One woman was putting her toddler to bed in Baltimore when her phone pinged. Another in Washington saw it while doom-scrolling. A third sat on the deck of her Connecticut home talking about chores with her husband when the WhatsApp message came.
Washington
After Biden’s exit, Zoom led by Black women mobilized 44,000 for Harris
More than 44,000 people logged onto a Zoom call to support Harris and raised more than $1.5 million for her campaign in three hours, according to Win With Black Women founder Jotaka Eaddy.
“Anybody that does not think that Black and Brown women are the backbone of this party, they don’t know us,” Star Jones, the lawyer and former talk show host, told The Washington Post. “[Harris] has already been leading by example. We are going to support her, we’re going to raise money for her, and we’re going to get out the vote for her.”
The call shows the ways in which Black women, a key Democratic voting bloc, plan to galvanize and organize to support Harris. The call, which attracted several celebrities and political figures, was off the record and everyone spoke in their personal capacities, but many attendees described to The Post that it felt like church, a family reunion, a rally or the online hangouts from the height of quarantine.
Even though they were told not to, people streamed the Zoom on other sites such as Clubhouse, Twitch and YouTube.
Eaddy organized the Zoom call the same way in which she has hosted most Sunday night calls for Win With Black Women since August 2020. The organization says it aims to elect Black women nationwide and speaks out against racism and sexism. At the height of the 2020 election, she said the most attendees she had on one Zoom call was 1,500 people. Eaddy was expecting a few hundred last night.
But she realized something was different around 2 p.m., when she got a message that 50 people were in the Zoom waiting room. The call was set to start at 8:30 p.m.
By 7:50 p.m., the Zoom was at capacity with 1,000 people. Members contacted Zoom, which moved the group to a webinar, giving them unlimited capacity to expand their attendees.
“I am forever grateful to the leadership of Zoom for what they did,” Eaddy said.
She said “allies” who identify as Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Black men joined the Zoom to show their support. But the majority of the call focused on Black women’s collective power to elect Harris.
“What happened last night was historic,” Eaddy said. “It really is the culmination of so many Black women for years and years and years that have been working, cultivating and creating for this moment. And last night was also a homage, a work to them and their sacrifice.”
Bernice King, the youngest child of Martin Luther King Jr.; 85-year-old Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the most senior Black woman in the House; and Donna Brazile, the two-time acting chair of the Democratic National Committee, each spoke during the call. Jones, actress Jenifer Lewis, first lady of Maryland Dawn Moore, radio host Angela Rye, U.S. Senate hopeful Angela D. Alsobrooks and author Luvvie Ajayi Jones also joined.
Many representatives of the nine Black sororities and fraternities that exist under the National Pan-Hellenic Council, known as the Divine Nine, also spoke. Alpha Kappa Alpha, of which Harris is a member, formed the first Black sorority in 1908.
Naima Cochrane, a music industry executive and writer, spent the early part of her Sunday afternoon shocked about Biden’s announcement. She said she was not confident in American voters, though she was confident about Harris. But the call lit a fire under her.
“There was no conversation about doubt. There was no ‘what if we can’t’; it was ‘this is what we’re about to do,’” Cochrane said. “People needed to know directives. That there is a strategy, that we’re unified in messaging, and their next steps. We can go forward confidently and strongly now to combat misinformation and combat naysayers.”
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who has endorsed Harris, said she got at least 10 messages from people telling her about the Zoom call. Bowser told The Post on Monday that she was at an event celebrating Washington’s restaurant scene when she joined the call. When other women heard she was stepping out to log on, they asked if they could come. So a dozen women huddled around an iPhone outside the event and listened.
Bowser said there was “collective anxiety about what is coming.” She said the women are expecting sexist attacks against Harris from political opponents. She logged on again on her way home. After putting her daughter to sleep and walking the family’s dog, she logged on for a third time. The call, Bowser said, “is indicative of what these women are going to do over the next several months.”
The founder of Black Girls Vote, Nykidra “Nyki” Robinson, said she received the Zoom link about 15 times, starting at 3 p.m. After putting her 2-year-old to sleep, she joined the call at 9:40 p.m.
“Sometimes we work in silos, but I felt a sense of community being on the call and feel better equipped to mobilize young voters,” she said.
“I hope Joe Biden feels the love. We’re grateful for him,” Robinson said. “We’re also really excited to support Harris in this moment in history. The call was very much about sisterhood, unity and love.”
