Kamala Harris: From the black bus to the ironing board during the election campaign, from Sunday lunches to her husband Doug, here is the US vice president ready to replace Biden

THEImagine US Vice President Kamala Harris singing at the top of her lungs Everybody loves the sunshine by Roy Ayers. It’s sunset, the windows are down, and she’s in the car with her future husband Doug and his children, Cole and Ella, whom she’s just met. The song serves to “break the ice” during the first meeting between the boys and “Momala”, as they will call her from then on. It’s 2014: Kamala and Doug have been together for two months. She is the attorney general of California, he is a partner in a law firm in Los Angeles. At that moment, no one imagines that they will end up in the White House six years later.

And now, ten years later, after Joe Biden said at the first event after the attack on Donald Trump that Kamala Harris ‘is not just a great vice president’ but «he could also lead the country”she could really become the first female president of the United States and he the first first gentleman of the White House. A woman, young, supported by the black and Asian community, she would now be the only alternative to Biden, when only a few days ago she seemed the least likely presidential candidate. But who are we talking about? Here are some biographical pills extracted from our podcast We can be heroes.

From India to the USA

To tell the story of Kamala Harris, we must start from Chennai, India. It is 1960 and Shyamala Gopalan, 19 years old, Brahmin caste manages to convince her parents to send her to Oakland, California, to do a doctorate in endocrinology at the University of Berkeley. In the meantime, after a few months, Donald Harris, 23 years old, also leaves Jamaica for Berkeley, where he plans to graduate in Economics. After meeting at a meeting of the Afro American Association, the civil rights movementthe two fell in love and in 1963 flew to India to get married. On October 20, 1964, while Shyamala was getting her doctorate, their first daughter, Kamala, was born, a name that means “lotus flower.” Three years later, Maya was also born, but the marriage failed in 1971. But the harmony between Kamala’s parents did not last. They separated shortly after.

The 70s

In the 1970s, Kamala grew up in Berkeley with her mother and sister. The entire family was made up of activists, from her maternal grandmother Rajam to her mother’s student friends. The black community welcomed all three. Kamala did her first marches for the right to vote, civil rights or against the war in Vietnam in a stroller.. Every morning Shyamala goes to the lab, while her daughters take the bus to school. “My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters. She knew that her adopted country would see Maya and me as black girls, and she was determined to make sure that we grew up to be proud, confident women.”
About a year after her parents’ separation, Shamala and her daughters moved to an area of ​​Berkeley known as flatlandsor “the plain”. It is a neighborhood of working-class familieswho try above all to work hard, pay the bills, and help each other. It’s a community that cares a lot about kids, a place where people believe in the basics of the American Dream: if you work hard and behave, your kids will have a better life than you do.

The Gospel Choir and the “Clash” with Joe Biden

Kamala sings in the church gospel choir and goes to school taking the desegregation busa bus set up to “mix students from different neighborhoods and colors.” A fundamental experience for the future vice president of the United States, but criticized at the time by many whites. Among them is also Joe Biden, a 29-year-old young man who is not yet a senator but is already politically active.as Kamala Harris recalled in 2019 during a Democratic primary debate, and which went down in history as the only moment of serious disagreement between the two. Biden later responded that at the time he was not against the integration measure but against its mandatory nature.
During those years, Kamala attended the Rainbow Sign every Thursday, a cultural center where she had the opportunity to listen to Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of novel The color purpleor Representative Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress.
When, following the example of these strong women, Kamala also reaches the top of American politics, becoming the first female vice president and the first non-white, her mother Shyamala will not be there, she died in 2009. It will be to her, her North Star, that Kamala will turn, very emotional, in her speech after the victory in November 2020.

Canada and the degree

In 1976 Shyamala won a research position in Montreal, so Kamala moved with her family to Canada and graduated there. In the 80s she returned to the United States to study economics and political science at Howard University in Washington, then law at Hastings College in San Francisco, where she graduated in 1989. The following year she became a lawyer. In the 90s she worked as a district attorney first in Alameda and then in San Francisco, For Kamala, it’s been years Law and Order: She could easily be a lawyer on a crime drama. She deals with murder, drug trafficking, and sex crimes: rapists and child molesters. She pors over police reports and interviews witnesses. She sits down with the medical examiner and looks through autopsy photos. When the police arrest a suspect, she goes to the station and stands on the other side of a false mirror, constantly exchanging notes with the detectives conducting the interview. But it’s not all sunshine and roses: as much as she loves her job, it’s a toxic environment. When she’s offered a job on the San Francisco public defender’s team, Kamala happily accepts. She stays for two years, dealing with street children, child prostitution, and he will succeed in closing down thirty brothels in the city.

