Out of 244 years and 46 administrations, Kamala Harris is the first woman to become Vice President.
Kamala Harris was born on the 20th of October 1964. Her father, Donald Harris, was Jamaican-American and her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was born in the former British Raj, known today as India. This makes Kamala Harris the first woman as well as the first Black, Jamaican, and Indian person to hold the Vice President position.
Mrs. Honz, the photojournalism and yearbook teacher at Elkhorn North said, “It’s about time. I have a Seven-year-old daughter and it’s amazing to think that we are one step closer to having a female President in her lifetime and maybe even mine.
When Harris was young, her father would take her to civil rights demonstrations. A civil rights demonstration was also where her father and mother met.
According to Brittania, in 1986 Kamala Harris graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C., and then got a law degree at Hastings College in 1989.
She went on to become the deputy district attorney of Oakland, California from 1990 to 1998. Six years later she became the district attorney for Oakland, Calif.
In 2010 she was elected to become the Attorney General of California. While she was Attorney General she showed political independence by defying her own party and fighting to allow same-sex marriage.
A few years later, she was approached and offered to run for the senate, taking Barbara Boxer’s place. She accepted and announced her campaign in November of 2015.
During Harris’s campaign. she was a heavy advocate for legalizing abortion nationwide. Planned Parenthood Action Fund has maintained a 100% rating for Harris’s since they endorsed her according to Pro-Choice America.
Another thing Harris advocates for is the federal legalization of cannabis products. She and Republican Orrin Hatch sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the DEA was blocked by the Department of Justice from growing cannabis for research.
Kamala Harris also fights for automatic rifle buyback laws to be passed. This would make it so all automatic rifles would become illegal and get sold back to the government to be destroyed.
Her biggest policy that she supports is immigration. With both of her parents being immigrants, she fought for fair treatment of captured illegal immigrants by ICE (United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement). She has been very vocal about her stance stating that illegal immigrants need to have “timely and appropriate treatment.” This was after news stations reported that children were being separated from their parents and locked in cages.
Through much of Harris’s effort, she didn’t manage to stay the Democratic Candidate because her war chest, the amount of money she had to campaign, ran out. She conceded the race in December of 2019.
Three months later, on the 8th of March, Kamala Harris endorsed Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential candidate.
Then in August of 2020, Joe Biden announced Kamala Harris as his running mate. Many have said he was under pressure to have a black woman be the Vice President.
The day of the election was very nerve-racking for both parties because the votes were very close in both states.
Finally on the 7th of November, after three days of waiting, Joe Biden was elected to be the President of the United States.
Kamala Harris put a video on Twitter of her calling President-elect Biden after they found out they won, “We did it. We did it, Joe. You are going to be the next President of the United States”
For many, a woman as a leader is very inspirational and it sets the future generation for great things.
Mrs. Wagner, an English teacher at Elkhorn North said, “It was really overwhelmingly wonderful. I feel like it’s really exciting and you could tell yesterday. I watched the inauguration with my son and he only got to see snip bits of it at school. Watching it and realizing how momentous it was and how often they refer to that being a big deal.”
No matter which side of the political spectrum you lean, Kamala Harris becoming Vice President is a historic moment for the United States of America.
