Taking a look at the Kamala Harris campaign.
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
By now most readers here are aware that Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) has officially declared her candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination for President.
Black Kos does not endorse candidates, though individual editors are free to do so. I’ve openly expressed my support for her.
Should she not be nominated, I will gladly, and enthusiastically GOTV for whichever Democrat wins the primaries. During the season I will be paying close attention to all of the candidates — how Black communities are responding to them, and what proposals and plans they have espoused in their platforms that resonate with us.
Given that the Harris candidacy is historic, as a Black-Asian woman running for POTUS —following in the footsteps of Shirley Chisholm’s announcement in 1972, I’d like to pay homage to that moment.
January 25, 1972 Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm became the first African American woman to run for President when she sought the Democratic nomination in 1972.
The description above (which you will see repeated all over the internet) is factually incorrect since Charlene Mitchell, was actually the first in 1968, though not running for a major party — since she was the candidate for the Communist Party USA ((CPUSA).
Harris, announced on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in the same week that Chisholm did, 47 years prior. The Harris campaign is using Shirley Chisholm’s colors.
Harris, like Chisholm, is the child of immigrants — Harris’ mom a Tamil from India and her dad from Jamaica. Chisholm’s mom was from Barbados, her dad from Guyana. For more on her history, read, “Before Barack, Hillary, and Bernie, there was Shirley Chisholm.”
The announcement:
Her first campaign ad:
We know America can be better than this — but it's on us to build it. We have to fight for it. Together. Go to kamalaharris.org to join us.
Her ad links to her new campaign website — where she has introduced herself, and covered her history — both personal and legislative. She makes it clear she will not be taking money from PACS.
As I did here for Hillary, and Bernie — I like to first take a look at the people who are going to be the key players in her campaign in the months ahead.
As I said back then:
...it behooves us here in Black Kos to examine the actual people who are both adviser's to the candidates and running their national campaigns, because this is a political blog, and campaigns are one of the key elements on the road to electoral success or failure. I don't believe that a candidate in 2016 can win—the nomination and the general election—without significant backing and turnout from the large portion of the Democratic base that is comprised of people of color.
Of course, neither Hillary or Bernie are poc — which meant that they were under more pressure to have ties to, and staff that were connected to communities of color. Hillary’s campaign won in that duel, and though Hillary had long and deep ties to both African-American and Latino communities, I don’t want to minimize the role played by her staff. The photo we used back then — links to “the now” of the Harris campaign.
It was of Maya Harris and her sister Kamala.
Maya Harris is now Kamala’s campaign chair.
Here’s some of what I wrote about Maya, back then:
One of the key hires that interested me was that of Maya Harris. Though more people are familiar with her higher profile sister Kamala Harris, Maya's background is of real interest.
Harvard Law School Names Civil Rights Lawyer Maya L. Harris Visiting Scholar
As Vice President of the Ford Foundation’s Democracy, Rights and Justice program, Ms. Harris oversees a global effort that invests over $150 million annually to promote effective governance, increase democratic participation, and advance human rights worldwide. Under her leadership, Ford launched its first LGBT rights initiative; funded nationwide efforts to protect voting rights; supported emerging human rights organizations in the Global South; and invested in expanding economic and political opportunities for women around the world.
Over the last two decades, Ms. Harris has built a career as a public policy advocate, a legal educator, an attorney and published commentator. She is a contributing author to the No. 1 New York Times best-seller, “The Covenant with Black America” (Third World Press, 2006).
Ezra Klein wrote this feature Maya Harris is Hillary Clinton’s most interesting hire yet pointing out that Harris has authored an important paper:
She's a law professor and, most recently, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where she published only a single paper — but it's a paper that may prove key to Clinton's 2016 efforts to hold, and even expand, Obama's coalition.
The paper's title is "Women of Color: A Growing Force in the American Electorate," and in it, Harris criticizes politicians and political strategists for only addressing the concerns of women of color "as a part of broader efforts aimed at women, youth, or a specific racial or ethnic group." Women of color, Harris argues, are their own, incredibly fast-growing voting bloc, and any politician who wants to win them needs to make sure "their interests are priorities on the policy agenda."
