Sen. Kamala Harris spoke at Shaw University in North Carolina and encouraged civic engagement at an event with Black female voters
Sen. Kamala Harris was in North Carolina today, campaigning at two critical events as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee shores up support in the Black community.
Harris spoke at Shaw University in Raleigh, one of the state’s historically Black colleges and universities. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, which the late Rep. John Lewis once led, was founded 60 years ago at Shaw. Harris, a graduate of Howard University, one of the nation’s most prominent HBCU’s, hailed the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as “a giant, not only of the court, but of American life.”
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The vice presidential hopeful encouraged voting as she stood at Estey Hall, the nation’s first university building made to educate Black women in America.
“Vote as if your life, your choice, depends on it because it does,” Harris said.
Harris declared that healthcare would be gutted with Judge Amy Coney Barrett as a replacement for Ginsburg on the High Court.
“Getting rid of the Affordable Care Act will take us backward to a time where you could charge a woman more for her health care than you can charge a man just because she’s a woman. Getting rid of the Affordable Care Act will take us backward to a time when pregnancy could be considered a pre-existing condition,” said Harris. “This relentless obsession with over turning the Affordable Care Act is driven entirely by a blind rage toward President Obama.”
Harris then met with Black voters for a “Sister to Sister Meets Shop Talk” roundtable after her address. She insisted accountability and consequence would be prominent in a Biden administration.
“I have said many times and in many situations, America has yet to value the sanctity of Black life and has yet to treat Black life as fully human,” she said.
She encouraged those listening to “honor the ancestors and vote,” and that there was power in the Black vote. Harris also referenced how Black voters were targeted with “surgical precision” in 2013 when North Carolina instituted a strict voter ID law enacted which was struck down in 2016.
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“They know when we vote, things change. They know when we vote, things get better and they’re scared of that.”
Watch the appearance below.
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