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    ‘HillmanTok’: how The Cosby Show inspired resistance to Trump’s war on Black education

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    In 1987, the Cosby Show spinoff A Different World made its US TV debut and followed the elder child, Denise Huxtable (Lisa Bonet), as she studied at her parents’ alma mater. The fictional historically Black college (or HBCU), Hillman, would go on to become a byword for Black excellence. “The influence of kids wanting to go to school, period, I think is very powerful,” one of the stars of the series, Jasmine Guy, said while touring HBCU campuses with her former castmates in 2024, 35 years after the sitcom ended. “Because they could see themselves there.”Hillman College is credited with driving record levels of enrollment at actual HBCUs in the 1980s and 90s, and remains a source of inspiration for Black creatives to this day. The actor-screenwriter Lena Waithe had the fabled campus in mind when she launched her production company, Hillman Grad. “I want to call it something that is close to my heart, and that is the world of A Different World and what that show represented for me and so many other people,” she said.View image in fullscreenFour decades later, that fantasy world lives on and finds itself reckoning with the reality of a second Donald Trump administration hellbent on rolling back diversity programs and gutting the Department of Education. On TikTok, the hashtag HillmanTok has become a free online space where Black scholars share their expertise in subjects that the administration is trying to excise from libraries and school curricula. Anyone who scrolls to their content on TikTok and sticks around for the lesson is part of the class. “I’m mindful of the weight of this particular teaching and this particular time,” says Leah Barlow, a liberal studies professor at North Carolina A&T, the country’s largest HBCU. “Honestly, it feels a little ancestral.”Last fall, Barlow posted an introductory two-minute TikTok video for her African studies class; 250,000 users subscribed to the class channel overnight and within a week it hit 4m views. “I thought it was going to be a trend for a short time, and then we’d move on to the next thing,” says Barlow, who posted the video on the same day Trump retook office and rescinded a federal TikTok ban.But then a sixth-grade math teacher named Cierra Hinton seized on the enthusiasm and started the hashtag HillmanTok. She encouraged Black educators to post instructional videos under the banner, and was inundated with hashtagged submissions. Like Black Twitter and Black Lives Matter, another digital social justice movement was born – the world’s first crowd-sourced HBCU. In an emotional response video, Hinton took a measure of satisfaction in helping “people come together and build something that is bigger than we ever imagined, something that means so much”.HillmanTok class subjects run the gamut from US history to mathematics to culinary arts. There are even electives on African American food studies and Stem careers. “I am finally about to post the syllabus,” Carlotta Berry says in the greeting for her Engineering 101 HillmanTok course. “You can learn asynchronously by watching any of my videos.”The HillmanTok educators aren’t limited to real-world academics like Berry, an electrical and computer engineering professor at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana. Shannan E Johnson, a former creative executive at the Syfy channel, has a course on screenwriting. The music journalist Touré has a course on the prehistory of hip-hop. “This is actually a reprise of the class I did 20 years ago at NYU,” he joked. “We’re overenrolled, as usual.”Just as A Different World regularly dealt with weighty subjects such as war, homelessness and the Aids epidemic at the risk of losing advertiser support, HillmanTok also offers culturally urgent lessons on resistance and restorative justice. “People have always been trying to limit and marginalize the impact and effect of Black education,” says Jelani Favors, the director of North Carolina A&T’s Center of Excellence for Social Justice. “But it was those teachers opening up their classroom doors, pouring into young idealists and finding ways to unlock their potential to engage in the deconstructing of Jim Crow and white supremacy.”This is all happening against the backdrop of a Black college enrollment gap in which Black men account for 26% of the student body. All the while Maga donors add insult to injury by trashing the value of HBCU education overall. “Howard was not Harvard,” the billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel said in a dig at the former vice-president Kamala Harris’s scholarship at Howard University, the most prestigious HBCU. “You couldn’t even point this out [when she was running]. This is probably a racist thing to say.”That’s just the start of the slights against HBCUs, which were founded to provide educational opportunities for Black students at a time when it was illegal or impossible to attend college in the US. A 2023 investigation by the Biden administration found that HBCUs had missed out on more than $13bn in federal funding for more than three decades because state governors blocked the funds. North Carolina A&T, which has a 14,000-student enrollment, was owed more than $2bn alone. HBCUs could well end up suffering more under Trump, who has made a U-turn from allocating $250m in funding to freezing educational grants and