Jane, a Black woman in Connecticut who spoke to The Post on the condition that only her first name be published because she feared retribution from her employer, spent last night watching the Zoom call from her kitchen island on speakerphone as one of her 11-year-old sons listened in. He asked her whether Harris would be president, and she explained to him how the nomination process works.
She said she was glad her son saw a group of Black women come together so quickly to support each other.
“This is a message to the world,” she said. “Don’t underestimate Black women in this country and the reach we have. Sometimes we’re ignored, but you would want to be our friends because that’s how fast we were able to get that information out. It was lightning speed.”
Mariam Sarr logged on to the Zoom at 10 p.m. determined to make sure the Democratic Party does not “skip over Harris.”
“As a young Black woman in corporate America, I know what it feels like to be passed over. I feel energized in a way like I did in 2008. I actively campaigned for Obama when I was in college and hit the streets campaigning. Last night felt like the same way.”
On Monday night, political commentator Roland Martin will host his own online discussion with the Win With Black Men group.
Star Jones, who has known Harris for several years and is a founding member of Win With Black Women, was tasked with fundraising. As the creator of the Brown Girls Fundraising Collective, Jones told The Post that she spent last night at a dinner with people working to see how they could fund Harris’s campaign. She got a fundraising link together but had no graphics. Leaders of the Zoom call told her to join around 11:43 p.m.
She told the attendees the challenge was to raise $1 million over the next 100 days. She dropped the fundraising link at 11:50 p.m. “Within 100 minutes we raised $1 million,” Jones said.
The money will go directly to the Harris presidential campaign, according to Jones.
“People don’t tend to think we actually have the power of the pocketbook,” Jones said. “So in addition to what we spend as consumers, we actually do give in a political climate when we feel we have skin in the game.”
As of 1:30 p.m. Monday, Jones said they had raised more than $1.6 million dollars from more than 13,000 donors.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), “on behalf of the Department of Education (ED),” on Monday released a Notice Inviting Grant Applications for the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program. Applications are due by May 29.
Last November, ED announced that it had entered into an interagency agreement with HHS to administer the CCAMPIS program. This is the first CCAMPIS competition conducted under this arrangement.
Approximately $73.5 million will go to institutions of higher education that awarded at least $250,000 in Pell grants to enrolled students in FY 2025. HHS will award about 148 grants, ranging from $150,000 to $1 million.
The terms of the grant competition are not significantly different than prior competitions. As before, there are two absolute grant priorities that every application must address – leveraging non-federal resources and utilizing a sliding-fee scale for low-income parents.
This year’s competition includes only one invitational priority that reflects the Trump administration’s general educational policy. The new priority, entitled “Expanding Education Choice in Early Learning Settings,” encourages applications that “expand access to education choice … including by empowering parents in choosing the early learning setting that best meets their family’s needs.” Flexible childcare programs that include drop-in care and care during nontraditional hours are also encouraged.
One other notable difference from prior competitions is an expanded “Terms and Conditions” section that not only requires compliance with applicable civil rights laws, but also refers to Trump administration Executive Orders and guidance on racial discrimination that clarify “the application of federal antidiscrimination laws to programs or initiatives that may involve discriminatory practices, including those labeled as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”) programs.” This includes any “discriminatory equity ideology [as defined in Executive Order 14190] in violation of a federal antidiscrimination law.”
The exact scope of these terms is unclear because courts have not found many of the practices described in these Executive Orders and guidance documents to be violations of federal law.
The Newsfeed
This week, the team brings you stories about how communities including Filipino immigrants, Sephardic Jews and Somalis arrived in the Pacific Northwest
Each week on The Newsfeed, host Paris Jackson and a team of veteran journalists dive deep into one topic and provide impactful reporting, interviews and community insights from sources you can trust. Each day this week, this post will be updated with a new story from the team.
Group hopes to boost recognition for Seattle’s Filipinotown
By Venice Buhain
The group Filipinotown Seattle hopes to make sure that the legacy of Filipino Americans in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District isn’t forgotten.
One of the group’s current projects is pushing for a Filipinotown placemarking sign in the CID.
“Filipino Americans have had a presence here for over 100 years in Seattle,” said Filipinotown Seattle Executive Director Devin Israel Cabanilla.
He said that the signage is important to remind people that “the International District is not just Chinatown. Japantown. Filipinotown is here as well.”
The group held a poll on what signage might look like and where it might be located. It would be similar to the Chinatown sign on South Jackson Street and Fifth Avenue South, or the Wing Luke Museum
In the early 20th century, the area now known as the CID was a hub full of businesses, entertainment, social groups and housing that served Seattle’s growing immigrant population from Asia and elsewhere. The communities all intermingled throughout the CID.
