U.S. Senator Kamala (pronounced comma-la) Harris is the woman who makes Jeff Sessions “nervous.”
When you drill down into her life story and career, it’s clear why all republicans see her as a major threat.
Born to progressive parents, she possesses a passion for stepping up and doing the right thing that dates back to a young age.
In fact, she may actually be a Super Heroine incognito. Here she is greeting a sister Super Heroine:
Here’s a compilation of Kamala Harris facts and inspiring quotations that the Talking Heads on TV are unlikely to mention.
She worked on Jesse Jackson’s campaign for President in the 1980s and had a “Jesse Jackson For President” bumper sticker on her car.
In a 2010 Q & A, Harris said:
“It was a completely different period of time. One of the clearest and most poignant memories I have of Jesse Jackson’s campaign was driving this little Toyota Corolla—I was a student at the time—and I had a “Jesse Jackson For President” sticker on my rear window.
And I was driving around the freeway with my “Jesse Jackson For President” sticker on my window and truckers were honking, saying, “Oh yeah, go for it.” And it really pointed out that this was a candidacy that was about America and a much broader base than sometimes people gave it credit for.”
https://www.superlawyers.com/california-northern/article/brilliant-careers/e8902c40-542b-40e4-89a5-58a2e181b36f.html
The Reason Why She Choose A Career In Law.
“Because at the dinner table in my family, which always included extended family, there was always some passionate debate about something. And everyone, regardless of their age, was expected to defend, with logic, their positions. In that environment you couldn’t help but develop skills because it was needed for survival.
Also lawyers were the heroes of the civil rights movement. There was Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston and Constance Baker Motley. They used the skills of their profession to lead the passion from the streets into the courtrooms of this country.”
She Attended Early Civil Rights Rallies – In Her Stroller.
Harris has said she grew up with “a stroller-eye view of the civil rights movement.” Her parents brought her to demonstrations around the Bay Area, and she has written that her “earliest memories are of a sea of legs marching around the streets and the sounds of shouting.”
Even as a small child, Harris picked up the language of the movement. Her mother recounts the time her eldest daughter, then a toddler, was fussing and, when asked what she wanted, cried out, “Fweedom!”
She Organized A Protest – at 12 years old — And Won!
When Harris was 12 years old and living in Montreal, she organized a protest against the apartment complex where her family lived to allow children to play soccer in a then-forbidden grassy courtyard. She successfully convinced the building's management to change its policy.
She Won Her First Campaign: Freshman Class Student Council Representative At Howard University.
At Howard, Kamala Harris studied economics and political science, argued on the debate team and worked with the Howard University Student Association (HUSA).
In her freshman year, she won her first election -- the freshman class representative the College of Arts and Sciences. She has said the experience molded her political career and sense of duty towards people who need their voices to be heard:
“I was working with HUSA in our tiny office creating priorities around folks that needed a voice,” she said.
She Worked In DC While Attending Howard University.
With Howard located in Washington DC, Harris worked as a tour guide at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and served as a press aide at the Federal Trade Commission. She also interned for Senator Alan Cranston of her home state of California.
She Remains Steadfast To Her Anti-Death Penalty Principals -- Even When She Gets Flack.
During her campaign for San Francisco District Attorney, Harris pledged not to seek the death penalty in her cases. A few months after she took office, police officer Isaac Espinoza was shot and killed while on duty. Days later, Harris announced that she would not seek the death penalty; instead she would pursue life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The police union and a number of prominent California politicians were outraged, At Espinoza’s funeral, Senator Dianne Feinstein stood up and declared, “This is not only the definition of tragedy, it’s the special circumstance called for by the death penalty law.’ The church full of mourners cheered.
She Stands Up For Children & Women.
In 1990, after earning her law degree for the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, she worked as a prosecutor with Alameda County in northern California. She specialized in child sex abuse trials and domestic violence cases.
In 2016, she told The New York Times in 2016, “When I was prosecuting child molestation cases, I will tell you, I was as close to a vigilante as you can get.”