loans – which is how most HBCU students cover tuition. Last month, he signed an executive order to close the Department of Education – a critical lifeline for HBCUs, which have a much harder time fundraising than predominantly white institutions.View image in fullscreenThat HillmanTok is poised to become a resource for a Black student population that could find itself locked out of the traditional college experience makes it more relevant than just another Khan Academy, YouTube University or MasterClass. Inevitably, that momentum faces new headwinds from the rush to capitalize on the Hillman name – not unlike the Black Lives Matter movement did at the end. Some HillmanTok supporters have taken exception to attempts to sell merchandise and live events under the name. What’s more, as a number of trademark claims have been filed for the name, Black TikTok users have raised concerns about a white business interest winning control.“Anytime something looks like it’s going to make some money or turn into a movement, you see this,” says the Howard University law professor Nicole Gaither, who adds that the case for each filing also holds potential ramifications. It just really depends on how the US Patent and Trademark Office is going to view this. “Lena Waithe has Hillman registrations that are related to entertainment services, but she also has education services related to manners and etiquette. And she sells apparel,” Gaither aded.While that plays out in the background, Barlow remains strictly committed to the work. Last month TikTok and the United Negro College Fund hosted an event in Washington to connect HillmanTok instructors with Capitol Hill lawmakers and bring awareness to inclusive education and Black history preservation. While there, Barlow conducted TikTok interviews with the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock and the representative Jasmine Crockett for her class. Crockett implored her students to “take advantage of this moment and realize we don’t have a million Leahs running around. Please value her and value your education.”HillmanTok continues a tradition of Black self-determination through education that dates back to the flouting of anti-literacy laws during slavery. “We always find a way, regardless of what is happening – we, meaning Black people,” says Barlow. “We have always been resilient, autonomous and used agency to get information where it needs to go.”View image in fullscreenThe Hillman brand wasn’t always such an easy sell. Where The Cosby Show was largely written and produced by white people for white audiences as a showcase for Black respectability, A Different World boldly entrusted young Black creatives with the task of relating the cultural experiences that young Black students were having in real time. A Different World faced bitter critical reception when it debuted. One newspaper reviewer called it “a greed-motivated sitcom” in a slam of the show’s creator, Bill Cosby – who patterned the college after the women’s HBCU Spelman College, where he was once a major benefactor.After that rough first season, control over the sitcom was passed to the Fame alumna Debbie Allen (sister of The Cosby Show matriarch Phylicia Rashad) – who not only brought her own college experience at Howard into the production process, but also an army of Black writers and consultants. She empowered actors to give feedback and introduced clauses into their contract that freed them up to write and direct episodes, adding to the show’s diverse perspectives. For a kicker, Allen enlisted Aretha Franklin to record the theme song.Also in the middle of that first season, Bonet became pregnant with her first child, Zoë, with her then husband Lenny Kravitz. Cosby, scoffing at the cultural optics of Denise being portrayed as an unwed mother in college, had Bonet written off the series and reabsorbed into The Cosby Show. “I thought that show just wasn’t going to come back because she was and is the star,” Guy said. But after reconfiguring around the romance between Whitley (Guy) and Dwayne (Kadeem Hardison), A Different World became a ratings colossus alongside The Cosby Show and a mainstay in Black households for generations.Among others, the sitcom introduced the world to Jada Pinkett Smith and the Oscar winners Halle Berry and Marisa Tomei – who took the role playing Bonet’s white roommate after Meg Ryan passed. (It certainly worked out for the both of them.) And unlike with The Cosby Show, the disgraced Cosby’s involvement has not dinted A Different World’s popularity over the years. (He only appears briefly in the pilot.) Last fall, the cast reunited for a national HBCU tour to spark enrollment and scholarship fundraising and found that many of the students who remain inspired by the show had been born long after its initial 144-episode run.In February, A Different World finally made its debut on Netflix – six months after the streamer announced the development of an Allen-produced sequel that would focus on the Hillman experience of Whitley and Dwayne’s daughter, with the pilot to begin shooting over the summer. It remains to be seen whether this new version of the series will address Magaworld’s assault on Black education. It wouldn’t be the same show if it didn’t. “The issues we were dealing with then,” said the series co-star Dawnn Lewis, “we’re still dealing with in some shape or form today.”HillmanTok roll call: five to follow

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      ‘We’re going backwards’: the Black student unions being defunded on US campuses

