What’s Going on With That ‘White Women for Kamala’ Call?

Organizer Shannon Watts on breaking Zoom and why the fundraiser wasn’t “cringe.”

Within hours of President Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race and endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, a group of Black women organized a Zoom call that drew some 44,000 people and raised $1.5 million. Black men organized a similar call the next day. Shannon Watts, the founder of the anti-gun-violence group Moms Demand Action, watched in amazement and wondered: When will white women do the same?

By Tuesday, no one had stepped up, so she tweeted the thought and was immediately inundated with messages of support. Watts, the author Glennon Doyle, and a few other activists quickly organized an event they called White Women: Answer the Call. It was the largest Zoom call in history when more than 200,000 attendees joined on Thursday night. The goal was to ensure that this group of voters that makes up almost 40 percent of the electorate doesn’t vote for the Republican, which it has historically done in all but two presidential elections. High-profile figures joined such as Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Connie Britton, who joked about the women on the call being “Karens for Kamala.” P!nk logged on from a private jet after finishing a show in Stockholm. The fundraiser was so popular that at one point, the platform crashed — “Kamala just broke Zoom again,” Watts tweeted — forcing some people to watch the livestream on YouTube.

In just 90 minutes, the call helped raise $8.5 million for the campaign and energize a crucial segment of voters. But it also received backlash for its focus on such a privileged demographic. I spoke with Watts the following morning about the frenzied organizing, the need to mobilize white women to vote blue, and what the fundraiser’s success says about Harris’s prospects in November.

How are you feeling after pulling off such a massive success?

Like maybe I hosted a wedding or something last night, and now I’m just confused. When you’re in the heat of it, you’re not sure whether or not that was wonderful or horrible. When the Zoom call crashed I felt like, What if this doesn’t come back up? Does this look like a debacle? Are we going to be able to get Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe on? They were in Paris. It was a roller-coaster ride right up until the very end. When it was over, my husband had made me the New York Times’ Marry Me Chicken for dinner and poured me a glass of Champagne. Everything tasted like wallpaper because of the adrenaline. We were trending on TikTok and Twitter. My phone was absolutely overwhelmed. Now I feel a little hungover with joy and hope and excitement.

What was the organizing process like? You had less than 72 hours!

I didn’t get out of my chair for three days. My husband brought me power bars and liquid. It was like, How do you get a Zoom together for maybe 100,000 people? How do you figure out who the speakers are? All the logistical stuff. Glennon started pulling together the people she knows. Once we got that out of the way, the momentum just snowballed.

What kind of turnout did you expect?

Every single post I wrote about it went viral. So many people signed up for the call that it kept crashing our system. We had over 100,000 RSVPs. But there’s usually a 50 percent flake rate, right? I’ve been organizing for years. I know that when you invite a certain number of people, only half of them show up. But they all showed up. Within minutes of starting the Zoom, we got an email from someone at the company saying “Congratulations, you’re the biggest Zoom capacity ever.”

Why did you put out a call for white women, specifically, to gather? 

The idea was: How do we use our platform and our privilege to do the same thing Black women and men had done on their calls? I had written a piece called “White Women Have 100 Days to Help Save the World” and it was being shared a ton. I noticed that Black women in particular were tagging me on Twitter and saying, “Okay, white women, you’re up.” So I just put a tweet out into the ether. I reached out to Jotaka Eaddy, who organized the call for Black women, and asked, “Do you think the lineup should include women of color?” She said, “You have your own work to do first. Don’t ask Black women to come in and give you their insight. You already have it.” I think that was important counsel. A lot of the conversation on our Zoom was centered around a course correction, something that Black women don’t have to do. They’ve been doing this work for decades and they’ve been on the right side of the issue.

Why do you think there was so much enthusiasm among this group to join the call?

I think there’s a lot of regret among white women about what happened in the last couple of elections. The majority of us voted for Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton and the next year, even more white women voted for Trump than Biden. But based on the energy we’re seeing, I’m very hopeful we will finally flip the script. Brittany Packnett Cunningham said, “Your whiteness will not save you from what the patriarchy has in store for you.” I think more and more white women are starting to realize that. We’re the largest voting bloc, but we’re not a monolith. We’re divided by things like marital status, education, and religion. Even the tiniest shifts in our voting behavior can swing elections. If we can get some women who are offended by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s stances on everything from IVF to cat ladies to childless women, we can win this election in a landslide. I also want to be clear that we’re not starting an organization of white women.

Why does that feel important to clarify?

We have enough organizations. It would have been cringe to create a new one. This was just a call to honor and emulate what Black women and men had done. The question was: When are you going to use your privilege and your platform to raise money and register new volunteers? That’s exactly what we did last night. We sent over 30,000 new volunteers to the organization Women for Harris.

What do you say to critics who say there’s something cringe about focusing on such a privileged group?

Some speakers we reached out to had the wrong idea. They said, “Do I really want to be involved in a white women thing? Why are we segregating this?” There is nuance to it. I get that. But they didn’t understand that it was more like a reckoning than a rally. The Black women who love and trust me were telling me I was on the right track.

I think of Zoom calls as so draining. What was the energy like on this one?

Women were going crazy in their tiny boxes. Women were crying, applauding, pumping their fists in the air. This is really about the energy around Kamala Harris. This blows the doors off of anything I’ve ever seen around any candidate in my lifetime. Women want so badly to elect her. It’s because she’s such an amazing candidate but also because the alternative is so dangerous. I’m a 53-year-old Gen-Xer, and I honestly thought, Maybe I’m going to die and never see a woman elected president. Even thinking that, I tear up. Women my age are seeing that if we want to elect a woman in our lifetime, it’s now. We have this opportunity to fix what we fucked up.

White women don’t have the best track record of sticking with activism. I’m thinking of the 2017 Women’s March, which had so much momentum but then seemed to peter out. 

Alice Walker says, “Activism is the rent I pay for living on the planet.” Black women have understood that for a very long time. White women sometimes think they can do a call or make a donation and call themselves activists when in reality, it’s constant. It doesn’t end the day after we elect Kamala Harris as president. It goes on for the rest of your life.

So how do we convince white women to be more committed? What’s next?

I do believe there’s been a shift. I don’t want to be too Pollyanna, but those mistakes were important steps along the path. We don’t just need white women talking to one another. We need all of us working together. There’s going to be a coalition call with Women for Harris on Monday night where the leaders of various groups are going to speak. I think there are nearly 20,000 people signed up. We have to come together now as one movement. I spent the last three days in a chair, and I think we’re going to spend the next 100 days really focused on winning this election together.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.