“Ayyeee, that’s right. Get those steps in,” a volunteer wearing a “Kamala for President” T-shirt shouts at a woman who is dancing down a hallway to Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” in the Georgia State Convocation Center in Atlanta. Another woman standing next to me laughs, then leans in to say, “That lady’s not going to have a voice tomorrow.” Vice-President Kamala Harris has drawn 10,000 people — her largest crowd yet — here on a Tuesday night for her first Georgia campaign event since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee. It’s as much an organizing opportunity as it is a campaign rally. When another volunteer walks by with a sign-up sheet for canvassing, a white woman behind me says that she’s already working with the DeKalb County Democrats and has roped a friend in to join her.
That friend, a Black woman named Laura, tells me she’s never been to a political rally before but couldn’t miss this one. “I feel so hopeful and energetic about this campaign, so I really wanted to be here today,” she says. Laura wasn’t feeling enthusiastic about the 2024 election when President Joe Biden was the nominee, but she experienced a “180” the minute he dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris. “I’ve been donating money, I’ve been on podcasts, listening,” she says. “It’s like a lightning bolt hit for me.”
A lengthy concessions line wraps around the hallway and grows with each passing minute. “We have to have a strategy,” a 45-year-old Black woman named Amber tells me as we wait toward the back. “I don’t play about my food.” She’s wearing a green jumpsuit and carrying a matching pink-and-green clutch, the colors of the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, which counts Harris among its storied members — though Amber says she’s not an AKA herself. Amber is the founder of a commercial construction company that employs two other people, and she closed down her office early to attend this event. While she grew up going to vote with her parents, she wasn’t enthused about supporting Biden, who she felt prioritized student-loan forgiveness over strengthening voting rights.
“I was going to go and not vote for anybody for president and vote for everything else down the ticket,” Amber says. “I think not giving a vote is just as powerful and loud as voting.” She changed her mind when Biden stepped down. “I was reading an article saying that Obama’s campaign was all about hope. Kamala’s job is not that. It’s to give them hell,” she says. She was initially skeptical about a woman of color becoming the Democratic nominee, but the outpouring of donations and support from groups like “White Dudes for Harris” changed her mind. “Clearly she is a fighter. That’s what we need right now.”
I settle into my seat as Stacey Abrams, Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens, and Georgia senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff take the stage to warm up the crowd for Harris. No one is more equipped to amp up a crowd of Southerners than Warnock, a Black pastor who evokes the civil-rights legacies of Atlanta icons Martin Luther King Jr., C.T. Vivian, and John Lewis when he speaks. The senator reminds the crowd of the letter Harris helped him write to his daughter about the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Supreme Court Justice who has locs that look like hers. A Black woman in the audience nods at Warnock’s story, flipping her honey-brown hair over her shoulders and waving her hands in the air.
The rally crowd is mostly women, but it’s as racially and generationally diverse as the playlist blasting through the venue’s speakers, which switches from Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” to Too $hort’s “Blow the Whistle” and Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” Atlanta native and comedian Chris Tucker bobs and weaves along to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” While Gen-Z and millennial women don’t make up the majority of the crowd, there’s no shortage of them in the stands. Megan Thee Stallion, who just released her self-titled third studio album, is a huge get for Harris’s campaign as they try to tap into a younger voting base. Once she takes the stage in a blue suit with a matching tie and white crop top, a group of supporters raises a “Hotties for Harris” sign behind her.
The rapper performs four songs, but it’s “Body” that feels most on message for the Harris campaign. “I know my ladies in the crowd love their body,” she says. “And if you want to keep loving your body, you know who to vote for.” The crowd doesn’t match the rapper’s energy, seeming more energized to yell “A minorrrrr” while Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us” plays over the loudspeaker. Migos rapper Quavo, who has been working with the vice-president on initiatives to address gun violence following the shooting death of his nephew and group member Takeoff, follows Megan and tells the crowd that Harris “always stands on business.” As he leaves the stage, a reporter behind me whispers that this is the most entertaining rally he’s ever attended.
Harris finally emerges, dressed in a light-blue suit, to the sound of Beyoncé’s “Freedom.” The crowd greets her with deafening cheers as she steps to the podium. “I am very clear,” Harris says. “The path to the White House runs right through this state.” As an Atlanta native, I never heard the words “Georgia” and “swing state” used together until 2020, when the state voted for a Democratic president for the first time in nearly 30 years.
The vice-president, keen to capitalize on that momentum, is already a pro at nailing a campaign rally. In roughly 20 minutes, she delivers her popular speech about being a former prosecutor who is poised to take down criminals like former president Donald Trump. She quotes her “friend” Quavo when she says Trump doesn’t “walk it like he talks it,” a reference to Migos’ 2018 hit. And she confidently delivers a message straight into the cameras for her presidential rival, who hasn’t yet committed to debating her. “As the saying goes, if you got something to say —” Harris begins. The crowd jumps in to finish her sentence and yells, “Say it to my face!” as Harris points at herself and delivers her signature laugh.
Harris leaves the stage and the cheers subside. Shuffling out of the venue, I pass Real Housewives of Atlanta star Shereé Whitfield keeping to herself as she passes back through the metal detectors. Across the street, underneath the Olympic Cauldron that Muhammed Ali famously lit during the 1996 games, a small group of protestors holds Palestine flags and a sign that says “Stop killing people with our tax$.” The group shouts the demands they have for Harris about Palestine and mass incarceration at departing rallygoers. “Shut the fuck up,” a man exiting the venue yells back at them. Further down the sidewalk and out of earshot, a group of women pay a street vendor for black T-shirts with photos of Harris on the front.
Other rally attendees are taking selfies on the lawn. I ask two young women taking photos of each other in front of the convocation center what they thought of Megan and Quavo coming out to support Harris. “I don’t really care about that. I mean, that’s great, but I’m from Atlanta,” one of them says. I joke that it took me leaving Atlanta temporarily to realize not everyone grew up with rappers performing at their high school, and she nods.
Still, the 28-year-old is excited about the prospect of Harris’s election as the first Black woman president. “I feel there’s something different in the air this time around,” she says. “With her running, it puts a lot more life into the party. It puts a lot more life into people actually wanting to come out and vote. I have friends that said they weren’t sure if they wanted to vote before this.” Now, those friends are engaging in the election conversation. “It just feels like hope,” she adds.