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      For Nevaeh Parker, the president of the Black student union (BSU) at the University of Utah, Black History Month is usually a buzzing time on campus.The school’s BSU hosts several events – kickback parties and movie screenings – throughout the month. The Black cultural center, where students would usually congregate and attend activities, would be full. And the month’s crown jewel would typically be a conference at the college for Black high schoolers in the area.But in July 2024, the center was shut down and turned into offices. The BSU budget, previously a guaranteed $11,000 a year to fund various gatherings to support the school’s marginal Black population, has been slashed. And the group has been forced to officially disassociate from the university in order to keep Black students at the center of their programming, all thanks to a new anti-DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) law passed in Utah last year.“It really hurts my soul to feel like we’re going backwards,” Parker, 19, told the Guardian. “We aren’t able to be as strong of a resource as we could be to Black students here.”View image in fullscreenBlack student unions at US colleges are fighting to stay in operation as state laws targeting DEI initiatives threaten their existence. Founded largely in the 1960s and 1970s, the campus groups support Black students at predominantly white universities by securing additional educational and financial resources, demanding more Black faculty, and building spaces for Black students to socialize. Activism by Black student unions helped spur the creation of African American studies programs across the US.BSUs are often the first line of response to racial discrimination on campus, organizing protests and holding universities accountable. Dozens of the groups held demonstrations after George Floyd’s murder in 2020.But anti-DEI bills are restricting what BSUs can do on campus, and how universities are legally allowed to support them. Since 2023, at least 11 states have passed laws targeting DEI initiatives in higher education. And conservative lawmakers in more than 30 states have also introduced such bills. At the federal level, Donald Trump ordered US universities and schools to eliminate DEI measures, threatening to withhold federal funding from those that do not comply.DEI programming at the collegiate level was initially conceived to support marginalized students, who are disproportionately affected by discrimination, financial hardship and feelings of alienation. But Republican legislators have argued that such initiatives are unfair and discriminate against white students. The flurry of anti-DEI bills, which have sharply increased since 2022, comes after the US supreme court struck down affirmative action, or the practice of race-conscious student admissions, in June 2023.Anti-DEI legislation and culture as a whole has had a chilling effect on colleges. Several universities have cancelled scholarships specifically aimed at students of color. Multicultural and LGBTQ+ student centers have been shuttered. And staff overseeing DEI initiatives have been terminated or reassigned.In January 2024, the Utah legislature passed House bill 261, known as the Equal Opportunity Initiatives. The law prohibits state schools and public offices from engaging in “differential treatment”, essentially banning DEI efforts centered around a particular identity.In response to the new legislation, the University of Utah closed its Black cultural center, a major loss for Black students on campus looking for a physical location to socialize, especially as only 3% of Utah students are Black. “It was a home away from home for a lot of students, especially those who lived out of state,” said Parker. “[The state of] Utah is less than 2% Black, [so] obviously, you are going to need spaces that are safe.”View image in fullscreenUtah’s BSU lost its adviser, as administrators either were reassigned to different parts of the university or resigned altogether. Notably, the words “diversity, equity and inclusion” cannot be used on any events sponsored by the university. “It basically took away our voice and took away what things that we wanted to talk about,” said Parker of the new limitations.In a comment to the Guardian, university officials said that identity-centered student groups are still able to gather as “affiliated” or “registered” organizations. “The University of Utah preserves and defends the rights of all registered student organizations – including the Black Student Union – to organize, gather and sponsor events on campus. Universities are marketplaces of diverse viewpoints and ideas, and that includes within our student clubs. Changing their status from ‘sponsored’ to ‘registered’ preserves their independence to continue working with a community of students, faculty and staff without limitation on their communication and activities.”The school said it has since opened the Center for Community and Cultural Engagement (CCE) and the Center for Student Access and Resources, which are “open to all students, whose dedicated staff still provide the same level of support – in advising, scholarship preparation, resource referrals and mentorship”. It has “redistributed the funds that were originally dedicated to BSU to efforts that work toward supporting all students”.Parker noted that the missions of these centers are broad and “not centered on student organization and affinity