(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
What Drives Kamala Harris: The Art of the Possible [1]
['Lisa Lerer', 'Erica L. Green', 'Zolan Kanno-Youngs']
Date: 2024-08-22
In 2005, one year into her job as San Francisco district attorney, Kamala Harris was showing a new hire around the office.
Ms. Harris had recruited Lateefah Simon, a 28-year-old racial justice activist, to lead a new program aimed at keeping first-time drug offenders out of jail. As the two women walked the halls, they stopped in front of a wall lined with photographs of Ms. Harris’s predecessors — all of them white men.
“The expectation of our community is that I’m going to fix all the havoc,” Ms. Harris said, according to Ms. Simon’s recollection. “They’re going to want me to fix all the racism, all the dysfunction, in the next four years.”
But in reality, Ms. Harris said, change will happen “bit by bit.”
The comment underscored the political philosophy that has guided Ms. Harris’s style of governance for decades. It is among the more striking contradictions of Ms. Harris’s candidacy: While she would bring about historic change if elected, as the first woman, the first Asian American and the second Black person to hold the office, she is not offering sweeping change in policy. She is at heart an institutionalist, defined by a deliberate style, focused on granular impacts over broad society shifts.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/22/us/politics/kamala-harris-policy-change.html
Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/
