New York’s Kamala Calvary Gearing up

By Nayaba Arinde
Editor-at-Large @NayabaArinde1
Under the banner Win with Black Women, the Democratic Party is riding that wave once again. First, in an organic call-to-action 44,000 Black women joined an hours-long Sunday night Zoom call raising over a million dollars, the very day Vice President Kamala Harris was endorsed by out-going President Joseph Biden, as his choice for Democratic presidential candidate 2024; then Black men followed suit with Roland Martin hosting a Black Men for Harris calling for a show of support for the presumptive candidate.

“She has electrified a previously nonchalant and unmotivated audience,” retired teacher and community activist Sam Adewumi told Our Time Press. “It was a meeting of Black men that reminded me of aspects of the Million Man March… brothers from all over the country, all affiliations and varied experiences, coming together to pledge support around a common issue. This time it was for a sister. It was an amazing event to be a part of.”

The Associated Press (AP) announced that Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign “has raised $200 million since she emerged as the likely Democratic presidential nominee.”
With the General Election Day less than 100 days away, “over 170,000 volunteers have also signed up to help the Harris campaign with phone banking, canvassing and other get-out-the-vote efforts.”

This past weekend, with New York included, there were 2,300 organizing events in battleground states. “Make no mistake, New York is a battleground state,” said State Senator Cordell Cleare at a ‘Harlem for Harris’ rally beneath the statue of freedom fighter Harriet Tubman. While Harris has not yet announced her choice of running mate. She said she would make her pick known by August 8th.

Uptown on Sunday, July 28th, a pumped-up crowd of Harlem Black Women for Harris held a rally in support of the campaign. Enthusiastically motivating the crowd was Ny Whitaker, who was a Senior Fellow at Obama for America, then worked as a Biden and now Harris campaign organizer, and was the former Women’s Vote Director at the New York State Democratic Party. The marketing and political strategist told the excited crowd, “Black women have been the backbone of this nation for decades and generations. We are going to Win with Black women for Harris not only in Harlem but around the nation. We have white women answering the call; we have white men…we have Latinos…we have the Indigenous community…we have Asian American Pacific Islanders…we have our seniors…we have our young people answering the call. This is our time to go forward and never back.”

Plugging NewYorkforHarrisforpresident.com, NYU professor Whitaker, as the Executive Director of Emerge previously aided over 20 women to run for office. At this week’s support rally, she urged the assembled women to sign up, volunteer, participate, and “Turn our anxiety into action.”
Political complacency cannot be on the agenda, State Assembly candidate Jordan Wright noted that with several seats on the ballot in November, folks must participate in the process. Likewise, State Senator Cordell Cleare emphasized, “Please know that New York state is a battleground state. We are fighting for New York. We need help up in the Hudson Valley” Cleare told the crowd, “We have 5 seats that we can flip and one to hold.”

“Every single person is here because of a woman,” City Councilman Yusef Salaam told the crowd of perhaps 200 women. The nation is experiencing a “pulse,” right now, he said. “We are feeling the vibrations like we’ve never felt before. We are feeling inspired like we never felt before. And why is that? It is because we have a convicted felon running for office who can’t even vote, according to the current laws in America…we have a Black woman running for office who has a prosecutorial background.”

Salaam is one of the Exonerated Five – a member of the falsely accused Central Park 5 teenagers wrongfully convicted of attacking a jogger in 1989. “Donald Trump took out that full-page ad calling for the state to kill us, and they put out our names and addresses in the newspapers when we were 14 and 15-year-old children, he looked at the color of our skin and deemed us guilty, and look at where we are now…”

Harris as a Howard University alum and an AKA soror, is seeking support from both. Bed Stuy’s Shirley Chisholm was the first Black woman to run for president. Harris is the second African-American woman and the first South Asia American.
As a senator, Harris advocated for gun control laws, healthcare and taxation reform, and the DREAM Act – a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Even though the campaign strategy of Trump, and his running mate Sen. JD Vance has been to pivot on insults from Biden to Harris, they continue to portray her as a radical liberal.

“She’ll still need to reintroduce herself to voters and answer questions regarding criminal justice reform, the war in Gaza, homeownership, and economic opportunities,” MSNBC contributor Professor Basil A. Smikle Jr. told Our Time Press. “Much of her platform will rely heavily on Biden’s platform for now but we may see some departure after the convention. But a galvanizing issue that has brought Harris closer to her base is the constant use of DEI by Republicans as a proxy to describe her as being unqualified… Black and Brown voters know that attack all too well and can help her push back on the narrative.”

Loud opinions and consequential theorizing will be office and home, street corner, salon, and barbershop standards for the next four months.
“I believe wholeheartedly that the unfortunate events that took place to force President Biden from the race could have been avoided had he kept the implicit promise of his 2020 candidacy and not run for re-election,” Tamika D. Mallory, Co-Founder, Until Freedom, told Our Time Press. “I think many of us are relieved that the decision has been made conclusively and we are on the road to wrapping up the chaos of the past few weeks, which has caused a great deal of anxiety and uncertainty.

While it is a great feeling to see how quickly and powerfully Black women, national and local organizers, donors, activists, Party leaders, and State Chairs have come together to endorse my sorority sister Kamala Harris as the next President of the United States, we can not get wrapped up in the euphoria of the moment. We have to get to work pushing the nominee to address the issues of our Movement and commit to building a better life for all marginalized Americans. We must gather all our forces and resources to beat Donald Trump and his dangerous agenda. While MAGA works on Project 2025, we’re working on Project Freedom.”