groups. It’s felt like their ability to support us in the ways that we need have not been met.”In October, the BSU publicly announced that it would forgo official sponsorship in order to fight censorship attempts. Some events at Utah have had to be cancelled, Parker said, as students try and preserve funds they crowdsource across school years. The group has had to meet less as well, especially without a designated space. Club meetings are now held in various campus classrooms.Black students at the University of Alabama have also found themselves in a similar position. Their BSU had its funding revoked and was forced to relocate after a state bill restricting DEI went into effect in October 2024. “It’s been hard for freshmen especially to find their community and find like-minded people that look like them,” said Jordan Stokes, the BSU president.If the BSU wants university support, particularly funding for student events, the groups would be forced to “partner with another organization”, Stokes, 20, said, so the event is not solely focused on Black students and is in compliance with state law. The BSU has since successfully reached out to outside sponsors and alumni to finance Black History Month events, including its annual BSU week which features a number of celebratory gatherings. But that fundraising is finite compared to the university’s resources.The BSU office, which is now sitting empty, also held a significant amount of civil rights artifacts from past events at the university, said Stokes, and students are working to preserve its archives amid the closing. Posters highlighting important Black figures used to hang around the office. Yearbooks past were available for perusal.Now, much of that history is sitting in storage, Stokes said. “We had writing on our wall and on the window where you could read about our history and everything,” she said. “It’s pretty sad for folks who [aren’t Black] to not see this history and learn and explore different cultures.” The University of Alabama did not reply to the Guardian’s request for comment.Both Parker and Stokes said that they are extremely frustrated with lawmakers who are going after their communities and other students of color. Watching the university comply with state demands has been hard, Parker added, especially amid concerns that directly protesting from the anti-DEI policies could have their organizations punished or removed from campus altogether.But both BSUs have continued hosting events to make sure that Black students feel supported. Attendance at BSU events has remained steady, said Stokes, with students becoming more interested in voting and learning more about these policies.Parker said that she and other BSU leaders are focusing on individuals, students who need the organization in whatever way it can exist. That means continuing to celebrate and gather, even under the threat of erasure. “It’s really sad,” she said, “that we as students, who are not politicians, have to take the responsibility to continuously fight every single day for our existence on campus.” More

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      The little-known Gullah Geechee politician who pushed for the 14th amendment

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      After Donald Trump issued an executive order to limit birthright citizenship last month, Marilyn Hemingway, the CEO and president of the Gullah Geechee Chamber of Commerce, knew she had to do something. Based in Georgetown, South Carolina, the GGCC helps preserve the history of Gullah Geechee people, the Africans who were enslaved on the Sea Islands along the Atlantic coast, and their descendants. One such person was Joseph Hayne Rainey, a man born in Georgetown and enslaved until his father purchased his freedom when he was 10. Rainey is who Hemingway immediately thought of following Trump’s order.Rainey was the first Black person elected to the United States congress, where he was known for his support of the 14th amendment, which was ratified in 1868 and stated: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The amendment was necessary to give the roughly 4.5 million Black people in the country citizenship after emancipation, as a previous supreme court case, Dred Scott v Sandford, had denied citizenship to all people of African descent.Rainey’s support for the laws passed during Reconstruction was deeply informed by his life in enslavement. He spent much of his time in Congress fighting to protect Black Americans and to ensure the 14th and 15th amendments – the latter of which prohibited the federal government from denying a citizen the right to vote based on race, color or previous condition of servitude – were enforced.“The 14th amendment was passed and ratified because once those who were enslaved were emancipated, it was like they didn’t have standing,” Hemingway said. “Where were they in this world now? They were no longer enslaved, so they needed to be made citizens … [Rainey] went from an enslaved person to an emancipated person to a citizen. His personal story reflects the American story.”Now, the amendment that has long granted birthright citizenship is being used by the US president to deny citizenship to the children of recent immigrants. “The Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” his EO reads. It “has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’”.Trump’s executive order almost immediately faced several lawsuits from civil rights groups and Democratic attorneys generals, as well as a temporary restraining order from a federal judge. A federal appeals court has denied the administration’s request to reinstate a ban, but the threat still looms, especially as the president has said he expects the supreme court to side with him on the decision.