This profile gives us more: Meet the woman who's guiding Hillary Clinton's stance on police reforms
Harris talks about the “collateral consequences of conviction” on families and communities, not just individuals, and tells me that the best police reforms are those that “engage the community as partners and problem-solvers, not just people to be policed.” Clinton’s speech gave fodder to critics who accuse the candidate of being too soft on crime and too hard on police officers assigned to work the front lines of dangerous neighborhoods.
...
Immigration is another issue that falls under Harris’ campaign purview, and another spot where Clinton has rejected her husband’s policies and moved to the left—further left than even President Barack Obama. In a May 6 speech that Harris helped to craft, Clinton warned that if Congress doesn’t pass immigration reform—and she is elected president—she would issue executive orders beyond those issued by President Obama to provide legal protection to undocumented workers living here. Look to see Harris’ influence again on June 13, when Clinton delivers official “launch” speech on Manhattan’s Roosevelt Island.
Interestingly, Maya Harris is a close friend of Michelle Alexander — author of The New Jim Crow, and harsh critic of Bill Clinton’s policies. According to Alexander — Harris supported her writing the book.
Kamala’s campaign manager is Juan Rodriguez. He has been with Harris for a long time:
As Campaign Manager for Kamala Harris for Senate, Juan helped lead Harris to the largest vote percentage by a non-incumbent Senate candidate in California history, carrying every demographic group, party, and region of the state.
Previously, Juan was Senior Advisor to Attorney General Harris in the California Department of Justice where he served as one of the Attorney General's principal advisors on issues impacting business, labor, government bodies, regulatory agencies, and community-based and non-profit organizations throughout California and the United States. In this capacity, Juan was part of the Attorney General's senior staff developing and implementing public policy, litigation, legislation, and outreach strategies for multiple issues. In 2014, Juan served as Interim Chief of Staff, supervising the office's executive staff and managing communications, scheduling, and advance staff.
Prior to that, Juan was Director of State Relations for the City of Los Angeles under Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Juan oversaw an expansive government lobbying effort on issues including energy, education, transportation, public safety, water, economic development, revenue and taxation needs. During his tenure with Mayor Villaraigosa, Juan also served as a Senior Political Advisor, advising on national, statewide and local redistricting, and elections.
I dug a little deeper to find out about his background:
Rodriguez was born in Burbank and grew up in North Hollywood. He watched people he was close to thrive in the middle class while other friends struggled, dropping out of school and joining gangs. His parents were both 19 when they fled El Salvador for the United States in the late 1970s and early ’80s around the civil war, part of the first waves of unaccompanied minors and young adults to exit the country, later bringing along their younger siblings.
A housekeeper, his mom caught the bus to clean homes for families in Beverly Hills. He remembers his dad, a carpenter, rising well before the sun most mornings to finish work early enough to pick up Juan’s mother.
Juan tagged along when she couldn’t find child care, when he wasn’t in school, or playing sports. He pitched in, cleaning sometimes so they could get home. “You get an education, and work hard, and you won’t have to do this,” she told him. Years later, he traveled along the same bus route as a freshman at UCLA.
He learned about immigration firsthand. Before his parents’ marriage, Juan’s mother had a daughter in El Salvador. They tried unsuccessfully to bring her to L.A., initially illegally, then through the formal process when they became U.S. residents. Juan’s first language was Spanish, so he took English classes. He was 8 by the time his sister arrived, at 13, and he observed her integrate into public schools. His parents became American citizens and had two daughters after Juan.
His background, and experience with the U.S. immigration system, and the trials faced by immigrants will stand in good stead as the Harris campaign develops both policy and outreach — across the U.S.
Laphonza Butler, is listed as a senior policy advisor for the campaign — and she brings not just policy cred, but on the ground working class organizing skills.
Butler lives in Los Angeles with her partner, Neneki Lee, and their 4-year old daughter, Nylah. It’s a long way from where she grew up — tiny Magnolia, Miss. — as the youngest of three children. Her father, a small-business owner, was hobbled by heart disease for much of her childhood and died when Butler was 16. During his illness and afterward, her mother was largely the household’s sole provider, working as a classroom aide, a home care provider, a security guard and a bookkeeper, among other things, to keep the family afloat. In college at Jackson State University, Butler studied under civil rights organizers. Her dorm building still had bullet holes in its facade from a 1970 state police shooting that left two students dead. “That was my socialization for doing the right thing,” said Butler, 39.
