Yahoo News This Is How You #WinWithBlackWomen
“Oh, it’s everything,” Terri Jackson, the executive director of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association, says. She’s describing the weekly Sunday-night calls with #WinWithBlackWomen, an advocacy group spearheaded by social-impact strategist Jotaka Eaddy, that she’s been joining since 2020. “We have been pushing in all directions every single day, not just on Sunday nights. Every single day.”
In July 2024, this group of Black women burst onto the national scene when it announced that it had raised $1.5 million for the Kamala Harris campaign the day of her dramatic entrance into the race. The Sunday-night Zoom call that led those efforts swelled to a stunning 44,000 people. (The usual attendance numbers hover around 300.) The news inspired a flurry of other identity-based calls in support of the campaign, like White Women: Answer the Call, South Asians for Harris, even Poets for Harris and Knitters for Kamala. The calls were a joyful explosion that turned on its head the Right’s long-running bogeyman: identity politics. Here seemed to be a real example of why so many work so hard to make sure Americans don’t connect the facets of their identities to questions of power; the momentum and sense of belonging that can come from these connections are undeniable.
#WinWithBlackWomen includes Dallas Mavericks CEO Cynt Marshall; professor and author Brittney Cooper; venture capitalist and founder and CEO of Valmo Ventures Valerie Mosley; and a communications strategist and longtime adviser to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Rachel Noerdlinger, among many others. They all work under the auspices of veteran political strategist Donna Brazile, who is the bridge from this network to the Black women organizers of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. They first came together on August 1, 2020. Joe Biden was considering a diverse group of candidates for vice president, and the group was concerned about the racist, sexist rhetoric surrounding the pick. From that fateful meeting of 90 women, the calls became weekly, building a network of influential Black women in tech, finance, the arts, politics, and sports to quickly respond to crisis. In 2022, they worked intimately with the State Department to secure the release of Brittney Griner. That same year, they mobilized around Ketanji Brown Jackson when her Supreme Court nomination was first floated. In 2023, they counterorganized against racist attacks on Halle Bailey when she starred in The Little Mermaid. The reason they were able to respond so quickly to Harris’s announcement in 2024 was that they all knew every Sunday night was time for organizing.
There’s a long history of Black women’s clubs and organizations maintaining the civic life of America. During the Great Migration, groups like the Links, the Tents, and the Urban League kept a connection between Black women who stayed in the South and attempted to build wealth and community under Jim Crow and those who moved North and West and faced the unofficial segregation of the wider United States. These groups sometimes organized around professions, sometimes crossed class lines, but were all operating under the principle of “uplift.” Uplift, in its purest form, is the idea that a Black woman has a responsibility to her community and that individual successes are valuable only so far as they advance the larger push of Black women as a whole against American racism and sexism. When you grow up around Black women steeped in uplift, as I did, it can seem as natural as breathing air. It was a profound shock to me when I first met other marginalized people who do not understand the world in this way. It still is. For us, though, it is about building a sustainable life as much as it is about achievement.
Here, key members of #WinWithBlackWomen reconvened on a Zoom to speak about the commitment, love, and joy needed to organize a movement.
Jotaka Eaddy, social-impact strategist, founder and CEO of Full Circle Strategies, founder of #WinWithBlackWomen:
We had that momentum, and we were planning to meet on Sunday regardless. We got the news [about Kamala Harris entering the race], and then we very quickly shifted our agenda. Anywhere from 500 to 1,000 women on a call quickly ballooned to 44,000 on Zoom.
#WinWithBlackWomen is a true sisterhood. We formed four years ago more formally, but the work of #WinWithBlackWomen—we stand on the shoulders of Black women who came before us: Black-women-led organizations that have been around for over 100 years.
Valerie Mosley, venture capitalist, founder and CEO of Valmo Ventures:
People know me as an investor. But my original love was history. And if you look at history, it’s Black women who’ve been keeping families together. And we don’t say what we need. Black women have the greatest responsibility. They have the highest levels of degrees. They have the lowest net worth of any other group that’s out there. But we’re in a position to create the most amount of wealth. And in the afternoon of my life, I’m dedicated to that.
