By Reese Watterson
Kamala Harris is a current California senator and is running with Joe Biden in the presidential election. If they win, she will be the first African-American female vice president. Kamala Harris has been a strong female leader and will continue being, regardless of the election outcome.
Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, California in 1964 and lived there with her sister and mom for most of her childhood. Harris’s family lived in a mostly African American neighborhood. She had to be bused to school, to a white neighborhood, for 1st through 4th grade.
She attended middle school and high school in Montreal and soon moved on to graduate from Howard University with majors in political science and economics. She then earned a law degree from the University of California, Hastings, and her first job out of law school was with the Alameda County District Attorney’s office in 1990. This job was the start of her career as a leader of California.
This wasn’t enough for her though. Kamala Harris wanted to be the first African-American woman as District Attorney of San Francisco. So, in 2003, with more than 56 percent of the votes, she completed that goal. As District Attorney, Harris focused on drug and crime cases and made some very big and influential changes. One of her decisions was starting a program for high school first-time drug offenders that enabled them to graduate and get a diploma.
In 2010, Harris ran for a more difficult office, California Attorney General, and won, making her the first African-American and the first woman to hold this office. As a California Attorney General, Kamala Harris defended a California climate change law, which set a limit on greenhouse gases all over the state. In addition, as Harris herself, had always supported equality and the LGBTQ+ community, as Attorney General she was even more active in her support, by helping to strike down the law that had banned same-sex marriage.
After 6 years of dealing with law reinforcements, and protecting the public, finally, Harris was elected for the position of California State Senator, but it wasn’t easy. To get to the California Senate, she had to deal with a lot of discrimination and racism, but Harris was not one to give up. As the first African-American woman in the Senate, Kamala Harris has advocated for healthcare for everyone and helped undocumented immigrants get citizenship. This support will hopefully change the way that people think of these things in future years.
During the 2020 presidential election, Kamala Harris was in the running for president for 11 months, until it became clear that she didn’t have a very good chance of winning. Once Harris suspended her campaign, Joe Biden, one of the presidential nominees, asked her to run with him in the election and to be his vice president if he wins. In August of 2020, they announced that Harris had accepted his offer. Biden and Harris have a strong plan of how they would control the COVID-19 pandemic and how to deal with other important issues. Their campaign would give healthcare to everyone, which would be especially helpful during COVID-19. They would make better-paying jobs for everyone, so people could feed their families and get more income. A California senator and former vice president and Delaware senator make a strong, progressive team together and could solve our nation’s issues.
“You may be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.” This is Kamala Harris’s motto, which comes from her mom. This motto proves true to what Harris has done for this nation, and how she can accomplish anything.
References:
https://oag.ca.gov/history/32harris
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/11/kamala-harris-vp-background-bio-biden-running-mate-2020-393885
https://www.harris.senate.gov/about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris
https://ballotpedia.org/Kamala_Harris_presidential_campaign,_2020
https://joebiden.com/together-we-will-beat-donald-trump/
image taken from:
https://joebiden.com/together-we-will-beat-donald-trump/