“This area was a central place for Asian Pacific immigrants simply because of segregation,” Cabanilla said.
Because the Philippines was a U.S. territory from 1898 to 1946, Filipino immigrants were unaffected by laws in the 1920s that restricted immigration from Japan or China. Many Filipinos came to study at the University of Washington or to work in burgeoning industries, like lumber, farming, canneries and factories.
While the physical Filipino presence in terms of buildings and storefronts in the CID dwindled in the later 20th century with redevelopment, Seattle Filipinos and Filipino Americans continued to make impacts locally, regionally and nationally.
“It may not have been in terms of storefronts, but our presence has always existed in terms of politics, culture as well,” Cabanilla said.
The Seattle Department of Transportation said it is aware that the group is working on its signage request, but the Department of Neighborhoods has not yet received a formal request. They are also working to develop a clearer process for this and other similar neighborhood signage proposals.
Filipinotown Seattle said it hopes that the sign helps remind Seattle of the CID’s unique designation as a neighborhood shaped by many immigrants and migrants to Seattle.
“Is it Chinatown? Is it Japantown? Is it Little Saigon? It’s all those things. And I think re cultivating that this is a multicultural district, Filipinotown is helping establish: Yes, it’s more than one thing,” Cabanilla said.
Venice Buhain is a multimedia journalist at Cascade PBS. She previously was the Cascade PBS’s associate news editor and education reporter. Venice has also worked for KING 5, The Seattle Globalist and TVW News.
Venice Buhain is a multimedia journalist at Cascade PBS. She previously was the Cascade PBS’s associate news editor and education reporter. Venice has also worked for KING 5, The Seattle Globalist and TVW News.
The state of Washington is getting a seventh temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Marysville Washington Temple was announced Sunday night during a devotional in the Marysville Washington Stake by Elder Hugo E. Martinez, a General Authority Seventy in the church’s United States West Area Presidency.
“We are pleased to announce the construction of a temple in Marysville, Washington,” the First Presidency said in a statement. “The specific location and timing of the construction will be announced later. This is a reason for all of us to rejoice and express gratitude for such a significant blessing — one that will allow more frequent access to the ordinances, covenants and power that can only be found in the house of the Lord.”
The other temples in Washington are the Columbia River, Moses Lake, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma and Vancouver temples.
The church has 214 temples in operation. Plans for another 170 temples have been announced; many of those temples are in various stages of planning and construction.
Sunday’s temple announcement follows the new practice of the church’s First Presidency, which determines where temples will be built — and when and how they will be announced.
The First Presidency directed a General Authority Seventy to announce the first temple in Maine at a fireside there in December.
In January, church President Dallin H. Oaks said the Maine announcement set the pattern for future temple announcements.
“The best place to announce a temple is in that temple district,” he told the Deseret News.
The First Presidency will continue to decide where future temples will be built. It then will “assign someone else to make the announcement in the place where the temple will be built,” he said.
This pattern came to him as a strong impression after he assumed leadership of the church in October, following the death of his friend, President Russell M. Nelson.
This came as a strong impression to him shortly after he assumed the leadership of the church, President Oaks said.
The church remains in the midst of an aggressive temple-building era. President Nelson announced 200 new temples from 2018 to 2025. All but one were announced at general conference.
Five dozen temples are now under construction.
President Oaks now has overseen the announcement of two temples, neither at a general conference.
At the October conference he said that “with the large number of temples now in the very earliest phases of planning and construction, it is appropriate that we slow down the announcement of new temples.”
Ten new temples are scheduled to be dedicated in the next six months.
- May 3: Davao Philippines Temple.
- May 3: Lindon Utah Temple.
- May 31: Bacolod Philippines Temple.
- June 7: Yorba Linda California Temple.
- June 7: Willamette Valley Oregon Temple.
- Aug. 16: Belo Horizonte Brazil Temple.
- Aug. 16: Cleveland Ohio Temple.
- Aug. 30: Phnom Penh Cambodia Temple.
- Oct. 11: Miraflores Guatemala City Guatemala Temple.
- Oct. 18: Managua Nicaragua Temple.
Two-thirds of the 170 temples still to be built are outside the United States.
Temples are distinct from the meetinghouses where Latter-day Saints worship Jesus Christ each Sunday. Temples are closed on Sundays, but they open during the week as sanctuaries where church members go to find peace, make covenants with God and perform proxy ordinances for deceased relatives.
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