“Hello, President Harris,” Meryl Streep said.

“Not yet,”  Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris answered with a smile.

I didn’t expect how surprisingly moving Oprah Winfrey’s online and real-life “Unite for America” rally with Harris in Detroit would be. It was billed by its primary organizers, Win With Black Women, as “Historic. Welcoming. Mobilizing.” 

Historic, as in there’s never been such a widespread recognition that not only are Black women the Democratic voting base; they are one of the party’s organizing juggernauts.

Welcoming, as in there’s never been such a wide net cast for the party’s varied constituencies: Win With Black Women begat Win With Black Men, White Women Answer the Call, and White Dudes for Harris, all of which begat fun spin-offs like Deadheads for Harris, Cat Ladies for Kamala, Chefs for Kamala, Comics for Harris, Swifties for Kamala, Jewish Women for Harris, Caregivers for Harris, Republicans for Harris—at least 100 groups.

Mobilizing: Well, that was my question as I tuned in. I don’t want to seem cynical; Win With Black Women knows how to mobilize, but would this gathering of the new groups help them turn fun Zoom calls, and even great fundraising, into organizing?

That’s still not clear. But, I figured out, that wasn’t really the point Thursday night.

“Tonight, for the first time, we are uniting all of these groups in one place for a single purpose: to elect Kamala Harris,” Oprah said in her introduction. “It’s hope and joy rising.” She gave credit to Jotaka Eaddy, head of Win With Black Women, whose first call drew at least 47,000 women and famously broke Zoom when more couldn’t sign on.

Eaddy called WWBW “a collective love letter to ourselves,” started by Black women “long before we were born, who knew that we would see this moment.”

Initially, I misunderstood what “this moment” was about. It was a town hall, with 1,000 people in the auditorium, and almost 300,000 online, hosted by Oprah. For a while, it featured the affinity groups WWBW had launched. Asked by Oprah to talk about “White Dudes for Harris,” Ross Morales Rocketto explained:.”I haven’t seen anything like this since 2008. An exuberance and excitement you only get from hard-fought wins, and hard-fought losses.”

“Thank you, white dude!” belted Oprah.

We also saw a multiracial, mostly young set of questioners asking mainly about the economy.

Soon, Kamala Harris came out. “There’s so much that I love about our campaign,” she said. “I look around at these screens in the room, and this is America.” She referenced “forces trying to divide us. This movement is about reminding us we have so much more uniting us than dividing us…. In the face of a stranger, you see a neighbor.”

Harris credited Eaddy for getting these affinity groups to take off. “Jotaka started it—she said, ‘Let’s open the door and let everybody in.’ And they came. Organically!”

Then the mood shifted, as families telling horrific stories about the lack of abortion access and prevalence of gun violence in post-Trump America took the stage. Among the stars of the night were the family members of Amber Nicole Thurman, 28, who died and left her 6-year-old motherless after a medication abortion resulted in rare complications and she couldn’t get care.

“People around the world need to know that this was preventable…,” her mother said. “I want you all to know she wasn’t a statistic. She was loved. I lost strength. I lost hope. You are looking at a mother who is broken. The worst pain ever that a mother could ever feel.”