This week has been a challenging one as we mourn the loss of Sonya Massey. The 36-year-old Black woman was shot and killed in her home by an Illinois sheriff’s deputy after she called 911 for help. Our hearts go out to her family and the community during this difficult time.
With President Joe Biden announcing his withdrawal from the presidential race last Sunday and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee just thirty minutes later, the vice president’s campaign has seen record-setting fundraising of over $81 million in the first 24 hours. This includes the intersectional and intergenerational #WinWithBlackWomen coalition, a virtual gathering of some 44,000 Black women, which raised $1 million on Sunday night immediately following Biden’s endorsement.
The next day, more than 45,000 Black men convened online to rally for Harris’ candidacy, raising $1.3 million. The trend continued into the week with a separate Zoom fundraising event for white women, where over 100,000 participants joined the call and raised nearly $2 million.
As some political strategists predict that Harris rising to the top of the Democratic Party presidential ticket so close to the election will energize and mobilize voters of color, some voters who recently spoke with Sahan Journal say they are “cautiously optimistic” about Harris and want more details on her policy. So, who is Kamala Harris, and can she really win?
In this newsletter published for the web, we dive into Kamala Harris’s personal and political background, including where she stands on key issues affecting Black voters, criticisms she faces and more.
Born in Oakland, California, Kamala Devi Harris is the first Black and South Asian American vice president of the United States. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a biologist from India whose research advanced breast cancer treatment, and her father, Donald J. Harris from Jamaica served as a professor at Stanford University economics professor (emeritus). The immigrants both met as students at the University of California, Berkeley, fell in love, and, after a year got married.
A Howard University and UC Hastings College of the Law graduate, Harris served as California’s attorney general (2011-2017) and as a U.S. senator in the state (2017-2021). Harris also ran for president in 2019 but didn’t get very far. Among the stand-out moments from her 2020 presidential bid were her criticisms against Biden’s previous stance on desegregation and busing. In elementary school, Harris was bussed from her mostly Black neighborhood to a white one, as part of an effort to desegregate local public schools.
More on Harris’ policies
Harris has championed reproductive rights as the first Vice President to visit a clinic run by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and led a nationwide tour “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” at the start of 2024. According to a fact-check by Capital B’s partner PolitiFact, Harris has consistently emphasized the stakes for American women regarding abortion rights, correctly noting that about 29% of women of reproductive age live in states with abortion bans. In another story about Harris’ approach to women’s rights, India Currents highlights that when Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio was named Trump’s running mate, Harris used her next campaign appearance to criticize him for blocking protections for in vitro fertilization.
The outlet also points out that Harris supported a Biden administration rule that addressed short staffing in federally funded nursing homes, earlier this year, with Harris announcing it during a visit to nursing home care workers in La Crosse, Wisconsin, a key battleground state.
Despite the excitement from Harris’ party and some voters, criticisms about Harris’ record on criminal justice are likely to arise during the rest of the election season. As Capital B notes, the Biden-Harris administration has yet to sign the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021, which has stalled in Congress due to opposition by Senate Republicans.
Kamala Harris may face ongoing criticisms about her law enforcement career, including a notable incident from her tenure as San Francisco District Attorney. In 2004, after a gang member shot and killed Officer Isaac Espinoza, Harris chose not to charge the gunman with the death penalty, a decision that upset California’s political leadership.
Plus: Racist and misogynist attacks against Harris have already entered the race (Epicenter-NYC)
If Kamala Harris wins in November, she’ll be the first female president, the first Asian American president, and the second Black president
Representation politics will be front and center in Kamala Harris’s presidential run.
The first campaign event for Harris was held in Minnesota this week, where campaign staffers visited a Hmong shopping center and held a roundtable with Hmong business owners. Shivanthi Sathanandan, vice chair of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, who is focused on Asian voters as the campaign’s battleground states director for South Asians for Harris, stressed to Sahan Journal that “Representation matters,” adding a motivation behind some Asian voters. “The energy that comes from seeing someone from a shared culture, whether they’re Black or Asian American or South Asian or just a woman, that energy is contagious, and it’s exciting.”
Another Minnesota resident who spoke to Sahan Journal in another story said he’s undecided. “In the end what matters is what policies are important, what affects common people. I vote on policies that support the small business community,” said Sohil Goorha. “Ask the small business owners, ask the small guys. They don’t care about ethnicity and race. They care about taxes, they care about being able to stay alive.”
Plus: Palestine advocates react as Biden drops out of presidential race (Prism)
While some voters, like Sohil Goorha, remain focused on practical policies affecting small businesses, others are looking at the potential shift in foreign policy with Harris’s rise. Asma Mohammed, the lead organizer of Uncommitted Minnesota, which mobilized 19% of Minnesota’s Democratic primary voters to cast a protest vote against Biden for his involvement in the war on Gaza described Biden’s exit and endorsement of Harris as “good news,” as she sees Harris’s potential to engage with pro-Palestine voters.
“Joe Biden was not going to engage with the anti-genocide crowd at all,” Mohammed said. “The difference now is that the vice president was at times making concessions to people who are supportive of Palestine and the Palestinian people. So I think that we have an opportunity here, and so does the vice president.”
What are your thoughts on Kamala Harris’s candidacy and her potential to make history once again? Share your views with us at editor@url-media.com.