Cynt Marshall, CEO of the Dallas Mavericks:
It gives a new sense of purpose. It’s like a blood transfusion, a little shot in the arm that we needed to say, “Yes, our voices do matter. Our thoughts matter. We’re part of something bigger, and it’s beautiful.”
Shavon Arline-Bradley, president and CEO of the National Council of Negro Women:
People don’t know the whole story. We were on a call with Joe Biden’s [campaign in 2020], and Joe wasn’t even on that call. It was like eight of us. And I remember we talked to them about needing a Black woman as the vice president.
So this was predicated on something that was even [before the calls started]. It is so important to give context. Because what Black women don’t do well is tell the whole story, because of the fear that details can cause strife. When generations see and sense the gifts, they will pour into you and then require you to take it to another level. And I know without a shadow of a doubt #WinWithBlackWomen is an example of the baton being passed.
Donna Brazile, political strategist and former DNC interim chair:
I can recall back in the day when I set up those conference calls with [civil-rights activist] C. Delores Tucker and [first Black congresswoman] Shirley Chisholm and [then-president of the National Council of Negro Women and civil-rights activist] Dorothy Height. I remember organizing around the appointment of Alexis Herman as the [first Black woman] secretary of labor [in 1997]. I remember when we organized the National Political Congress of Black Women [in 1984], using conference calls, that Shirley Chisholm led each and every month. And now #WinWithBlackWomen.
So there’s a long legacy here of how Black women have constantly communicated with one another. The next generation may do it differently than what we’re doing now. Maybe I’m speaking as an OG auntie about how we did it in the past. But there’s no question what we started four years ago was groundbreaking.
I took a break [from the calls] at the beginning of the summer because I really wanted to focus on the end of my semester teaching. And I tell you, it was the only thing I missed in my life. I felt like there was a void in my soul because I didn’t have my Sunday-afternoon or evening [call].
Terri Jackson, executive director of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association:
#WinWithBlackWomen has a range.
Arline-Bradley: We’ve been trying to hook up people for the last four years, honey.
Yolanda Cash Jackson, attorney and lobbyist:
Listen, I didn’t know any of these women four years ago. But the first time I got on the call, it was electric. It was something that I was looking for.
Being a lobbyist, I’m in this space a lot by myself as a Black woman. And to have the intellectual capacity that these ladies had, the messaging, and then the trust.
Somebody said “in the afternoon of my life.” I am so in the midnight hour right now [laughing]. So my number-one thing for me is to uplift young women, to be in sync with these women who were serious about what they were doing and weren’t what my grandma would call “ragged,” you know.
My life will never be the same. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever will my life be the same. Just the energy, the intellect, the timing. I just turned 66, and I’m not gonna get another chance to do this. So whatever I got to do, you know? If my grandmama could send eight kids to college without an education, don’t I know that I can help get Kamala elected as president of the United States.
Holli Holliday, CEO of Holliday Advisors, president of Sisters Lead Sisters Vote:
There is a little bit of a formula to this, right? And the formula is, it starts with love and joy. We sent love letters to Black women in struggling situations across the four years. Even actual love letters, like to the WNBA.
The other thing is information. We are fastidious about sharing it, reaching out to the most expert Black women we can find in any given area—and we have yet to find an area where we can’t find a Black woman expert—and letting them help us understand.
The third thing is the volunteerism. There’s something very nonhierarchical, and it creates a sense of everybody being the same when you all are volunteering. My volunteer time is as important as some of these great women that you see. We’re all in the same room.
Marshall: I literally take notes, then I go and talk to all my kids. I am 100 percent better every time I hang up. The formula is very, very real, and it’s making public policy practical for us. We always leave the call better.
Felicia D. Henderson, screenwriter, producer, director:
It’s Sunday-night homework for my nieces. They’re not on camera, but they’re there. They are 13 to 22, and they know if one of them can’t make it, then the other one gives them those [notes]. I have to start doing the work with them. Thirteen is not too young for them to sit and learn what we’re doing so we can make sure we’re building the next generation of Jotakas.
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