Back On Track Program
NOTE: The following edited excerpts are from the Mother Jones Article: The Secret To Understanding Kamala. The entire article is well worth the read. Link below. (Boldface, mine):
In the early 2000s, while working on child abuse and domestic violence crimes in the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, she set out to build the Back On Track program for people who, if reached in time, were less likely to reoffend: first-time nonviolent drug offenders, specifically those aged 18 to 30. At that time, Lateefah Simon, a single mom in her 20s, was the executive director of the Center for Young Women’s Development and spent her days organizing young sex workers. The two formed an unlikely alliance.
Since Simon was in the trenches confronting pimps, and Harris was building cases against pimps and other sex traffickers, Simon began accompanying Harris to “know your rights” sessions for women across the city. … Simon recalls Harris insisting that meetings with Back On Track program participants be held at the University of California’s law school instead of at the Hall of Justice—attached to the county jail. “You don’t do programs to increase people’s options and life outcomes,” Simon says, by having them “come to the probation department to talk about what their dreams are.”
For Kamala Harris, Back On Track, was also about building a team of activists within the criminal justice system. She wanted to persuade people who agitated from the outside to buy into making change from the inside. More often than not, that meant recruiting strong-willed women of color.
Joanna Hernandez, a young Latina organizer, had spent her career doing on-the-ground mediation with at-risk and gang-involved youths. When Lateefah Simon wanted to hire her as a reentry manager for Back on Track, Hernandez saw the DA’s office as an enemy, not an ally. Hernandez remembers saying, “What do I look like working with the DA’s office?” But like her boss, Harris, Simon was persistent, and Hernandez eventually joined up.
Today, Hernandez considers her time with Back on Track as the key to finding effective ways to help some of the city’s most vulnerable. “A lot of young people don’t get those second chances anymore, and to be part of a historic program that offers that was empowering for me,” she says.
Lateefah Simon, who won a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2003 for her work organizing formerly incarcerated young women of color, is president of the Akonadi Foundation, a racial justice organization, and serves on the board of directors of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. She ran for that office in the name of Oscar Grant, the young black man who was killed by a BART officer on New Year’s Day in 2009. She credits her current position to her work with Harris: “She saw me before I saw myself, in a lot of ways.”
And Just-For-Fun Facts
She Formed A Dance Group In High School.
While attending high school in Canada, Harris co-founded a dance group called "Midnight Magic" that performed at Canadian retirement homes and other venues.
She Has A Collection of Converse Sneakers.
Harris says, “I run through airports in my Converse sneakers. I have a whole collection of Chuck Taylors: a black leather pair, a white pair, I have the kind that don’t lace, the kind that do lace, the kind I wear in the hot weather, the kind I wear in the cold weather, and the platform kind for when I’m wearing a pantsuit.”
She Reads Cookbooks & Recipes To Unwind.
“If I’ve had a particularly crazy day, I try to squeeze in a nice hot bath before I go to bed. And I have a hot cup of tea, usually some kind of chamomile. One of the things that I do to relax at the end of the day is I read recipes. I have a whole collection of cookbooks, so if I’m at home, I read them. … the New York Times cooking app if I’m on the road, or I try to get past the paywall on Bon Appétit.”
She Works Out Every Morning.
She watches MTV and VH1 while on the treadmill, or going to SoulCycle. “I love SoulCycle,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s like going to the club.” She tells all the young women she mentors that “You’ve got to work out,” insisting, “It has nothing to do with your weight. It's about your mind.”
Sources:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/article/Kamala-Harris-decision-2020-presidential-run-13437108.php
http://time.com/3665461/kamala-harris-senate/
https://www.superlawyers.com/california-northern/article/brilliant-careers/e8902c40-542b-40e4-89a5-58a2e181b36f.html
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2017-06-20/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-kamala-harris
http://hunewsservice.com/politics/howard-grad-returns-to-roots-in-senate-race/
http://mentalfloss.com/article/90839/13-trailblazing-facts-about-kamala-harris
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/the-secret-to-understanding-kamala-harris/
www.thecut.com/…
And thanks to DKer Jabberwoky for linking the video in another diary.