She was a national organizer for SEIU before moving to California in 2009, after she asked the union’s leaders to let her lead a local representing home healthcare workers. The local, the biggest in Los Angeles, had been stung by controversy after a Times Investigation detailed corrupt financial practices by its leaders. The in-home care workers “remind me so much of my mom,” Butler said. “Their kids remind me so much of me.” As leader of the home care workers local and in a four-year stint as president of SEIU California, Butler was in the mix for major policy initiatives, such as the efforts to raise the minimum wage to $15 in L.A. County, and then statewide. She also was heavily involved in statewide initiatives, including union-backed measures to increase income taxes in 2012 and 2016 on the wealthiest Californians.
Dustin Corcoran, chief executive of the California Medical Assn., said he witnessed Butler’s political acumen while working with her on initiatives including the 2016 effort to boost the state’s tobacco tax. “She can put competing organizations in a room and find a way to get everybody a win,” he said. “Watching her in a political meeting was like watching Neo in ‘The Matrix.’ You could tell she saw the world differently than everybody else.”
Other campaign staff are Lily Adams—communications director, Ian Sams— national press secretary, Marc Elias— general counsel, Angelique Cannon— national finance director, Sean Clegg— senior adviser, Averell Smith— senior adviser, David Huynh— senior advisor and David Binder— pollster.
The campaign has already done some things differently than most. Harris chose HBCU Howard University, her alma mater in DC as the site of her first press conference.
At Howard:
Howard holds a specific symbolic significance in the black community — “We went to Howard—not Harvard”
She’s headed to Oakland, for a launch rally on Sunday, the 27th — but before then she will be headed to South Carolina — to attend the Pink Ice Gala in Columbia, hosted by a South Carolina chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, which Harris pledged when she was an undergraduate at Howard.
Here’s hoping that the media will get it right this time, after the white WaPo writer assigned to her was clueless about AKAs, powerful black sororities and their culture. Wrote about that hot mess in “Cultural competency in reporting: Kamala Harris, AKAs, and 'skee wee'”
Harris, is not going to have smooth sailing in all the segments of the black community — and some of her opponents from a mostly white left segment, have been retweeting black “critiques” from Hoteps.
Now, I realize that many readers here may not know anything about Hoteps.
Here’s a sample from the King of Twitter-hotep world:
One of many sane responses:
For a crash course in “Hotepism” — you can look at this video.
The Root has several in-depth explanations of Hotep-ism — here’s one sample from a longer piece:
Ok, so I've seen you reference "Hoteps" before — with quizzes, video content, and even the way you conjugate certain verbs — but I don't think I've ever quite seen a clear definition or explanation on what makes a hotep a hotep. Would you mind providing one?
No problem! In this context, Hotep refers to Pan-African extremists who often infuse their Pan-Africanism with misogyny, a Trumpian relationship with facts and understanding of context, and a steadfast belief in bizarre and ridiculous conspiracy theories.
For instance?
The belief that menstruation is unnatural and only happens to Black women because of a European virus.
For more (if you can stand it) see “What Is Hotep? Meet The Black American Ankh-Right”
Harris, like Obama before her, is already a Hotep target — and the fact that her husband is white, has driven them off the deep end. I suppose we should be thankful that most of them don’t vote, however what does bother me is that certain elements from ‘the left’ (cough) have gone hunting for their deranged tweets and are retweeting them.
There is also “The stoopid” from white bigots. Hoteps will join forces with them too.
Like this:
See ExpatGirl’s diary on this birther ass.
Kamala has a strong twitter following, especially from black women, and it is picking up steam. Many black folks, and Asian and white supporters are preemptively fighting to ensure she does not get “Hillaried.”
An example: This was a series of tweets, responding to critiques —from a sister, epitomee on twitter which I’ve posted from a thread reader:
I work and live near Oakland, CA. I’m going to drop some truths in the context of Kamala Harris because some bots & fake woke are dropping a load of bullshit early. /1.
Kamala was DA of the City & County of San Francisco. Oakland is located in Alameda county. The DA of Alameda Co is Nancy O’Malley since 2009. Oakland does not have it’s own DA, criminal cases are prosecuted by Nancy,
The SF DA office has a total of 250 personnel. Although Kamala was the elected DA, she would have had 100 attorneys reporting to her. So as the head honcho, she rarely personally prosecuted low level crimes. It’s how things work
Kamala got her butt handed to her when she refused to ask for the death penalty on this highly controversial police officer murder
sfgate.com/crime/amp/SAN-…
When Kamala won the CA AG race, she became the AG of over 5000 personnel. The AG does not prosecute folks like your cousin Pookie or Shiloh.
