Harris secures enough delegate endorsements to win the Democratic presidential nomination
Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, on Monday, July 22.
Kamala Harris has the support of enough Democratic delegates to win the party’s nomination for president, according to CNN’s delegate estimate.
While endorsements from delegates continue to come in, Harris has now been backed by well more than the 1,976 pledged delegates she’ll need to win the nomination on the first ballot.
Three-year-old Kamala.
Harris Howard University yearbook photo.
In 1982, Harris enrolled at Howard University, a historically Black university.
U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris delivers remarks during a campaign event at West Allis Central High School in West Allis, Wis.
“Before I was elected as vice president, before I was elected as United States senator, I was elected attorney general, as I’ve mentioned, to California,” she said. “Before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds.”
“Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters, who broke the rules for their own gain,” Harris continued. “So, hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type. And in this campaign, I will proudly put my record against his.”
Obama throws his full support behind Harris
Vice President Kamala Harris (left) and former President Barack Obama have been in regular touch over the years.
And they have so much in common and here was Barack Obama’s dreams as an 8 year old.
Even at age 8, the future president had big dreams
Maraniss includes this excerpt from a paper Obama wrote as a third-grader in Indonesia, as recounted by his teacher:
My name is Barry Soetoro.
I am a third-grade student at SD Asisi.
My mom is my idol.
My teacher is Ibu Fer. I have a lot of friends.
I live near the school. I usually walk to the school with my mom, then go home by myself.
Someday I want to be president. I love to visit all the places in Indonesia.
Done. The eeeeeeend.
Barack and Michelle Obama endorse Kamala Harris
Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama have endorsed Kamala Harris in her White House bid, giving the vice president the expected but still crucial backing of the nation’s two most popular Democrats.
Michelle on her part said they have Kamala Harris’ back.
Kamala Harris – the first Black and Tamil woman to become Vice President of the USA
07 November 2020
California senator Kamala Harris has become the first Black and Tamil woman to be elected the Vice President of the United States.
The 55-year-old California Senator was born in Oakland to two immigrant parents.
Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, is a Tamil woman who grew up in Chennai, whilst her father Donald grew up in Jamaica. In her memoir, Harris writes how she would visit Tamil Nadu almost every year and understands small amounts of Tamil, often using Tamil around the house to express “affection or frustration”. In her address to the Democratic National Convention earlier this year, Harris paid tribute to her ‘chithis’ (சித்தி) – a word in Tamil for aunties.
“Family is my uncles, my aunts — my chitthis,” she told the convention.
In a speech at a “South Asians for Biden” event earlier this year, Harris also reminisced on her times in Chennai. “Growing up, my mother would take my sister Maya and me back to what was then called Madras because she wanted us to understand where she had come from and where we had ancestry,” she said. “And of course, she always wanted to instil in us a love of good idli.”
Harris told the Washington Post in February 2019 that her heritage “was one of the things that I struggled with” when she first ran for office.
“You are forced through that process to define yourself in a way that you fit neatly into the compartment that other people have created,” she added. “My point was: I am who I am. I’m good with it. You might need to figure it out, but I’m fine with it.”
Harris, far left, in a family photograph dressed in a traditional Tamil sari. (Courtesy of Sharada Balachandran Orihuela)
“We have a lot of work ahead of us,” tweeted Harris after the results were announced. “Let’s get started.”
Kamala Harris Tamil background came to me by surprise. Me and Tamils immigrants many of whom are Canadian citizens now go along way.
When we as Kenyan refugees came to Canada in 1988 taken there by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) from Tanzania, it was very tough for us. We lived in rooming houses where you have a sleeping room and share the washroom and Kitchen with ten other people you don’t know.
It was so bad for me and in our street in Broadview in Toronto the landlord would lock us out if we came home after 9.00 P.M. It would be snowing on us and there was nothing we could do about this inhumanity.
So we go to the UNHCR refugee center for health and we meet all these Sri Lankan Tamil refugees and Sinhalese and some Nigerians and we say lets go and buy a big house. We realized we could not buy a house because we had no credit rating in Canada.
Then we came together and rented one big house. It was Kenyan refugees, Tamil refugees, Sinhalese, Nigerian and we had a big house and paid rent and we were making good food everyday and back to the university to get the skills to join the workforce.
We got it done and now we are free and live all over Toronto City with our families. And God did we ever have a good political life? My Tamil friends now tell me they are going to the White House and I should be supportive and of course I am. I tell them we have been there before and we just laugh about it.
So today when I see Kamala Harris from an Indian and Tamil background going to the White House maybe I can be excused for being hopeful and excited for the future of America.
And when I talk about Kamala Harris family it is the same with my beloved son. His is 26 years old now. His mother is Eritrean. He was born in Canada but has been going to Kenya since he was 5 years old because he loves his grandmother there and his four aunts and endless number of cousins.
He always tells me he is a Canadian citizen by birth but a Kenyan in his heart. Eritrea is his home too and he makes that clear to me. We never argue about that.
We will welcome Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States of America. That will make her the first woman ever to take the White House. It is hard to breathe when you think about that and just how brilliant and intelligent she is.
My coworker who is a woman told staff at the meeting this week that if Kamala Harris wins in November she is taking a month off work just to absorb and celebrate it.
We Absolutely Support Kamala Harris.
President Nelson Mandela and Mac Maharaj.
My other great Tamil hero is Sathyandranath Ragunanan “Mac” Maharaj who after serving jail time with Nelson Mandela at Robben Island prison helped to put the final nails for the end of apartheid and get Mandela to be the president of South Africa in May 1994.
He was a military expert with umkhonto we sizwe (Spear of the Nation) and he was the operation chief when they made their last moves against De Klerk and the apartheid forces gave up and on May 10, 1994 Nelson Mandela became the president of a free South Africa.
When I look at what is going on I remember my good comrade and friend David Onyango Oloo who introduced me to these things and I wonder what he would be doing today if he was still alive. God bless you and your family my friend. You set this road for us and we will walk it with no fear whatsoever.
