The Truths We Hold: An American Journey

by Kamala Harris

You can believe in the need for consequence and accountability, especially for serious criminals, and also oppose unjust incarceration.

it is a false choice to suggest that you must either be for the police or for police accountability. I am for both. Most people I know are for both. Let’s speak some truth about that, too.

It was during that process that I started connecting a series of research-related dots. The first dot concerned the importance of third-grade reading proficiency. Studies show that the end of third grade is a critical milestone for students. Up until that point, the curriculum focuses on teaching students to learn to read. In fourth grade, there’s a shift, and students transition to reading in order to learn. If students can’t read, they can’t learn, and they fall further behind, month after month and year after year—which forces them onto a nearly inescapable path to poverty. The door of opportunity closes on them when they’re barely four feet tall. I believe it is tantamount to a crime when a child goes without an education. At the same time, I was focused on a rash of homicides in the city and county of San Francisco.

It was an issue for leaders across the area, in and out of government, so there was a lot of activity and concern about what we should do to address it. When we studied the data, we learned that more than 80 percent of prisoners were high school dropouts. I went to see the school district superintendent, a wonderful woman named Arlene Ackerman, to ask her about the high school dropout rate. She told me that a significant percentage of their habitually truant high school students had missed their elementary school classes, too—for weeks, even months at a time. That, to me, was a call to action. The connections were so clear. You could map the path for children who started drifting away from the classroom when they were young. The truant child became the wanderer . . . who became the target for gang recruiters . . . who became the young drug courier . . . who became the perpetrator—or the victim—of violence. If we didn’t see that child in elementary school, where they belonged, chances were we’d see them later in prison, in the hospital, or dead.

To see someone look for root causes, not just end results is so refeshing. Sign of a great leader!!

thought about the fight I’d been able to lead, first as district attorney and then as attorney general, to stop defendants in hate crimes from using what’s known as the “gay and trans panic defense.” In 2002, a seventeen-year-old woman, Gwen Araujo, had been brutally beaten and murdered in Newark, California. Her killers, two of whom had been involved with her sexually, had tried to justify their actions in court by claiming that they had panicked upon learning that Araujo was transgender, to the point of temporary insanity. It was ludicrous. As district attorney, I had organized a conference of prosecutors and law enforcement officials from across the country to push back against the idea that criminal conduct could be mitigated by prejudice. And as attorney general, in that summer of 2014, I was working with the governor and state legislature on what would be a successful effort to ban such a defense statewide. I thought about how much that meant to me.

“It is the very nature of this fight for civil rights and justice and equality that whatever gains we make, they will not be permanent. So we must be vigilant,” I said. “Understanding that, do not despair. Do not be overwhelmed. Do not throw up our hands when it is time to roll up our sleeves and fight for who we are.”

Still fighting!!

In their courage, their dignity, and their determination, they reminded me of my mother. Standing among them, I thought about the duality of the immigrant experience in America. On the one hand, it is an experience characterized by an extraordinary sense of hopefulness and purpose, a deep belief in the power of the American Dream—an experience of possibility. At the same time, it is an experience too often scarred by stereotyping and scapegoating, in which discrimination, both explicit and implicit, is part of everyday life.

I also remember how seriously she took any encounter with government officials. Whenever we would come back from traveling abroad, my mother made sure Maya and I were on our best behavior as we went through customs. “Stand up straight. Don’t laugh. Don’t fidget. Have all your stuff. Be prepared.” She knew that every word she spoke would be judged, and she wanted us to be ready. The first time Doug and I went through customs together, my muscle memory kicked in. I was preparing myself in the usual way, making sure we had everything just right and in order. Meanwhile, Doug was as relaxed as ever. It frustrated me that he was so casual. He was genuinely perplexed, innocently wondering, “What’s the problem?” We had been raised in different realities. It was eye-opening for us both.

Reality !

For as long as ours has been a nation of immigrants, we have been a nation that fears immigrants.

Concerns about growing numbers of newcomers from Southern and Eastern Europe resulted in the imposition of immigration quotas in 1924.

