Kamala Harris: ‘Let's Fight With Hope'

The US Vice Presidential pick aims to add to her list of firsts

- Jennie Noonan

Accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination to run as vice president of the United States alongside presidential candidate Joe Biden, Kamala Harris spent 18 minutes outlining her inspiration and motivation.

She described growing up with “a stroller’s eye view of the civil rights movement”, saying her mother, a cancer researcher from India, and her father, an economist from Jamaica, met as graduate students while marching together for justice at the University of California in Berkeley in the 1960s. After they divorced, Harris and her sister Maya were raised, mostly, by her mum, Shyamala Gopalan Harris – who passed away at 70 from colon cancer in 2009.