On Wednesday, August 19, Kamala Harris made history by accepting the vice presidential nomination at the 2020 Democratic National Convention. She is running alongside Joe Biden, the democratic presidential candidate. 

Sentiments toward Harris are extremely high. 

“I am thrilled, excited and emotionally overwhelmed all at once for the nomination of Kamala Harris. I felt a freedom that I had never felt before when I voted for Hilary Clinton in 2016 and my disappointment over her loss was intense. With Harris, I feel surer of a victory and I feel very confident in her ability, her platform and her past experience. She knows the constitution well and will be a fair and stable force in the White House,” said Mrs. Dymond, a Naugatuck High School teacher. 

Harris, 55, was born in Oakland, California to two immigrant parents. Her father Donald Harris was a Black Jamaican economist and her mother Shyamala Gopalan was a cancer researcher born in Madras, India. For the first time in history the vice president could potentially be a woman of Jamaican and Indian descent. 

Prior to being elected, she was the first black woman to be district attorney and the first woman to be an attorney general in California. She also became California’s senator in 2017.

As a democrat, she supports the same ideals as other democrats when it comes to law enforcement reform. Harris believes that more money should be allocated towards education, public housing, and mental health rather than going to police departments. Additionally, she believes that proper distribution of funds could make cities safer than adding more law enforcement. 

“In many cities in America, over one-third of the funding goes toward the police,” said Kamala Harris to Meghan McCain in an interview.  

She never openly says she wants to defund the police, but it is evident that she definitely wants to reform the police system. Throughout her campaigns, she strongly advocates reforming the criminal justice system to make sure it is fair enough for all people of color and communities of color. 

Harris is also a strong advocate for reducing racial disparities in maternal mortality. Most of her presidential campaign was surrounded around better reproductive healthcare for women of color. 

“She will do wonderful things for this country, especially for those who have been marginalized in the past – BIPOC, women and the impoverished,” added Mrs. Dymond. 

According to americanprogress.org  “African American women across the income spectrum and from all walks of life are dying from preventable pregnancy-related complications at three to four times the rate of non-Hispanic white women, and the death rate for black infants is twice that of infants born to non-Hispanic white mothers.” 

In a utopian society, these statistics would not even exist, but Harris plans to reduce them. 

Furthermore, Harris has taken a strong stance on immigration. A couple years ago, she was one of the leading voices against the Trump administration’s policy of separating children at the border. She  joined protesters at immigration shelters and advocated for expanded oversight of detention centers.

As a presidential candidate she planned to expand the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and clarify a path to citizenship for some Dreamers brought into the United States as children. 

As the country prepares for the presidential election in November, everyone is being encouraged to vote and people should vote for the pair of candidates that embraces the same values as them.