Behind the scenes at Oprah's "Unite for America" rally

A night fully of serendipity and surprises

I met Jotaka Eaddy, the founder of “Win with Black Women,” in late July after I tweeted that white women should honor and emulate the Zoom she organized to support Kamala Harris’ campaign just hours after Harris became the presumptive nominee. That “Win with Black Women” Zoom amassed over 44,000 participants and raised $1.5 million. After Jotaka saw my tweet, she reached out and encouraged me to spearhead a similar gathering, but she it made clear that white women needed more of a reckoning than a rally. “Your conversation will be different,” she said. “Black women have been doing the work. We need white women to follow our lead.”

Since then, Jotaka and I have become friends, and she called me a few weeks ago to tell me in confidence that Oprah Winfrey was planning an event to support the Harris/Walz ticket, and that she wanted to bring together all of the affinity groups that gathered online after the “Win with Black Women” Zoom. I assumed the Oprah event would be online, but as the date got closer, Jotaka shared that the affinity group leaders would be invited attend in person in a studio near Detroit. As an introvert who’s attended hundreds of these kinds of events in the past decade, I demurred. Couldn’t I do it online? Jotaka insisted, “We have to hug in real life.”

The night before Oprah’s event, my friend Edda Collins Coleman, a leader of Black Women in Tech, and I held a fundraiser for the Harris/Walz campaign at my home featuring the historian Heather Cox Richardson. We had a limit of 100 attendees, but over 140 people showed up, and we raised $250,000. By the time everyone left at 9 pm, there were just six more hours until Edda (who also led an affinity Zoom for Harris) and I needed to leave for the airport to catch the only direct flight to Detroit.

With Edda Collins Coleman and Heather Cox Richardson at our fundraiser for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz

Over 140 people showed up to support Harris/Walz

Bleary-eyed, we got in a car for the airport at 3 am. Once we touched down, Edda and I had less than two hours to get dressed and drive to the hotel shuttle that would take us all to the mysterious location of the studio, which was a secret due to security concerns. We dressed in sweaters and blazers, assuming the studio would be cold (it wasn’t!), and then stood in the 80-degree heat with hundreds of other attendees for nearly two hours until we were allowed to board the shuttle. Then, we waited another hour on the shuttle until security checked us all in. After that, we went through yet another security line to get into the building. Near the door into the studio, those of us who led Zooms were given purple wristbands, signifying that we were allowed to participate in a big group photo with Oprah.

At this point, I had to pee—badly. Another woman who flew in with us from the East Bay, Shannon Nash, and I are the same age. The two of us agreed that there was no way we could get our post-menopausal selves through the rest of the night without going to the bathroom. We asked security where the bathrooms were and they told us (wrongly) that we could only use the portapotties outside. So the two of us left the security line, and by the time we returned, our entire group was already inside. We were asked to hold in the hallway for a long time as staff buzzed around and handled production issues. Finally, we were ushered backstage where they told us we’d missed the big group photo. Crestfallen, we walked back toward the studio audience where we were supposed to sit when I ran into a friend on the campaign. “Come with me,” she said. “I’ll put you two in the photo line.”

Waiting in line with Felicia, Shannon and Edda. It was very, very hot!

Ten minutes later, my new friend Shannon and I were holding hands with Oprah and the Vice President and having a conversation about activism, and then we got to have our photo taken with the two of them. And while I’m sad to have missed the larger group moment, I’m eagerly awaiting the email of the photo of the four of us.

After that serendipitous interaction, I went to my assigned seat next to US Senator Debbie Stabenow. I looked at my phone; I’d received five missed calls from a number I didn’t recognize. I checked my voicemail, which was filled with messages from Oprah’s production team telling me that I was going to be asked a question at the top of the show and I needed to have someone mic me. A producer escorted me from my seat to the greenroom where she told me, “Oprah is going to ask you what you want to tell white women. Your answer should be fun and light and spontaneous, but keep it under 30 seconds. Don’t stress about it.”

Don’t stress about it? I was about to have an interaction with one of the most famous women in the world in front of a live (and online) audience of hundreds of thousands of people. What I assumed was going to be a relaxing and fun evening suddenly felt very high-stakes. I went back to my seat and wrote out an answer on my phone, and then proceeded to repeat it out loud for 30 minutes (I can’t do things in my head—I have to actually say the words). Twenty minutes in, I’m certain Sen. Stabenow thought I was unwell.

Once the lights went up, Oprah kicked off the rally by lauding Jotaka’s good work and then began asking her questions of affinity leads sitting in the audience. First, she called on the leader of the Black Men Zoom and then the leader of the White Dudes Zoom. Then it was my turn. I stood up and started to recite what I’d written on my phone. What I remember most about my answer is not that I said exactly what I needed to, but that I was so nervous my voice cracked when I said the word “men.” In my head, I sounded like Peter Brady on the Brady Bunch episode when he went through puberty and his voice changed. This kind of “error” is something I’d typically spend the rest of the night beating myself up over, but instead, I heard the voice of my friend (and professional speech coach and author of “Permission to Speak”)

Samara Bay

in my head: “It’s what you said, not what it sounded like.” Listening back later, I barely heard the crack and I feel proud of myself for performing under pressure.

By the time the evening was over—six hours after we’d left the hotel—I was hot, exhausted and hungry. I went directly to the hotel restaurant and made the very bad decision of celebrating the day by washing down an entire hamburger and a half pound of French fries with two glasses of champagne at 11 pm. With some women I already knew and others I met that day, we celebrated all of the unglamorous, heavy lifting of organizing we’d put into supporting the Harris/Walz campaign in such a short amount of time, and the community we’d built along the way. The election is still a ways away and it’s still too close to call, but the day after Election Day, we all knew we’d wake up knowing we left it all on the field. And that includes showing up even when we’d rather stay home.

I’m so glad I ignored my inner introvert and went to Detroit in person, and I did finally get to hug Jotaka in real life.

With Shannon, Jotaka and Virginia McGregor

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