In the weeks before Election Day, a loose-knit group of women are organizing online to blanket their communities with pro-Kamala Harris messages — not on yard signs or fliers, but on sticky notes.
The idea is simple: Take a pad of sticky notes, write messages and post them wherever women may see them — bathroom stalls, the backs of tampon boxes, bathroom mirrors, the gym.
The messages vary slightly, but a typical one reads something like: “Woman to woman: No one sees your vote at the polls. Vote Harris/Walz.”
No one really seems to know who started the trend. But women from across the country told NBC News they were inspired to borrow one another’s ideas, sharing advice and pictures of their messages for inspiration through social media, particularly pro-Harris Facebook groups.
A Harris campaign spokesperson denied that the campaign is involved in the initiative.
“I gave somebody the advice when she’s like, ‘I don’t know where to put it,’ and so I said my favorite thing to do is to put them on tampon boxes, birth control boxes, diaper bags, [that] kind of thing,” said Susan Visser Saez, 61, of Bella Vista, Arkansas.
Donna Savage, 76, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, said, “Just today, I was in bathrooms at a couple of places and put them up in each stall,” plus bathroom mirrors.
Liz Nace, 81, of Lee’s Summit, Missouri, always keeps sticky notes in her purse, spreading the pro-Harris messages in stores and restaurants to “atone for the fact that I voted for Trump in 2016.”
The first time she wrote notes was with a group of old friends who used to call themselves “the Biden Buddies.” Now they call themselves the “La Las,” after the last syllable in Harris’ first name, meeting every Wednesday night to watch webinars for people who support Harris.
Nace doesn’t wait to meet with the La Las to write her sticky notes. She said that any time she gets a few minutes, she writes messages on sticky notes to throw in her purse for when she goes out.
“I live in a very red state, and I know women who do what their husbands tell them to do, and it’s very sad,” Nace said. “And so if we can give a voice to somebody who might have some fears, it would just be a good thing for them to know that nobody’s going to know how you vote when you vote.”
Women in Republican-dominated areas shared that writing sticky notes was a way for them to get involved politically without dealing with potential backlash.
Kelly Johnson, 47, of Kansas City, said she and other Kansas Democrats talked on a Facebook page about being liberal in a red state. Some women in the state “are afraid to vote for Democrats because their husbands or their other family members are voting for Republicans,” she said.
Sticky notes became a way for women to participate in politics “without feeling or being afraid of having any repercussions,” she said.
Much of the organizing takes place online in Facebook groups with tens of thousands of members. One of the groups is “Cat Ladies for Kamala Harris,” a group with more than 110,000 members, named in response to a comment by Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, targeting “childless cat ladies.”
Visser Saez said she spends “easily eight hours” every day volunteering as an administrator for the Facebook group.
“We have the ability to use the anonymous posting in our public group so people can talk, and what we have found is that a lot of wives are afraid to vote against how their husband votes,” she said.
Women began talking in the online group’s chat rooms about how they “get the word to women that they don’t have to vote the way their spouse votes,” she said.
Some women participating in the trend have decided to streamline the process, ordering sticky notes with typed messages so they can distribute them faster.
Kelly Callaway, 54, of Lino Lakes, Minnesota, ordered sticky notes and estimates she has posted more than 200.
“I have them in my purse. I carry them with me everywhere,” she said. “I have a box of them in my car. And whenever my tablet gets low in my purse, I refill.”