This is Kamala Harris
By: Aambar Agarwal
Kamala Harris is the first Black and South Asian American woman to be a major party’s vice-presidential nominee. Yet she’s no stranger to making history.
She became the first Black woman in California to be elected district attorney (the chief prosecutor for a county) in 2003.
She started a program that gave first-time drug offenders the chance to earn a high school diploma and gain employment, giving them a second chance, as district attorney of San Francisco.
She opposed the two Californian laws that only allowed marriage between a man and a woman, effectively laying the groundwork for the 2012 Supreme Court decision that same-sex couples have the right to marry, as district attorney of San Francisco.
She served as the Californian attorney general (the top legal officer of a territory) from 2011 to 2017.
She fought for a larger amount of money from the federal government to help the tens of thousands of Californians affected by the foreclosure crisis as attorney general of California.
She created Open Justice, an online platform that made criminal justice data available to the public and helped improve police accountability, as attorney general of California.
She was the second Black and first South Asian American to be elected to Senate in 2016, where she continues to fight “for the people.”
She campaigned for the 2020 presidential election.
She was chosen as the Democratic candidate for vice president by presidential candidate Joe Biden this year.
She has been subject to racist birther theories propagated by Trump, despite that she was born in Oakland, California to her Indian and Jamaican immigrant parents.
She faces Trump and the GOP continuously and knowingly mispronouncing her name, even though she’s taught the public time and time again how to pronounce it: “Comma-la.” Not “Kah-MAH-la.”
She goes through what second-generation American immigrants go through every day. The birther theories reflect the phrase we hear too often: “Go back to where you came from.” The intentional mispronunciation reflects the marginalization that we experience too much: “Um-ber.” Not “Am-ber,” or “Ahm-bar.”
She could be the first female, the first Black, and the first South Asian American as vice president. We could see a leader that looks like us, thinks like us, understands us, and pushes for the change that our country desperately needs.
She, with Biden, could save us from Trump.
So vote now.
More readings:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53774289
https://www.harris.senate.gov/about
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/us/politics/kamala-harris-gop-attacks.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/us/politics/kamala-bio.html