“The first line of the 14th amendment is designed to say that anyone who was born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States is a citizen,” said Jamal Greene, a professor at Columbia Law School. “That doesn’t depend on their race or their ethnicity or anything else about them. The only question is whether they’re subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”Trump’s administration has harped on the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States”, which was understood to refer to people who were not subject to US law, Greene said. That would have meant diplomats from other countries, Indigenous people, who are sovereign, and, potentially, an invading army. But now Trump is trying to use that language to apply to a wide group of people, including children whose parents were not lawfully in the US at the time of their birth.Greene said that those who support such an understanding of the law are suggesting that those people would not have an allegiance to the US. “But that interpretation is not consistent with how it would have been originally understood,” he said. “And it’s also not consistent with the language itself, since jurisdiction is not a reference to allegiance. It’s a reference to whether US laws apply to those people.”Some are also concerned about the order’s potential reach to citizens, such as Black Americans. The GGCC, for its part, argues that Trump’s order is an attempt to undo some of Rainey’s work. For Rainey, the 14th amendment was not just for Black Americans – it was for everyone. “To all people born unnaturalized into the United States, [the 14th amendment] is the first time in the history of the United States that it actually covered citizenship, including of formerly enslaved people,” Hemingway said. “They were the impetus for this, but it covered everyone. So we have to be very careful when we come and we start attacking it, because it’s not just going to remove citizenship of immigrants, it’s going to remove citizenship of everyone.”Though the restraining order blocks Trump’s plan, the future of birthright citizenship will be undecided until the supreme court hears the case. In the meantime, Hemingway is continuing to promote Rainey’s life and continue his fight.“This is why we speak out to make sure correct history is told … We still have to have the same fight for civil rights. [Rainey’s] actions inform our actions to this day. His story needs to be told more so that we could hold all of our elected officials accountable to the United States constitution. We are in a constitutional crisis. His life explains why we continue the fight.” More

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      ‘She’s our vision of the future’: Black Nevadans rallying for Harris hope to make history

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      Las Vegas’s historic Westside has long been celebrated for its Black community’s entrepreneurship, activism and resilience. The neighborhood became “historic” when America’s first racially integrated casino, the Moulin Rouge, opened in 1955, employing Black card dealers and chorus line dancers, and welcoming singers such as Sammy Davis Jr and Ella Fitzgerald to not only perform, but to dine and gamble. Today, campaign organizers for Kamala Harris hope the community will play a history-making role again in November.The 2024 presidential election could hinge on how Nevada swings. To win the key battleground state, Democrats will have to run up the score in Las Vegas to overcome deficits in rural counties and the evenly divided electorate in Reno.About 10% of the state’s population identifies as Black or African American, a majority of whom live in the Las Vegas Valley. According to the Harris campaign, this subset is fired up, and turnout and enthusiasm in the critical Democratic constituency may make a difference.“It’s been pandemonium,” says Ishmael Carroll, the campaign’s regional political director focused on outreach to southern Nevada’s Black community. “I’ve been inundated with calls, texts, emails. It’s complete excitement. In previous elections I had to go find people. People are calling me now first thing in the morning, late at night – ‘How can I be involved? How can I participate? What can I do to help?’“I think they identify the importance of this moment in our history,” Carroll adds.Lya Harvey, a 52-year-old nurse practitioner, is one of those first-time volunteers. Though she always votes, she had never attended rallies, volunteered or donated to a campaign before, she said.