“Black Vote, Black Power,” a collaboration between Keith Boykin and Word In Black,
examines the issues, the candidates, and what’s at stake for Black America in the 2024 presidential election.
HOUSTON – They say everything is bigger in Texas, and Kamala Harris’s huge rally in Houston Friday night was no exception. With just over a week to go in the election, Harris came to the Lone Star State and accomplished three goals.
1. Exposing the Human Cost of Abortion Bans
First, she exposed the danger of the Trump abortion bans that threaten the lives of women and re-centered reproductive rights as an issue in the final days of the campaign.
Ondrea Cummings of San Antonio told the crowd of 30,000 people that when she discovered her pregnancy was not viable, she was given no options to protect her own health. “Because of Texas’s extreme laws, I was told I had to wait,” she said.
Watching the tearful Cummings tell her story of being diagnosed with sepsis and surviving a partial lung collapse reminds us that abortion is not some abstract academic issue for debate. These are real life people.
“Texas abortion bans unleashed by Donald Trump almost cost me my life,” she said. “I’m here to advocate for the women who are unable to share their truths, for the many Black and Brown women whose pain is often dismissed and disregarded.”
It takes courage for a Democratic presidential nominee to go to the belly of the white evangelical world and fight for reproductive rights, but Kamala Harris was not afraid to bring it, even fighting off a few MAGA hecklers who infiltrated the crowd.
2. Spotlighting Down-Ballot Power
Second, she shined a light on Texas Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred, who is running to unseat Ted Cruz. Harris reminded voters that Democrats need to vote in down ballot elections for Senate, House, governor, state legislature, and other offices to accomplish her policy objectives. “When Texans vote for Colin Allred for United States Senate, we will be…closer to being able to put back in place the protections of Roe v. Wade,” Harris told reporters in Houston.
Allred, a fourth-generation Texan, told the rally how he took off his jacket and tried to defend the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection. “I went to public school in Texas, I’m not just going to sit there,” he said. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Capitol, the Canadian-born Texas senator who led Trump’s effort to overthrow the election, was nowhere to be found. “Ted Cruz was hiding in a supply closet,” Allred said.
3. Closing the Deal With Confidence — and Beyoncé and Kelly
And third, Harris demonstrated confidence heading into the final stretch of the election. The truth is that red states have millions of blue voters who need to be inspired, and some states like Texas are on the verge of turning purple if we just show up to vote.
Which brings us to Destiny’s Child.
“Houston, we are grabbing back the pen,” Kelly Rowland told the rally, asking them to write a new chapter and a new song for the state and the country. It was a point Beyoncé made in her remarks as well.
“I’m not here as a celebrity. I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother,” Beyoncé said. And as a mother, she reminded us that “It’s time to sing a new song.”
With the unexpected rally in Texas, Harris returned her campaign to where it began in July with a message of freedom that echoed in Beyoncé’s music. Republicans have hijacked the word “freedom” in recent years to mean freedom for businesses to avoid government economic regulations and freedom for the worst people to carry the worst guns, but the Harris campaign has created a new vision of freedom focused on community.
Harris’s vision of freedom is a freedom to control your own body, a freedom to love who you love, a freedom to read the books you choose, a freedom from gun violence, and a freedom not just to get by but to get ahead in a new opportunity economy. It’s not a divisive freedom for some to be assholes to others — which the MAGA Republicans yearn for — but an inclusive freedom for all of us to live our dreams because we’re safer, stronger, and more prosperous when our neighbors are too.
“There’s one thing I know about Texas,” Allred said, “is that we believe in freedom.” But that’s not just a Texas value. It’s the defining question of this election, and men have every reason to be concerned about the women in our lives. Because of Donald Trump, today’s young women have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers did. And if Trump gets back in office, many others will have their rights taken away as well.
As Kamala Harris reminded us, whether you live in one of the seven swing states or deep in the heart of Texas, your vote is your power. Don’t give up your power.
Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Keith served in the White House, cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles.
The post Kamala Harris & Beyoncé Say: Get in Formation and Vote for Freedom appeared first on Word In Black.