The Truths We Hold: An American Journey

by Kamala Harris

First, my name is pronounced “comma-la,” like the punctuation mark. It means “lotus flower,” which is a symbol of significance in Indian culture.

Those early days were happy and carefree. I loved the outdoors, and I remember that when I was a little girl, my father wanted me to run free. He would turn to my mother and say, “Just let her run, Shyamala.” And then he’d turn to me and say, “Run, Kamala. As fast as you can. Run!” I would take off, the wind in my face, with the feeling that I could do anything.

“Mmmm, honey,” Mrs. Shelton responded in her graceful southern accent, her lips slightly puckered from the taste. “That’s delicious . . . maybe a little too much salt . . . but really delicious.” I didn’t walk away thinking I was a failure. I walked away thinking I had done a great job, and just made one small mistake.

She’d use a cookie cutter to make shapes in pieces of bread, then lay them out on a tray with mustard, mayonnaise, pickles, and fancy toothpicks. In between the bread slices, we’d put whatever was left in the refrigerator from the previous nights of cooking. It took me years to clue in to the fact that “smorgasbord” was really just “leftovers.” My mother had a way of making even the ordinary seem exciting.

“Fight systems in a way that causes them to be fairer, and don’t be limited by what has always been.”

America has a deep and dark history of people using the power of the prosecutor as an instrument of injustice.

One of my mother’s favorite sayings was “Don’t let anybody tell you who you are. You tell them who you are.”

For too long, we’d been told there were only two options: to be either tough on crime or soft on crime—an oversimplification that ignored the realities of public safety. You can want the police to stop crime in your neighborhood and also want them to stop using excessive force. You can want them to hunt down a killer on your streets and also want them to stop using racial profiling. You can believe in the need for consequence and accountability, especially for serious criminals, and also oppose unjust incarceration. I believed it was essential to weave all these varied strands together.

“There is never a time in the future in which we will work out our salvation,” he’d written. “The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.”

It had been stripped of almost everything as part of the transition. A metal cabinet sat against one wall with a 1980s Wang computer on top of it. (Mind you, it was 2004.) No wonder the office hadn’t gotten email yet. A plastic-lined wastebasket stood in the corner; a few loose wires stuck out of the floor. Out the window of my new office I could see a row of bail bonds businesses—a daily reminder of the ways in which the criminal justice system is more punishing to the poor. There was no desk in the office, just a chair where the desk had been.

Seems like a waste to not rotate furniture like this ?

Participants had to first plead guilty and accept responsibility for the actions that had brought them there. We promised that if participants completed the program successfully, we would have their charges expunged,

Wongful convictions?