At its inception, the OWL in the name of this blog, OWLcourage referred not only to “owls”, the iconic image of wisdom which presented my aspiration. It also expressed my enjoyment of something of a tongue in cheek reference: O refers to Old; W refers to White; L refers to Lady: a blog presenting the reflections of an Old White Lady. More specifically these words refer to age, race, and gender, three driving forces in our national and global cultural shifts. Even more specifically, because I had spent over thirty years working on creative conflict engagement, these are nexus points of discord worth exploring because they influence so many of our personal and communal conflicts.
As a result, when a good friend sent me the announcement of a “White Women for Harris” zoom meeting, I quickly realized that here was a national gathering of a group sharing two of my three descriptors. It was also a group embracing a goal I shared with those who would attend. I joined the meeting, a bit late but I was there. Later press coverage would note that this meeting “broke zoom” due to the number of participants, reported as over 200,000, and raised over 11 million dollars in donations. And yes, I made a donation.
After the meeting, with heightened curiosity, I began to explore this meeting and its predecessors: The night President Biden ended his bid for re-election and endorsed Kamala Harris, 44,000 Black Women for Harris convened on zoom and raised 1.5 million dollars. The next day, Black Men gathered with similar results. Shannon Watts, the founder of the anti-gun violence group Moms Demand Action watched this surge of support and asked herself “When will white women do the same?”
In her reflective effort to answer this question she tweeted it and was swamped with messages of support. The author Glennon Doyle and some other activists stepped up, and with her organized what became the largest zoom call in history, resulting in technology challenges, some crashes during the program, and some participants moving to YouTube to participate.
Shannon Watts, describing her experience of creating this event, recounted how she reached out to Jotaka Eaddy who had organized the zoom meeting for Black women. Black women had signaled to Shannon that White women should take a cue from their effort. She asked Jotaka if she should include Black women as presenters. Jotaka’s advice was to have all presenters be White, to do their own work and not ask Black women to provide advice. Shannon saw this initiative as a call to emulate and honor what Black women and Black men had done.
After this gathering, another emerged of “White Dudes for Harris” that was equally successful, along with some other ethnic groups such as South Asian women. This sparked a somewhat predictable criticism of these gatherings as supportive of division and segregation. While this critique continues, “identity” groups continue to emerge replicating this model of convening on zoom a “tribe” to share commitments and raise money for Kamala Harris. Those I found today in a cursory search included Latino men, Native women, Disabled Voters and Seventh Day Adventists.
What is clear is that these gatherings provide an expression for many people who were aware of their self-descriptors, their “identity”. They welcomed the opportunity to join a group of members of their “tribe”, to share in their celebration of the candidacy of Kamala Harris for president, to reflect on roles they might play in support of her election, and to make donations to ensure her success.
In some startling way, these groups have successfully unended our usual divisive expression of “identity politics” designed to “compete” and “oppose”. These “identity” gatherings create structural opportunities to join a comfortable and familiar “tribe” in sharing a commitment to a larger goal not through adversarial behavior but through affirmation of a preferred future. Watching a “tribe” convened, you do not resent their gathering; you replicate it with your tribe.
The themes that have emerged from the Harris campaign shed a light: Freedom. Future. We Are Not Going Back. These create a sharp contrast to the dystopian messages that have often seemed to be holding our nation hostage: Victimhood. Nihilism. Rage. Despair. My theme analysis is not exhaustive but it is informed and informative. And if we convene as “tribes”, the “work” confronting our individual “tribes” can more readily be identified, including the ways our tribe has a unique contribution to make.
My attendance at the “White Women for Harris” zoom meeting revealed a good deal more than that to me, both about the gathering and about myself. Some revelations were powerful, some simply touching or sobering. The most significant for me was to simply be present while several white women shared with other white women our history of sustaining racial inequities, not in public and ugly ways but through silence and inaction, through compliance and selfishness, because these inequities benefit us. Simply publicly owning this shameful reality was a big event for me to witness. I had myself made that admission publicly, always alone, often with serious consequences. I had never been present when a whole group of white women “laid claim” to this reality. We were on the call; we didn’t vote, but there we were, owning our complicity.
A second powerful recognition owned by the group was the pattern of patriarchy that results in women voting for whomever their husbands vote for. Since this has made me bonkers most of my adult life, I was thrilled it was so openly owned. Perhaps more significantly, however, was the public owning of white women as a large voting block who had thus ensured the ascent to leadership roles of men invested in governance measures that disadvantaged women, and often their children. Most concretely, White women were a critical voting block that elected the people who systematically destroyed Roe v Wade. It is hard to be outraged when you helped create the problem. We were on the call; we didn’t vote, but there we were, owning our complicity.
I wondered, watching this unfold, how many other “elders” were present. There were no speakers that wore the cloak of elder as their role or claim to fame. Most speakers were leaders, artists, politicians, political activists, most probably under 60 years of age. The last two speakers were in Paris for the Olympics, the lesbian couple Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe. It ended as it should, I thought, with a “battle cry” from Megan, egged on by Sue. I suspect many, like me, left smiling.
And we were advised that there would be another gathering of women, this time sponsored by the DNC, the “Women for Harris National Organizing Call”. Now I was curious, so I once more joined the call. This was not “segregated” and was well organized and informative. And the first scene was to take all of us into Gloria Steinem’s living room where she sat surrounded by a group of ten to twelve women. Ah, the elder! Gloria Steinem is 90 years old, and was clearly enjoying this gathering.
One by one each woman in her living room presented their perspective about the importance of electing Kamala Harris, with activists representing focal concerns such as persons with disabilities, Native American tribal communities, artists, …a diverse and delightful group of women enjoying a gathering in “Gloria’s Living Room”. Gloria Steinem has always been one of my heroines, so I was delighted, and as each person spoke, I enjoyed the camaraderie. Then the last two speakers came up on my screen.
Two girls currently in high school, started explaining how important it was to them to see a women become president and how much they were invested in working for her election. One of the two young women wore a t-shirt with words on it: “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”. This is the title of one of my favorite songs from Taylor Swift’s latest album, with lyrics that describe the experience of being a wronged, then angry, then reactive woman who posits that based on this, you actually should be “afraid of little old me”.
Watching these two young woman, both about the age of my youngest granddaughter, a surprise tsunami of emotion captured me, and I startled myself by suddenly crying. I am not sure. It may have been my reservoir of my very long list of experiences of my culture’s often bizarre and hurtful behaviors and attitudes toward women. Alternately, it may have been the overwhelming relief that these conversations were a public commodity, that these young women could anticipate a better future. It may have been thousands of other factors, but the tears were both spontaneous and welcome.
And now I am reflecting on all of this, and cherishing it. I lack the wisdom to know how this unusual series of political events will proceed. I certainly do not know how the campaigns and the elections will unfold, what other events will emerge. I do know however, that these experiences, these “identity” zoom calls convening “tribes” for affirmation of a preferred future are a development that made manifest the goals of this blog: “Hope and Possibility”. “Identity” does not need to be a threat or a divisive force; on the contrary it can bring us together to affirm what is best in us. Demonstrating that this is possible was a brilliant way of creating hope when it was most needed. And it strengthened the hope of this “Elderly Beige Woman”, my preferred self-description that sadly does not spell OWL.
“The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.”
- Amanda Gorman, National Youth Poet Laureate
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