“I’m really not that into politics, but given the situation right now between the two parties, I think it’s necessary to be out here getting involved,” she says. She’s tired of the “mean and nasty” attacks that have divided communities and contributed to dysfunction in Washington.View image in fullscreen“We’ve always had Democrats and Republicans and different views,” Harvey adds. “But right, I don’t think we can deal with any problems until we deal with [the division].”Nevada’s winner has gone on to the White House in 10 of the past 12 presidential elections. Democrats enjoy a winning streak in the battleground state that goes back four election cycles, to Barack Obama’s double-digit victory in 2008. But each of those wins was tighter than the last, and though Joe Biden narrowly defeated Donald Trump here in 2020, Trump held a significant lead in the polls of their expected rematch, contributing to Biden’s decision to end his re-election bid for lack of a viable path to victory.Harris’s Sun belt strategy to challenge Trump in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada has its strongest chance of a win here, according to current polling estimates.Daniele Monroe-Moreno, a Nevada assemblywoman and chair of the Nevada state Democratic party, says the reasons for Harris’s appeal in the Westside community are multifold. It’s a diverse city with multicultural families that see themselves, their friends and neighbors in Harris’s narrative, she said, which matches their “vision of the future”.“We’re Black, Native American, Hispanic and AAPI all in my family,” Monroe-Moreno shares. “But we’re also straight, gay, bi, Christian, Jewish and Muslim, so when I talk about ‘the community’, I talk about all of us, because it takes all of us working together for a better future. And I believe the excitement we’re seeing with Kamala Harris is that there are so many families like mine that see her and Tim Walz, who is like that guy next door who mows the lawn for the senior who can’t do it any more … They see Kamala and Tim as people they know and can personally attach themselves to.”Volunteers say they’ve been encouraged by voters’ responses to Harris and Walz’s proposals. The anxieties that Las Vegas organizers and volunteers “hear at the doors”, as they say, are consistent all across Nevada. The state’s education system isn’t preparing children for success. Rent and home prices are through the roof. Essential items like food and gas are frustratingly expensive.Harris’s effort to distance herself from criticisms of the Biden administration’s handling of the economy has included plans that seem tailored for door-to-door canvassers to assuage skeptical voters. There is the promise to build 3m new homes over four years. Tax credits for parents and small business owners. A plan to investigate corporations that engage in price-gouging on groceries.There’s also clear excitement for a younger, vibes-ier candidate who provides a striking contrast to Trump. There’s fresh hope that she can actually win a race that once looked like a Democratic death march. And then there’s the opportunity to shatter what Hillary Clinton often referred to as the “ultimate glass ceiling”.Harris rarely acknowledges the chance to overcome centuries of biases and oppression that have prevented a woman of color from representing one of the two major political parties as the presidential nominee. She may fear hearing the same attack lines Clinton faced about being driven more by personal legacy than by the kitchen table issues voters ultimately prioritize. Still, to borrow a famous Bidenism: this is a big fucking deal.Being one ballot away from electing the first Black Indian American female president has those communities fired up, along with Democrats who value diverse representation in positions of power.“You can see she actually cares about people,” Harvey, the first-time volunteer, says, “and being a Black woman – and I’m a Black woman – she understands that it’s about a lot more than just being a politician.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHer T-shirt suggests a new slogan: “kaMALA: Make America Laugh Again”. If Harris succeeds, historians will note that joy and humor proved surprisingly effective in galvanizing support against the perceived threat of Maga authoritarianism.There are nonpartisan voters in Las Vegas’s historic Westside who would welcome courtship from Republicans. Brian Harris, 64, founder of the Independent Black Voters group on Facebook, says: “It’s not about the party, it’s about the agenda.”There’s one problem, however. “Until Republicans get rid of the white nationalism, I can’t support them,” he says. “If they stop being the party of Trump and become conservative, I’ll talk to them. And if there are good people, they may get endorsed by us, but it comes down to us picking what’s best for us.”What about the complaints that Democrats only show up every four years when they need the Black community’s vote?Carroll, the Democrats’ regional director, says he grew up in the historic Westside and has been organizing here for years. All the campaign’s outreach teams, he adds, are led by individuals with deep community ties and in partnership with neighborhood non-profits and small business owners who host events.Those include Souls to the Polls gatherings in the Baptist community, neighborhood block parties and a weekly roundtable discussion at the Westside Oasis bar and restaurant.A registered independent, Terry Adams, Westside Oasis’s owner, participates in these discussions in which voters air concerns, analyze the issues and share research on news-making items like Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s proposed agenda for a second Trump term.View image in fullscreenThough the event is called Black Voices of Las Vegas, Adams proudly shares that often a majority of the attendees are white women. “This is for everybody,” he says, adding that it’s his civic duty to provide space for the event. “It’s the principles of the United States of America that matter. That’s what everybody strives for.”Longtime Democratic activists are also turning out with excitement to rally support for a Harris presidency. La Toya Laymon, 49, volunteers in every election. She was raised to understand that if you don’t like the way things are, you need to step up and get involved, she said. Her mother was a freedom fighter in Mississippi who was arrested at age 14 for demonstrating for equal rights and detained for three days afterward in a boxcar.