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“Win With Black Women” founder Jotaka Eaddy on how the group is embracing its role in a historic election
The founder of the viral “Win With Black Women” livestream that had 90,000 participants nationwide as Vice President Kamala Harris entered the race for the White House in July said as a child, she “always was that kid that just wanted to fight for anybody who I felt was being mistreated.”
Jotaka Eaddy said she felt that way after hearing negative comments made about Black women named as possible vice presidential candidates in 2020, when President Biden was on the campaign trail.
“Every last one of those women were receiving racist, sexist attacks,” Eaddy told CBS News. “No one was challenging their policies, their agendas. It was, ‘she was too ambitious.'”
Eaddy’s mentor, former White House political director Minyon Moore, encouraged Eaddy to do something. And in 2020, Eaddy created “Win With Black Women,” a virtual network that started meeting every Sunday during the pandemic via zoom with the goal of supporting and advancing the policy agenda of Black women. Since July, it’s raised more than $2.6 million for the Harris campaign.
When Mr. Biden opted to leave the race in July, endorsing Harris as his successor, the group’s routine call went viral, as around 90,000 Black women and allies came together to strategize — and to embrace the history that could be made.
“Remember this moment, remember where you were, remember how you felt,” Eaddy said at the time.
Eaddy said when the call came to a close at 1 a.m., around 20,000 women remained, in what she said “felt like a hug that you just did not want to let go.”
The group’s work inspired others to form virtual groups, while raising millions of dollars for the shared cause. And it inspired a “Unite for America” livestream in September with Oprah Winfrey, featuring Harris herself, who thanked Eaddy for her work.
“She started it, Jotaka started it,” Harris said.
According to CBS News polling, more than nine in 10 Black women voters are backing Harris in the 2024 presidential election. The support comes as Black women helped propel Mr. Biden to victory in 2020, like in Georgia, with 92% supporting him and helping a Democrat to win the state for the first time in 28 years.
The effort comes after a long history of Black women organizing, according to historian and professor Martha S. Jones.
“When we look back across not just decades, but more than a century, what we recognize is that Black women have always been knocking on the door, rattling the gates, insisting on a place at the table in American politics,” Jones said.
Jones, the author of “Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All,” was part of the zoom call in July, and noted the importance of getting out the vote — which she called “the heart of democracy.”
For Eaddy, she recognizes the new standard that “Win With Black Women” has set on voter outreach, which she hopes will make an impact in decades to come.
“What we are seeing is a level of energy united around our collective, our collective absolute need to ensure that this country is a place where we can all thrive and live and be free,” Eaddy said.
A grand jury in Nevada has again indicted Nathan Chasing Horse on charges that he sexually abused Indigenous women and girls for decades, reviving a sweeping criminal case against the former “Dances with Wolves” actor.
The 21-count indictment unsealed Thursday in Clark County District Court, which includes Las Vegas, again charges the 48-year-old with sexual assault, lewdness and kidnapping. It also adds felony charges of producing and possessing child sexual abuse materials.
It comes after the Nevada Supreme Court in September ordered the dismissal of Chasing Horse’s original indictment, while leaving open the possibility for charges to be refiled. The court sided with Chasing Horse, saying in its scathing order that prosecutors had abused the grand jury process.
Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson quickly vowed to seek another indictment.
The initial 18-count indictment charged Chasing Horse with more than a dozen felonies. He had pleaded not guilty.
His lawyer, Kristy Holston, had also argued that the case should be dismissed because, the former actor said, the sexual encounters were consensual. One of his accusers was younger than 16, the age of consent in Nevada, when the abuse began, according to the indictment.
Neither Wolfson nor Holston immediately responded Thursday to phone or emailed requests for comment.
Ty ONeil / AP
Best known for portraying the character Smiles A Lot in the 1990 movie “Dances with Wolves,” Chasing Horse was born on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, which is home to the Sicangu Sioux, one of the seven tribes of the Lakota nation.
After starring in the Oscar-winning film, authorities have said, he propped himself up as a self-proclaimed Lakota medicine man while traveling around North America to perform healing ceremonies.
He is accused of using that position to gain the trust of vulnerable Indigenous women and girls, lead a cult and take underage wives.
Chasing Horse’s arrest last January reverberated around Indian Country and helped law enforcement in the U.S. and Canada corroborate long-standing allegations against him, leading to more criminal charges, including on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana. Tribal leaders had banished Chasing Horse in 2015 from the reservation amid allegations of human trafficking.
The 48-year-old has been in custody since his arrest last January near the North Las Vegas home he is said to have shared with five wives. Inside the home, police found firearms, 41 pounds of marijuana and psilocybin mushrooms, and a memory card with videos of sexual assaults, CBS News previously reported. Police said that at least two of the women were underage when he married them: One was 15, police said, and another was 16.
When the Nevada Supreme Court ordered the dismissal of Chasing Horse’s indictment, the judges said they were not weighing in on his guilt or innocence, calling the allegations against him serious. But the court said that prosecutors improperly provided the grand jury with a definition of grooming without expert testimony, and faulted them for withholding from the grand jury inconsistent statements made by one of his accusers.
Chasing Horse’s legal issues have been unfolding at the same time lawmakers and prosecutors around the U.S. are funneling more resources into cases involving Native women, including human trafficking and murders.
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