Black Sororities and Fraternities Are Mobilizing Online and in Secret Conversations to Increase Voter Turnout
The Watch the Yard platform has 2 million followers, and Rabb says its content reaches about 13 million people each month. Because Divine 9 sorority and fraternity memberships are encouraged to continue after college, Rabb also notes that their audience is cross-generational, with Gen-Zers and boomers actively interacting with each other in the comments. “We can reach students in swing states. We can reach a student in the Pacific Northwest. Because there’s a D9 there. If I can reach that AKA in Oregon, I can reach her peers.”
On July 30, Watch the Yard announced an official partnership with Michelle Obama. When we all vote. Launched in 2018, the nonpartisan nonprofit seeks to increase participation in every election. On Watch the Yard’s Instagram, followers can simply click a link in their bio to quickly see their registration status.
“As black people fought for our right to vote, the Divine 9 was constantly connected to democracy and pushing people to vote,” said Rabb. Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, the second-oldest African-American sorority, was a leader of the suffrage movement as the group’s first public act of service in 1913.“When it comes to the election, this is just a continuation of the work,” he noted. [the Divine 9] have been doing.”
Black Greek organizations organize online not only publicly, but also privately. WIRED confirmed that more than 8,000 members of Alpha Kappa Alpha created an informal, secret GroupMe with the goal of increasing voter turnout in their community. The group’s privacy allowed members to share information about major campaign platforms for both candidates, strategize voter registration in underserved communities, and share opinions about candidates without the pressure to maintain formal protocols.
While the Divine 9 are organizations that are not allowed to support specific candidates, alumni from HBCUs like Howard University are campaigning. Howard University Bison PAC, a project within the Collective PACA political action committee that works to elect more black officials for political equity, brought together alumni to raise funds for the Harris-Walz ticket.
While the PAC is not affiliated with any D9 organization, many of its members are D9 members. According to an internal email viewed by WIRED, the first “HU Bison For Kamala” Zoom call on July 25 attracted more than 4,000 attendees and raised more than $151,000 for Harris’s campaign. “Over the next two weeks,” the email reads, “we will be launching Bison PAC phone/text ‘zoom parties’ to encourage Black voters in swing states to support Kamala Harris for President.”
The email to PAC members also linked to a social media best practices guide compiled by Cameron Trimble, a Howard University alumnus and founder of the platform Hip-Politics. The guide is titled “Ways to Be Helpful in the Digital and Social Media Landscape” and includes tips like sharing and engaging only with Kamala’s positive content, not engaging with negative comments and content to avoid algorithm spikes, and creating your own WhatsApp or internal chat group to share verified information for quick responses.
“We want to raise as much money as possible for Kamala. We want to make sure all Bisons [Howard students and alumni] “We want to give people real information to spread in their communities,” said Stefanie Brown James, co-founder and senior advisor of Collective PAC. “In the long run, we want to turn Bison PAC into an independent organization to support other Howard alumni running for office across the country… We want to be involved in our political process and make sure we have a role in choosing our leaders.”
