As soon as President Biden bowed out and passed the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris, Black folk started mobilizing. The movement was swift, phone calls, chats, fundraisers. Black people from all over started lining up behind her as the nation’s next leader, especially Black women and younger voters.

African Americans immediately started working their inner circles with calls and texts, pressing delegates to support Harris as the Democratic nominee and donating money in record numbers not only to her new presidential campaign but also to candidates in local, state and national races.

Still, lots of work remains, political experts warn, and now is not a time for Black voters to sit on their hands with so many issues at stake.

“Sometimes we have to vote as a form of self-defense,” explains Michael K. Fauntroy, Ph.D., director of the Race, Politics and Policy Center at George Mason University outside Washington, D.C.

But this is a message that Fauntroy and other experts don’t have to tell some folks twice — or anything at all. On their own or through their churches, sororities and other organizations, sisters plan to stroll to the polls in even bigger numbers than they did in the past for Kamala Harris and Barack Obama.

They’re excited, but they aren’t playing. They know this is a matter of survival as a people and as a democracy. They don’t want to see the blood, sweat and tears that their ancestors shed to gain voting, reproductive and other human rights to be in vain. And they want to stop what’s already been lost.

That’s why a group of Black women donated $1 million in less than three hours at a meeting intended for 1,000 participants that swelled by word of mouth to more than 40,000 supporters talking past midnight. That’s just one group among many that contributed to raising a record $50 million in a day.

“As of 9 p.m. ET, grassroots supporters have raised $46.7 million through ActBlue following Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign launch,” the Democratic fundraising platform announced on Twitter. “This has been the biggest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle.”

One result of this early push is that Harris is neck and neck with Donald Trump in polls — a difference of 1 to 1.5 percentage points based on analyses of recent polls by CNN and the Washington Post, respectively.

“She is as well positioned as anybody else to win this election,” Fauntroy said. “She’s running against someone who’s uniquely vulnerable.”

“The policies and priorities of the next administration will shape the landscape of reproductive rights, economic security, social justice and overall equality for years to come,” Glynda C. Carr, president and CEO of Higher Heights for America PAC, said in a statement provided to TheRoot.com. “It’s precisely why Vice President Kamala Harris is the only qualified and winning choice for president of the United States.” Higher Heights is a political action committee formed by Black women to support Black women running for office at every level.

“This is a choice election where we will have the opportunity to decide in November if we will be free or not,” says Dorien Blythers, who has been working with Harris on her campaigns since 2015 and was deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“What this shift is presenting us with is an opportunity to re-engage, an opportunity for people to have real conversations with their family, their friends and their communities about the stakes of this election, because this year they truly are higher than they’ve ever been,” said Blythers, founder of Good Rebel, a social impact agency.

Like others, Blythers suggested that African Americans read Project 2025, the conservative manifesto prepared by the Heritage Foundation to dismantle the federal government. These blueprints are nothing new, Fauntroy said, but this version is more severe than what was presented to President Reagan in 1981.

Since Trump has made such a big issue of age and cognition in this campaign, Fauntroy says that Harris should call his bluff by seeing her doctor, publicizing her test results and then asking Trump, “So, when are you doing your tests?”

As political commentator and former South Carolina legislator Bakari Sellers points out, Harris would be running “against the oldest candidate in election history” in taking on Trump.

“Kamala Harris is battle tested and battle ready,” Sellers tweeted. “I look forward to working damn hard to make her the next PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.”

Blythers said this is also a battle between a prosecutor and a convicted felon.

“She was a fighter when she was in the U.S. Senate,” Blythers said. “She was a fighter when she was serving as a prosecutor in California.”

“This is an opportunity for her to lean into her strengths and continue to prosecute the case against Donald Trump, which has been something that we’ve not seen over the last month, as folks have been so distracted by who would serve at the top of the ticket.”

Yanick Rice Lamb is a journalist based in Washington, D.C., and professor at Howard University.