Hey folks, Your girl is back with new things. Happy New Year!!! I am taking a Black Lives Matter class, and myself and two other lovely ladies, Magali and Mikkala, decided to do a segment on this blog titled: She Matters. We hope to discuss issues that affect Black women in America, and give shout-outs to Black women who are making moves in America and abroad. Our first piece today is by Magali, and is a tribute to Kamal Harris.

Let me know what you think about this, I want all the comments.

SPOTLIGHT: KAMALA HARRIS by Magali Guidos

Kamala Harris was born October 20, 1964 in Oakland California. She is currently California’s attorney general and state senator. Although she is biracial, half Indian and half black, she grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood in Berkeley in the sixties. This exposed her to the civil rights movement that were happening in the area. She decided to go to Howard University and acquired a degree in political science and economics. She then returned to the Bay Area and attended Hastings College from which she earned a law degree. In 2004, Harris went on to become district attorney of San Francisco, where she worked to lower the rates of recidivism, otherwise known as ex-prisoners being re-arrested for similar crimes they had previously been convicted for. She started the program “Back on Track” which allowed low level drug offenders a chance to earn a skill instead of going to jail. She also took a stand against the SFPD when they wanted to give a cop killer the death penalty, because she believed it was unethical. In 2010, Harris became Attorney General of the State of California, taking on issues
like the mortgage crisis in which homeowners who lost their homes due to foreclosures were awarded 25 billion dollars from the banks. She also created a program “Open Justice” which is a website that provides public access to arrests, police killings, and other issues surrounding race in order to have more transparency in the police departments. In 2017, she earned a seat in the U.S. Senate. As a democrat, she is part of the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues. Because she is on the committee of Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, she is often seen challenging and critiquing Trump’s policies and appointed officials. She uses her experiences as a prosecutor to ask tough questions, even intimidating Jeff Sessions, the current Attorney General of the United States, who stated that she made him feel “nervous” when being questioned about having contacts with Russian associates during Trumps election (she smiled when he appeared flustered). Kamala Harris is a force to be reckoned with; she is willing to put herself on the line in order to fight for justice surrounding issues that affect minorities in a tense political climate where they are often overlooked. She is our “Spotlight of the Week” because she uses her power and influence to benefit those that marginalized and she embodies the fierceness that is the intersectionality of being a black woman.