The AG is essentially the state’s attorney. For the morons who don’t understand, if the state wants to enforce one of their laws, welp that’s where the AG comes in.
Kamala did shut down the owner of Backpage. Backpage was a site for everything sex, drugs, sex trafficking, fire arm sales, etc.
A lot of sex workers are pissed with Kamala because she got that shit shutdown. But understand this, California has an underage sex trafficking problem. The bay are is notorious for this
Is Kamala perfect..no she isn’t. Is she liberal..you damn skippy she is. She’s actually really to the left on a lot of issues. I will not tolerate fools lying about her. /end
One last thing. I know a lot of Twitter “ intellectuals”, 🌹 and racist don’t understand government bureaucracy. But take this piece, the higher you rise in government, the less likely you are to run day to day operations.
I follow a lot of pocs on twitter like epitomee, who are not pundits, or political celebrities with huge twitter followings. I think that is more important in some ways, than just hearing the voices of political junkies (I am one).
There are valid criticisms of any candidate. Where folks will have a problem from me, is when they cite The National Review, or Washington Times, to criticize from ‘the left’.
Some Black Twitter folks are understandably suspicious:
It’s already gotten ‘interesting’ — and half the group who will be running have yet to announce. I’m glad to see that women have gotten out of the blocks early (with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard) and Julián Castro too. Will take a look at all the campaigns, and their staffing over the next month or two.
In a few months — those who are still in the game will have policy papers to examine. Till then, I’m glad to see we have a fabulous field.
Looking forward to winning 2020!
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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On Monday, when the rest of the country is taking the day off in commemoration of one of America’s civil rights heroes, the denizens of two states will get a remarkable choice: You can celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., or you can celebrate that of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
In Mississippi and Alabama, those days are officially the same, and the civil rights icon and the commander of the Confederate army are celebrated jointly, as two equally noble characters of American history. In Alabama, Lee gets first billing. (Mississippi downplays Lee in official documents). The two states have celebrated Lee’s birthday since the 1800s and began celebrating King’s in 1983.
Many in those states who defend the decision to honor Lee with King do so by whitewashing Lee’s actions and beliefs. In building upon Lost Cause myths and narratives, Lee’s defenders portray him as a reluctant hero, an honorable man who only with a heavy sadness took the job out of a sense of duty to protect his beloved South. Some will insist that he despised the institution of slavery, and others will emphasize he treated his slaves humanely. The reality, though, is this: Lee led an army—an army that conducted “slave hunts” of free black Americans and massacred black Union soldiers who tried to surrender—against the United States in an uprising for the explicit purpose of maintaining the institution of slavery. And while he was not the most ardent defender of slavery (he once wrote that slavery was a “moral & political evil” but also complained it was “a greater evil to the white man” and that black people needed to be enslaved in order to become civilized), he still ordered his slaves whipped and families separated. After the war, he continued to fight against efforts to give black Americans rights.
As offensive as it is that these two states celebrate the two men together—a decision that, as Jamelle Bouie wrote in 2015, came about out of bureaucratic convenience and a loyalty to their own state holiday in dealing with the new federally mandated holiday for King—pressure from civil rights groups and more progressive residents has successfully narrowed what was once a more common celebration across the South. In 2015, Georgia struck both Robert E. Lee’s birthday and Confederate Memorial Day from its state calendar. Two years later, Arkansas ended its practice of celebrating a joint MLK-Robert E. Lee day, instead moving Lee to a downgraded memorial day in October. And a small movement to have Alabama and Mississippi end their celebration of Robert E. Lee Day has gathered more than 16,000 signatures as of Friday evening.
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Haitians continued to search for gas Saturday as the Houston-based fuel reseller defended its decision to put five cargo ships filled with gasoline and diesel on “financial hold” in waters off Port-au-Prince.