“How could I not fight?” Laymon says. “I am her walking dream.”As a human resources professional, she feels frustrated by efforts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs. As a woman, she feels disturbed that the right to an abortion was won and lost during her lifetime.“A lot of people don’t understand the gravity [of elections] because they are reaping the benefits of people like my mother and my grandparents,” Laymon says. “This election is just because we didn’t do the job in 2016, and now everyone is like, ‘OK, who is going to get us back on track to democracy? Kamala Harris is that person.’” More

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      Harris campaign has enlivened voters, say Black organizers: ‘The energy is palpable’

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      Black grassroots organizers who played a critical role in mobilizing voters in the last presidential election say they are seeing an uptick in interest in their groups and a jolt of energy after Kamala Harris took Joe Biden’s place at the top of the Democratic ticket.“I hear nothing but enthusiasm,” said Helen Butler, a longtime voting rights organizer who runs the nonpartisan Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda. “More people are calling to volunteer. The young people are saying, ‘What can we do?’ All of our activities are nonpartisan. So we’re training them to just talk about civic engagement and why public policy matters.”The observations from organizers come as the Harris campaign has intensified its momentum in the race. It solidified the support of the Democratic party, earned enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee and has seen colossal fundraising numbers.Harris’s campaign says it has raised more than $100m, including a staggering $81m in the first 24 hours after Joe Biden left the race. That total was accrued from more than 500,000 grassroots donors who gave for the first time in the 2024 cycle, the campaign said.Grassroots groups played a critical role in 2020, mobilizing nonwhite voters – who tend to support Democrats – at record levels. Overall, turnout in the 2020 election was at its highest since 1900.Initial polls show Harris in a neck-and-neck race with Donald Trump, but there are indications of significant shifts in the race. A CNN poll released last week found that 50% of Harris backers said their support of her was more pro-Harris than anti-Trump. In a June CNN poll, just 37% of Biden’s supporters said their support was about backing the president rather than being against Trump.“It does change the energy, and to a certain extent, it changes the messages,” said Cliff Albright, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, which is supportive of Harris’s candidacy. “The full toolbox is open. We can go anti-Trump, or we can go pro-Kamala, or we can talk about some aspects of her record more, and the administration more, so it just expands the tools that we have at our disposal.”The first week of Harris’s candidacy has been bolstered by a groundswell of support. 44,000 people joined a Zoom call led by Black women on Sunday evening in the first hours after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, which raised more than $1.5m. A call the next evening hosted by Black men reported 53,000 participants and raised more than $1.3m. A call hosted by white women Thursday evening had more than 160,000 people on it and reportedly raised $8.5m. A similar south Asian women call for Harris had more than 10,000 people and raised more than $300,000. A “white dudes for Harris” call on Monday raised around $4m.“I think the energy is palpable,” said Angela Lang, an organizer with Black Leaders Organizing Communities (Bloc) in Milwaukee. She said that many on her team had said they would support Harris, while others were waiting to see how she reconciled her record as a prosecutor.“I think folks understand that people are allowed to change and evolve. We’ve seen other presidential candidates change and evolve their stances on gay marriage, for example, so I think folks are curious to see how she reconciles that,” she said. “But I don’t know if [her record will] be that big of a factor in the grand scheme of things, because I think the urgency of a second Trump presidency outweighs it for some folks.”That’s not to say that it will be a cakewalk for Harris. Those who helped organize the “uncommitted” vote in the primary in protest of the Biden administration’s position on the war in Gaza have warned that the vice president needs to earn their vote.Albright predicted that this campaign would be much different for Harris than her presidential primary – when she entered the race as a top tier contender and then flamed out before the Iowa primary.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Some of it was just about the overall positioning that you had during the primary. You had the clearly progressive candidates talking about Medicare for All and other really progressive policies, and then you had those that were viewed as being more moderate, including Kamala Harris and Joe Biden,” he said. “I think what we’ve seen now over the past four years is that some of those concerns that we had about how progressive either one of them would have been were proven to not be valid.”Both Lang and Albright have gotten a chance to speak personally with Harris and see how she approaches issues.Albright has met with her several times to discuss the push for federal voting rights legislation – one of the key issues that was in Harris’s portfolio as vice-president.