Unleashed power of Kamala's sisterhood

ThinkProgress @thinkprogress46m46 minutes ago
Kamala Harris unleashes the power of her sisterhood in 2020 bid https://thinkprogress.org/kamala-harris-aka-inc-black-greek-organizations/ …

____ To lock down the Democratic nomination, Harris understands she’ll need to earn the unchallenged allegiance and passion of the voting bloc most likely to make that a reality — African American women.

It’s a strategy based on an emerging consensus that recognizes black women as must-get voters for Democratic candidates. If there was ever any doubt of this, the post-election analysis of the 2016 general election and the 2018 midterms dispelled it, as black women proved themselves to be Democrats’ most loyal, enthusiastic, and unified voting bloc. And for the election next year, past is prologue: winning the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 demands having the support of black women voters.

So it’s little wonder that Harris turned immediately to her AKA sisters to get out of the starting blocks quickly. Little-known outside the largely overlooked circle of black professionals and virtually ignored by the overwhelmingly white political and media establishments, the AKAs are a potent force of some 300,000 college-educated women in U.S. college chapters and in alumni groups across the nation — as well as several foreign countries.

Andrea Bailey, a member of the Omicron Chi Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha, says she’s proud to call Harris a soror, and believes it is to the sorority’s advantage to have someone like her on the national political stage. Other black sororities, most notably Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., have made political activism and participation a cornerstone of their organizational work.

“Political activism is one of [the Deltas] programmatic areas and that’s where their strength is, but it hasn’t been as much for [AKAs],” said Bailey, who is a Democratic candidate for the board of county supervisors in Prince William County, Virginia, a bedroom community outside Washington, D.C. “This is an opening for us to bring together all types of organizations to serve the country. That’s what I love most about Kamala.”

read more: https://thinkprogress.org/kamala-harris-aka-inc-black-greek-organizations/

Sen. Kamala Harris stands with attendees at the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority gala in Columbia, South Carolina, on Jan. 25, 2019.