– “While Trump continued to claim that he had ‘won’, the visuals of Secret Service protection and air cover for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris signalled an unmistakeable power shift.
Kamala glided onto the stage in a sleek suffragette white pantsuit teamed with a silk pussy-bow shirt, sorority pearls, just a hint of nerves and a radiant smile. Her message was even bigger than the moment. ‘I am thinking about … the generations of women, Black women,’ she said, catching her breath as the crowd whooped. ‘Asian, white, Latina, Native American women, who throughout our nation’s history have paved the way for this moment tonight. Women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all – including the Black women who are often, too often, overlooked, but so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy.’”
– “For the first time in US history, the country had a vice president who was a chosen surrogate to the president and vested with power, authority and importance – by his own design and with his consent. TIME magazine illustrated this momentous occasion with a cover portrait that showed Biden and Harris side by side on its Person of the Year cover on 21 December 2020. Edward Felsenthal, the editor-in-chief and CEO of TIME, noted that although every elected president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt had at some point during their presidency been featured as Person of the Year, this was the first time that the magazine had chosen to include the vice president.”
– “Proof of Kamala’s sway shows up in moments both humdrum and significant. During the transition and after 20 January, White House communications include Kamala’s name and comments in almost every dispatch, unless it’s the text of an executive order from Biden. There’s a certain professional levelling and dignity that was missing from the Trump–Pence White House. At Biden’s first big foreign policy speech, Kamala went first, and followed that up with remarks at the Pentagon, the country’s military headquarters that has long been a male preserve.
She spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emanuel Macron in her first outreach with foreign leaders, typically the exclusive domain of the president. A couple of weeks later, she joined Biden on his first bilateral meeting with Trudeau in the Roosevelt Room. She called the director general of the World Health Organization the day after the inauguration. At least once a week, Kamala lunches with Biden, mostly Thursdays or Fridays; there’s also a weekly lunch with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Clearly, Kamala is wading deep into foreign policy, with Biden’s blessings.
All the evidence suggests Kamala will be the most consequential and powerful veep in US history.”
– “Through the lens of her children’s memories, Shyamala – whose name means ‘dark skinned’ and ‘beautiful’, in Sanskrit – was a lioness protecting and raising her cubs. Shyamala also happens to be one of the 108 names for the fierce and armed Goddess Durga, destroyer of stereotypes who leaves her flowing hair open and rides a lion. In Hindu mythology and ritual, Durga’s 108 names are associated with 108 lotuses – the flower after which Shyamala Gopalan went on to name her first born. All of five feet, Shyamala is most often seen in photographs looking on with motherly pride at famous people handing over the reins of power to daughter Kamala. She was at the heart of Kamala’s bootstrap political kickoff.”
– “Leadership at Hastings came to Kamala as easily as it did at Howard. In an interview she gave to UC Hastings’s publication, she articulated the reason she chose to pursue a legal career: ‘Lawyers have a profound ability and responsibility to be a voice for the vulnerable and the voiceless.’”
– “After she passed her bar exam, Kamala had to endure a much sterner test – making her family and friends understand why she was joining the ‘other side’. The decision to become a prosecutor for the government rather than a public defender is one she finds herself explaining to this day. Even her mother was aghast. Governments and administrations have long been seen as oppressors of the poor and minorities, and prosecutors were often viewed as blunt instruments of injustice. Why would the daughter of Berkeley radicals who had marched for civil rights decide to become a prosecutor?
Kamala’s time in Washington, DC, had opened her eyes to the possibilities of driving change by working from inside the system. She had read about and seen brave prosecutors who went after white extremists, corporate polluters and corrupt politicians. ‘I knew quite well that equal justice was an aspiration, I knew that the force of the law was applied unevenly, sometimes by design. But I also knew that what was wrong with the system didn’t need to be an immutable fact. And I wanted to be part of changing that,’ she writes. ‘When activists came marching and banging on the doors, I wanted to be on the other side to let them in.’
In the years that The Rainbow Sign thrived, it was a magnet for Black stars in culture, activism and the arts.
Kamala’s defence of her career choice, later balanced by Maya becoming a civil rights attorney (and eventually working for ACLU), won over a sceptical Shyamala. Her lab colleagues remember a bumper sticker on her car that warned: ‘Back off – my daughters are lawyers!’”
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