Vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has revealed how her mother influenced her at the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC).
While speaking at the DNC on Thursday after official accepting the Party’s nomination, the Vice President indicated that she is “no stranger to unlikely journeys” due to her mother’s influence on her life when growing up.
“She taught us to never complain about injustice, but do something about it,” Harris said and added later: “And she also taught us – never do anything half-assed.”
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Kamala’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was an Indian immigrant. She met the former’s dad, Donald J. Harris, a Jamaican immigrant, at the University of California, Berkeley, where they were both pursuing their doctorates. Kamala confirmed this story in her autobiography, The Truths We Hold.
She described how her parents “met and fell in love at Berkeley while participating in the civil rights movement.” Reflecting on her upbringing, she once posted on Instagram, “They laid the path for me, as only the second Black woman ever elected to the United States Senate.”
Even though her parents divorced along the line, the love needed from them was intact.
Kamala’s mother, Shyamala, passed away in 2009 after battling colon cancer. She was 70.
On becoming a lawyer, Harris divulged her parents’ activism within the Civil Rights Movement impacted her decision and chosen career path and also motivated her to be successful in the field.
“Everyday, in the courtroom, I stood proudly before a judge and said five words — ‘Kamala Harris for the people,” Harris said. “And to be clear, my entire career, I’ve only had one client: The people.”
Having been criticized for some of her prosecutions during her days as San Francisco district attorney and later as the attorney general for the state of California, the Democratic presidential candidate made clarifications.
“I fought against the cartels … who threatened the security of our communities,” she disclosed. “These fights were not easy, and neither were the elections that put me in those offices.”
After calling herself “underestimated at practically every turn,” Kamala Harris went ahead to tell the audience that “the future is always worth fighting for.”
