The junior United States Senator for California and the 32nd Attorney General of California from 2011 to 2017 has officially launched her 2020 presidential campaign a week after she announced her intention.
Attended by hundreds of supporters, the Democratic party member told the crowd gathered on Sunday in her birthplace of Oakland that she will fight for the people to restore lost American values under President Donald Trump.
“People in power are trying to convince us that the villain in our American story is each other. But that is not our story. That is not who we are. That is not our America. The United States of America is not about us versus them,” she said.
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“I’m running to be a President of the people, by the people, for all the people. If I have the honor of being your president, I will tell you this: I am not perfect. Lord knows, I am not perfect. But I will always speak with decency and moral clarity and treat all people with dignity and respect. I will lead with integrity. And I will speak the truth,” she told the crowd cheering her campaign slogan: “Kamala Harris, for the people.”
Kamala Harris called for unity in the face of a polarized nation as she has also endured name-calling for having immigrant parents from India and Jamaica who came to America in “pursuit of a dream. The fight for justice is everyone’s responsibility,” she said.
Harris spent her childhood in Berkeley with her mother and sister before they moved to Montreal during her middle and high school years after her mother got a medical research job in the Canadian city.
She has also been criticized by progressive Democrats for her record as District Attorney of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011 and later Attorney General of California, the state’s first African-American and female attorney-general.
Some of them argue that she did not push enough for criminal justice reform and during her tenure in 2012, she failed to tell defence attorneys that a police laboratory technician had allegedly been tampering with drug samples resulting in hundreds of cases being dismissed.
She is also being criticized for not prosecuting Trump’s Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin’s OneWest Bank for alleged foreclosure violations in 2013. He was then the bank’s chief executive and chairman.
Kamala Harris is being praised in other quarters for opposing the death penalty and the Back On Track initiative she pioneered as San Francisco district attorney, which allowed first-time, non-violent offenders to purge their records.
“Let’s speak the truth that too many unarmed black men and women are killed in America. Too many black and brown Americans are locked up. From mass incarceration to cash bail to policing, our criminal justice system needs drastic repair,” she said about the criminal justice reform legislation.
Harris has won the support of Oakland Mayor, Libby Schaaf, who said she decided to endorse her because “she has the most incredible strong character,” reports CNN.
If Kamala Harris wins the Democratic nomination for the 2020 presidential election, she makes history as the second black woman to be a presidential candidate after Lenora Fulani who ran in 1988. If she wins the election, she makes history as the first woman and the first black woman to be president of the United States of America.
