known as CATS”, a reference to Vance’s “childless cat ladies” attack on Harris.

There are many identity groups being formed in the US to rally behind Harris. But there is none like: Cat Ladies for Harris.

‘CAT LADIES FOR HARRIS’

Many pet lovers and self-declared ‘cat ladies’ also showed support for Harris in a Zoom call. This call was a response to Trump’s VP, JD Vance’s “childless cat ladies” remark about Harris, reports The Guardian.

This meeting began with a presentation of pet pictures. Nancy Pelosi was a surprise guest on this call. She told the audience that the purpose of the call was to show support for women’s freedom to “love how they wanna love, and live how they want to live”.

“When JD Vance couched his opinion on our freedom, we decided that the cat ladies are striking back,” Pelosi said. “He didn’t realise what an opportunity he was giving us, and what he would unleash.”

The call was organised by a group called Pet Lovers for Kamala.

Initially, the group was formed solely for cat lovers, but dog lovers also showed solidarity.

On the call, women discussed social media posts, texts and volunteering for Harris. They also raised money for Harris’s political campaign.

Now that Harris has so many identity groups on her side, she is set to give Donald Trump a good fight in the US elections. It seems Americans have started Zooming in on Kamala Harris.

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