“We’ve obviously been impressed by her leadership and the sincerity that she [has], the dedication that she takes to some of these issues,” he said.Lang said that she briefly spoke to Harris in 2021 in Milwaukee when she had a chance to take a picture with her. She said she used the brief interaction to speak about the need to fix lead pipes in Milwaukee and emphasize that it was a social justice issue since exposure to lead has been linked to behavioral and emotional issues in children.“It didn’t feel like she was blowing me off or she was just saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, to agree,” Lang said. “She immediately connected the dots and felt just as passionate as I did.” More

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      Harris’s likely nomination invigorates US Black women and spurs donations

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      Following Joe Biden’s decision on Sunday to end his re-election campaign and endorse Kamala Harris, Win With Black Women, a political collective, held its regular call to discuss that week’s agenda: the upcoming election. Only this time, the call swelled to include more than 44,000 people – forcing Zoom to lift capacity limitations – with an additional 30,000 joining in on a Clubhouse stream, and an unknown number of others connecting to unauthorized livestreams, organizers said. Even as late as 1am, people continued trying to join the call.“We were so elated and pleased to see [Biden] fully endorse Vice-President Kamala Harris, and so we all got on that Zoom, united around our joy, united around our desire to be together in history,” Jotaka Eaddy, Win With Black Women’s founder, said. “But [we] also united around our support of Vice-President Harris and our commitment to do the work to make sure that she’s the next president of the United States and that we beat Donald Trump and the Maga agenda.”The group first convened four years ago “around our collective outrage to the racism, the sexism that was taking place in the presidential process”.While Sunday’s number of call attendees was unexpected, Win With Black Women was able to accommodate and mobilize them because of the extensive framework the organization has built.“It is important to recognize Jotaka Eaddy, Holli Holliday, Chrisina Cue, Chantel Mullen, Edwina Ward, Hollye Weekes,” Sesha Joi Moon, who was present on the call, said. “These are the women that were responsible for 71,000 registrants, 44,000 and counting logging on … then helped to raise $1.5m in three hours [for] the first potential Black woman president in the United States of America.”Moon was formerly the chief diversity officer for the US House of Representatives for the 117th and 118th Congresses. After her position was eliminated a few months ago, she recalls saying that it was “a very sad day for America”. Sunday night gave her a renewed sense of hope.“Regardless of your race, your gender, your religion, your sexual orientation, your immigrant status, your military service status, your geographic location, your educational level, your ability status as it relates to being disabled – we said we want a country where everyone belongs,” she said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSunday’s Win With Black Women call featured prominent Black women including representatives Maxine Waters, Joyce Beatty and Jasmine Crockett; Danette Antony Reed, president of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority; actor Jenifer Lewis; and LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. The Zoom call included an intergenerational representation of Black women and girls along with Latino, AAPI and male allies.“It was one of the best feelings ever,” Sophia Casey, who joined the Zoom call from Washington DC, said. “The sisterhood, I was just sharing with another colleague who didn’t get to make the call, that the sisterhood was just delicious.”Tiffany Crutcher received an invitation to join from Debra Watts, with whom Crutcher has done social justice organizing, then used her own networks to invite hundreds of additional women, she said.“We’ve carried this Democratic party for decades – we’re the margin of victory. This is our time, and that’s the energy I felt on that call,” Crutcher said. “All of the energy and the organizing that we’re doing on the ground … We’re gonna use that energy all the way into November.”Eaddy said that “there is a fire in the country right now of excitement”. The Monday-night call had more than 5,000 women who were interested in joining, and following the Win With Black Women call, a coalition of several groups organized another under the banner of Win With Black Men.In 2016 and 2020, 94% and 90% of Black women, respectively, supported the Democratic nominee. If Harris is successful in clinching her party’s nomination, for the first time, Black female voters will have the opportunity to vote for a Black woman representing a major political party for president.“To see the breadth of Black women in joy, but also committed to the work that is ahead of us, it’s a feeling that I will never, ever lose,” Eaddy said. “I will take it with me for the rest of my life.” More