When I got to the Wheaton station for the Metro, Washington, D.C.’s subway system, at a quarter past 5 last Tuesday, I realized I was going to be late. Granted, the event I was headed to was just a 30-minute ride away, and wouldn’t start for two hours. But I was headed to Vice President Kamala Harris’s rally at the Ellipse, a park just south of the White House. I’d been reading the signs, about how the crowds at her rallies had been growing by the week, a clear sign that something was happening.RELATED: How Michelle Obama Sparked My Drive to Turn Out the VoteIt’s a week later, it’s Election Day — and I’m still thinking about that rally. Folks are nervous about who America will vote into office, Donald Trump and his Project 2025 agenda, or Kamala Harris and her clear agenda for America’s future. That rally was the first time I really felt that Kamala Harris will win this. I’ve been cautiously excited about her jumping into the race ever since late summer, when she replaced President Joe BIden at the top of the presidential ticket. I was one of the 47,000 brothers who joined the first Win With Black Men fundraising call (though I was disappointed that we raised $500,000 less than Win With Black Women, even with more people on our call.). RELATED: It’s Time to Get on the Right Side of History Back then, though, I also was fatalistic, like every other Black person whom America had let down, ignored or betrayed. Trump seemed literally bulletproof after two assassination attempts, the Democrats’ elevation of Harris was a huge gamble on an untested candidate and the nation had already shown it didn’t want a qualified female president — let alone a Black woman who pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha at Howard University. And as a Black man, I kept hearing how we would pull a Stacy Abrams on Harris and vanish on Election Day. Or that we would vote for the convicted felon with the gold, $200 kicks because we can relate. RELATED: Kamala Harris Has a Plan for Black Men. Trump Never DidHope sputtered to life, though, after Harris smashed Trump during their first and only debate. It flickered as she ran a flawless presidential campaign on a much shorter runway than Trump, who’s been running for eight years. It grew when she crushed it at the Democratic National Convention, pulled even with Trump, then stayed in the groove while Trump lost steam heading into November. Now, on my way to the rally, my reporter’s instinct told me there would be a mob scene. Going against rush-hour subway traffic, more people kept crowding onto the train as it got closer to the White House, and disgorged nearly all of them just blocks away from the rally. RELATED: How Will Project 2025 Affect Black America?On the street, the crowd grew heavier as I approached the corner of F and 15th streets. I braced myself as I turned the corner to what purportedly was the entrance two blocks from the rally. And then I was stunned. The street was a river filled, curb to curb, with people. Three or four orderly lines wound a quarter mile down the street. And the racial composition looked like a Benneton ad had mutated: Black, white, Asian, young, old, students, businesspeople, artists.RELATED: A Love Letter to My Daughter: A Vote for Your FutureA man with an electric guitar, speaker, and backing vocals sang soul ballads. A dude on a bicycle — wearing a Harris/Walz T-shirt and a full-face monkey mask, for some reason — raced back and forth, weaving in and out of the lines. There was a bootleg Elmo, scooting around on an electric unicycle. Lots of Harris/Walz camouflage baseball caps.I’d been shuffling in my line for about an hour when some quick mental calculations led me to conclude I probably wasn’t going to get into the main venue. By then, the overflow section stretched a good 100 yards from the entrance across the street to the base of the Washington Monument. Word went around that there were 75,000 people in the crowd. It felt like twice that. After wedging my way through the thick crowd and interviewing about a half-dozen people — including Black women, who among the most skeptical that Americans would vote for someone who looked like them — I realized the good vibes were legit.They truly believed in Harris.That’s when I began to believe that joy could triumph over fear; that positivity might actually overcome pessimism and doubt. Black women, I thought, can and should be seen. And whenever democracy needs rescuing, we instinctively look to them for the job. The polls close in mere hours, and we might not know the results of the election tonight. But what I saw at that rally will forever remind me of comedian Trevor Noah’s shout-out to his mother and grandmother on his final broadcast of “The Daily Show”: “Unlike everybody else, Black women can’t afford to f— around and find out.” The post Thanks to Black Women, I Know Kamala Harris Can Win appeared first on The Atlanta Voice.