Chris Scott, the chief financial officer of Novum, confirmed that the Bureau of Monetization of Programs and Development Aid, BMPAD, did make a partial payment, allowing the release of some fuel. But more than 60,000 barrels of gasoline and 260,000 barrels of diesel remain anchored off the Bay of Port-au-Prince, he said, as the company still awaits more than $35 million in overdue payments in order to discharge the pending volume. Neither Scott nor BMPAD director Ignace Saint-Fleur would say how much the government paid.
“We have made a lot of efforts to put certain amount of money ... to unblock the fuel,” Saint-Fleur told the Herald on Thursday.
Under a presidential decree issued by Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in January 2018, BMPAD is the only agency in Haiti that can import fuel in Haiti. The country’s private sector in recent days has called on the government to end the monopoly and allow the half-dozen or so fuel distributors to order fuel on their own on the open market.
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At least 680 people have been infected with the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s the second-largest Ebola outbreak in history, with 414 deaths so far, and the first Ebola outbreak in an active war zone, DRC’s eastern North Kivu and Ituri provinces.
But it could get worse: Health officials this week are concerned that Ebola appears to be spreading in the direction of Goma, a major population center in DRC.
Just this week, DRC’s health ministry confirmed four cases of the deadly virus in Kayina, a town in North Kivu, where fighting among rebel and militia groups has repeatedly interrupted the painstaking work of health workers who are responding to the outbreak.
Kayina happens to be halfway between Butembo, currently one of the outbreak’s most worrisome hotspots, and Goma, where a million people live.
So far, the outbreak has not affected DRC’s biggest cities. But Ebola in Kayina “raises the alarm” for Ebola reaching Goma, Peter Salama, the head of the new Health Emergencies Program at the World Health Organization, told Vox on Friday.
Goma is a major transportation hub, with roads and highways that lead to Rwanda. “These are crossroad cities and market towns,” Salama added. People there are constantly on the move doing business, and also because of the insecurity in North Kivu. Ebola in Goma is a nightmare scenario WHO and DRC’s health ministry are scrambling to prevent.
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The Vera Institute of Justice and the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality released a new report on Wednesday (January 16) called, “Investing in Futures: Economic and Fiscal Benefits of Postsecondary Education in Prison.” The research details how lifting the ban on giving incarcerated people federal Pell Grants would ultimately benefit students, workers, employers and states. Pell Grants are financial awards given to undergraduate students experiencing financial hardship. They are funded by the government and generally do not have to be repaid.
Many, from corrections officers to college administrators, have worked to create postsecondary education programs in prisons. This report outlines the amount of money states would save if more incarcerated people were able to earn degrees, which would ultimately lead to better job opportunities and lower recidivism rates. However, most “incarcerated people lack the financial resources to pay for postsecondary schooling,” the report states. Instead, those who seek a higher education have to rely on public funding, which “has been scarce since the mid-1990s.”
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Victor Manuel Torres raised one hand, about waist level, indicating how high the sea rose in his house during Hurricane Maria last year.
Then, with his other hand, he lifted a rusty machete. At 77, he has lived for more than half a century in a barrio called Vietnam, abutting San Juan Harbor. For nearly as long, municipal authorities have tried to evict him.
“This is how I have held them back,” he told me, waving the machete. “The storm was a passing shower compared to what we have survived here.”
Today numbering some 250 families, Vietnam began like many barrios in Puerto Rico. Laborers lured from the countryside during the island’s postwar industrial boom established a squatters settlement. The harbor was a bustling site of factories, military bases and jobs, but nobody had supplied housing for workers. So the workers did it themselves.
They cleared a swath of mosquito-infested mangroves and cobbled together what were at first rickety shacks that sank time and again in the mud and rain. When the shacks didn’t collapse on their own, the police would come and tear the houses down, hoping to force residents out. The pattern continued even as the houses became cinder block and concrete and the settlement grew into a neighborhood.
By the 1970s, the quagmire of conflict gave rise to the name Vietnam.
For residents, it became a badge of honor.
Now, as the federal government prepares to spend an unprecedented $20 billion to repair neighborhoods across Puerto Rico that were ravaged by the Category 4 storm, the goal of finally replacing Vietnam’s besieged warren of cinder block houses with a flourishing community capable of weathering the hurricanes of the future seems at once more urgent and less likely than ever.
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH
Welcome to Black Kos, and the Black Kos Community. It’s a new year, and we have new folks dropping in to visit, so here’s a little background attached to the welcome mat.
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