Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has chosen Senator Kamala Harris of California to be his running mate in the November 3 election. Biden and Harris are hoping to defeat Republican President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, who are running for re-election.
Harris is the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent to be nominated to national office by a major political party. She and Biden addressed a televised audience on August 12 at a Delaware school. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, there was no crowd, and both of the candidates wore masks.
”This morning, all across the nation, little girls woke up, especially little Black and brown girls that feel overlooked and undervalued in their communities,” Biden said. “But today—today just maybe, they’re seeing themselves for the first time in a new way as president and vice presidents.”
Harris talked about her parents and their commitment to racial justice. “My mother and father, they came from opposite sides of the world to arrive in America, one from India and the other from Jamaica, in search of a world-class education,” she said. “But what brought them together was the civil rights movement of the 1960s. And that’s how they met as students in the streets of Oakland, marching and shouting for this thing called justice in a struggle that continues today.”
Harris has expressed her own strong support of Black Lives Matter movement. In her televised address, she also acknowledged “all the heroic and ambitious women before me whose sacrifice, determination, and resilience makes my presence here today even possible.”