The Beginning of Political Activism and the Iron

That’s where Kamala makes the leap: she understands that in order to really change things, she has to run for a political role.must become the district attorney of San Francisco, the office from which she had fled. She follows the words of activist James Baldwin: “There is never a moment in the future when we will solve the problem of saving ourselves. The challenge is in the present moment; the moment is always now.” It is 2003: Kamala then decides to challenge her former boss, and former boxer, without having any idea what an electoral campaign entails. With an ironing board for a desk, Kamala starts holding rallies in supermarket parking lots“like a telemarketer,” she will say later, and with no desire to talk about herself, as her mother had taught her. In the end, she will win that election against her former boss. Not a bad start: she collected three times as much funding as her rival. In five years, as district attorney of San Francisco, the conviction rate for serious crimes increases by 50%, convictions for drug dealing by 56%. In short, she manages to overturn that office.

Mother’s Cancer

Everything seems to be going well, until life violently breaks into Kamala’s life. During a family lunch reunion in New York, with her sister Maya and her mother Shyamala, the latter tells her daughters that she was diagnosed with colon cancer. Endocrinologist and oncologist, she knows exactly what is happening in her body. Kamala describes the chemotherapy period like this: «We tried to get by. I cooked her elaborate meals, filling the house with the smells of childhood.which reminded both her and me of happy times. When I wasn’t in the office, I spent most of my time with her, telling her stories and holding her hands, helping her endure the torment of chemotherapy. When she lost her hair, I bought her hats, and soft clothes so she could be as comfortable as possible. I would learn that decline is neither fluid nor stable. It is not a gradual process. My mother would reach a certain level and stay there for weeks or months, and then, seemingly overnight, she would fall back down to the level below. One of the last questions she asked the nurse who cared for her, The last worry she had was, “Will my daughters be okay?” She absolutely wanted to be a mother until the last moment.”

After the mourning, Doug’s arrival

After her grief, Kamala threw herself back into her work. In 2011, she became California Attorney General. grief followed the campaign to become California Attorney General. She is the first woman and the first Asian American to hold that position. A 2015 report said that 79% of the time, that job is held by white men. Fast forward to 2013: Kamala is a forty-year-old career woman who is unable to have a private life. He doesn’t know it yet, but that will be a watershed year in his life: before Doug and after Doug, before and after Doug, as her collaborators say. We are talking about Doug Emhoff, whom she will marry on August 22, 2014, about a year after their first meeting. It is one of the anecdotes of her biography that is best known: Kamala said that it was her friend Chrisette who had arranged the blind date and had told her not to look for him on the Internet. But she had searched for him on Google. And the date works very well.

The extended family and dinners

Kamala is immediately welcomed by Doug’s grown-up children, as well as by his ex-wife Kerstin, who becomes her friend. Too good to be true? And yet. Kerstin and Kamala joke: “We have a modern family that’s a little too functional,” Kamala said. The Harrises and Emhoffs have a ritual: Sunday dinner. “We all gather around the table, and family and friends are always welcome,” Harris said. “I make a meal that we share together, and that’s really important to me. Everyone has a role to play. Cole sets the table, chooses the music, and helps out as a chef’s assistant in the kitchen. Ella makes restaurant-quality guacamole and delicious desserts, including a gorgeous fresh fruit tart topped with homemade whipped cream. Doug has bought himself a pair of safety goggles for chopping onions, which he wears with great fanfare when the time comes — and let me tell you, There is nothing more attractive than a man with onion glasses. I prepare the main course – maybe a pork stew, spaghetti with meat sauce or an Indian biryani or chicken with feta, lemon zest and fresh oregano from the garden. “And again: “I know not everyone likes to cook, but I find it an activity that can re-center me. And, As long as I make Sunday dinner for my family, I know I’m in control of my life. – because I do something that matters to the people I love, so we can share good times together.”