There wasnt always a limit

Our country was built by many hands, by people from every part of the world. And over the centuries, immigrants have helped to lift and fuel the economy—providing labor to industrialize it and brainpower to create society-altering innovations. Immigrants and their children were the creative minds behind many of our best-known brands—from Levi Strauss to Estée Lauder. Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, was a Russian immigrant. Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!, came here from Taiwan. Mike Krieger, the co-founder of Instagram, is an immigrant from Brazil. Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post, was born in Greece. In fact, in 2016, researchers at the National Foundation for American Policy found that more than half of Silicon Valley’s billion-dollar startups were founded by one or more immigrants.

Parents canceled their children’s pediatrician appointments out of fear that ICE would be waiting for them.

Happening now.

And I knew it wasn’t just undocumented people who were terrified. According to research published in American Behavioral Scientist, all Latinx immigrants—whether citizens, legal residents, or undocumented—experience the fear of deportation at the same rates.

Many of them outwardly support Trump in fear

In addition, when they applied, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assured them it would follow its long-standing practice not to use their information for law enforcement purposes except in very limited circumstances. “These young people,” I said to General Kelly, “are now worried that the information they provided in good faith to our government may now be used to track them down and lead to their removal.” Hundreds of thousands of them have relied on our representations.

Now, they should be scared !

I don’t ever want a victim of a crime to be afraid to wave down a passing patrol car to get help. Such a system serves the predators, not the public. It renders all of us less safe.

in the first hundred days of the administration, immigration arrests increased by more than 37 percent. The administration chose to make all unauthorized immigrants a priority for deportation, regardless of whether they were otherwise law-abiding members of the community. Arrests of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record nearly doubled.

This was the first time around .

Enshrined in the First Amendment is the notion that not only would America establish no official religion of its own, but the government has no authority to prohibit anyone’s activities based on their religion.

How is it that people have forgotten this?

Justice Gorsuch cast the deciding vote in one of the most shameful decision’s in the Court’s recent history: the decision to uphold the president’s travel ban.

May he go down in history as that guy.

Medicare, which covers about fifty-five million people, could have incredible bargaining power to drive significantly lower prescription prices through negotiation. But lawmakers from both parties, at the behest of the pharmaceutical lobby, have prohibited Medicare from doing so.

should come as no surprise that over the past decade, pharmaceutical companies have spent about $2.5 billion on lobbying. Imagine the new drug trials they could have funded instead.

when you adjust for inflation, the federal minimum wage is actually lower now than when Dr. King spoke of “starvation wages” in 1968. What does that say about how our country values the sanctity and dignity of work?

Let’s speak truth about child care. If we don’t find a way to make it affordable, we’re not only subjugating people in financial crisis; we are also making it harder for women to stay in the workforce when they want to. This is one of the systemic barriers to women’s growth and success in the workplace. We need to tear it down.

Our current administration doesn't want this change. They want women "in their place"!

And let’s speak one final truth: big corporations and the richest people in the richest country in the world can afford to pay their fair share of taxes so that we can fix the economy. It’s necessary, it’s moral, and it’s wise.

We must remember what we have worked and in some cases bled for: an international order that promotes peace and cooperation; a commitment to democracy, here and around the world; a rejection of despots and tyrants and dictators who rule their countries based on their self-interest alone, not the interests of the people they are meant to serve. Imperfect though we have been, ours is a history in pursuit of a better, safer, freer world.

It’s our job to stand up for those who are not at the table where life-altering decisions are made. Not just those people who look like us. Not just those who need what we need. Not just those who have gained an audience with us. Our duty is to improve the human condition—in every way we can, for everyone who needs it.

90 percent of Judge Kavanaugh’s record was withheld from members of the Judiciary Committee.

true meaning of the word “patriot.” A patriot is not someone who condones the conduct of our country, whatever it does; it is someone who fights every day for the ideals of the country, whatever it takes.

Years from now, our children and our grandchildren will look up and lock eyes with us. They will ask us where we were when the stakes were so high. They will ask us what it was like. I don’t want us to just tell them how we felt. I want us to tell them what we did.