Presidential Candidate Joe Biden revealed on Tuesday afternoon that he had chosen California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate for Vice President. This announcement sparked an outpouring of responses - many hailed Harris as a favorable choice given her experience as a U.S. senator, having already been put through the media wringer as a former presidential candidate, and being the first woman of color ever to be a part of a major party’s presidential ticket. Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, is Black and Asian-American.
But contrary to the Democratic establishment’s promotion of Harris's vice presidential candidacy, a substantial cohort of progressives and liberals greeted the news with critiques of her career, both as a prosecutor and lawmaking Senator. From denying affirming healthcare to a trans inmate to barring forums sex workers used to protect themselves, the former “top cop” has a concerning record of endangering the American community’s most marginalized members.
The History
Many queer voters have historically viewed 2012, when Obama publicly stated his support for marriage equality, as a turning point. Supporting marriage equality has been used to gauge a candidate’s true commitment to LGBTQ+ rights: Candidates who came out in favor of the issue before 2012 largely passed the test, and candidates who backed equal marriage after just did it for political points.
For Kamala Harris, that has left a lot of room for bragging rights. With roughly two dozen major contenders for the 2020 Democratic presidential ticket, Harris stood out as the candidate who could boast the earliest explicit on-record support for marriage equality (yes, Bernie Sanders backed LGBTQ+ rights in the 1970s; but he did not come out for marriage equality until 2009, favoring civil unions first).
In 2008, when California’s Supreme Court overturned the state’s LGBTQ+ marriage ban, Harris again officiated queer weddings. She helped create “an LGBTQ hate crimes unit” while district attorney of San Francisco.
When she was California’s attorney general, she battled the “panic defense,” a legal strategy in which a person claims that anti-LGBTQ+ violence or murder is justified because the victim made sexual advances toward the perpetrator. In 2011, she backed marriage equality by petitioning to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to repeal Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage. Standing as a senator, Harris also introduced legislation to ensure and protect LGBTQ+ Americans from discrimination. In 2018, she introduced the Do No Harm Act to prevent the use of religious beliefs to be used as a means to discriminate against the community.
Harris has often been vocal against Trump, condemning the President’s removal of LGBTQ+ health-related information across federal websites. She signed a letter to President Trump condemning the administration’s removal of LGBTQ+ health-related information from federal websites, and announced her support for the Equality Act and for allowing transgender people equal access public accommodations, including to restrooms that match their gender identity.
Harris positioned herself as the original “progressive prosecutor.” Harris argues that she’s fought to reverse incarceration, scale back the war on drugs, and address racial disparities in the criminal justice system. But as she has become a prominent political figure, those more familiar with her criminal justice record, particularly on the left, have voiced their skepticism.
The Opinions
A lot has changed since 2012. A queer electorate that might have held up Harris as its champion eight years ago largely greeted her in 2020 with mixed emotions. At issue is her history as a prosecutor, a string of missteps on trans issues and recent support for bills cracking down on sex work.
In 2015, as California attorney general, Harris argued, on behalf of the state, to withhold gender reassignment surgery from two transgender inmates who were prescribed the procedure while serving out their sentences.
A closer examination of Harris’s record shows it’s filled with contradictions. She pushed for programs that helped people find jobs instead of putting them in prison, but also fought to keep people in prison even after they were proved innocent. She refused to pursue the death penalty against a man who killed a police officer, but also defended California’s death penalty system in court. She implemented training programs to address police officers’ racial biases, but also resisted calls to get her office to investigate certain police shootings. Harris also failed to hold police and prosecutors accountable for misconduct. Her lack of meaningful oversight has contributed to a crisis of legitimacy that continues to upend the county’s criminal justice system.
It reflects a view embraced by many progressives in the criminal justice reform movement: that the US puts far too many people — particularly people of color — in prison, typically for way too long, and without doing enough to fight the “root causes” of crime.
Harris also pushed for more systemic reforms. Her most successful program as district attorney, “Back on Track,” allowed first-time drug offenders, including drug dealers, to get a high school diploma and a job instead of prison time.
Harris also voted for the First Step Act, the most significant federal criminal justice reform bill to get through Congress in decades. She signed on to Booker’s marijuana legalization bill, introduced her own bill to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, and voted to legalize hemp.
Biden and Kamla represent a lukewarm option for many young progressive LGBTQ+ voters. Many are no longer captivated by Biden’s 2012 support for marriage equality, which has been the law of the land for five years now. This year is expected to be the deadliest on record for transgender people, and trans women interrupted this year’s forums demanding that candidates address the epidemic of violence facing their communities.
The Conclusion
Earlier in the year, at a CNN town hall in April, Harris was recounting her history working in the LGBTQ+ community. She drew attention to her work outlawing “panic defenses.”
“You’ll remember the tragic cases involving transgender men who were killed,” Harris said. There was just one problem. Transgender murders victims are overwhelmingly transgender women.
That said, Joe Biden’s lengthy LGBTQ+ policy platform includes “requiring gender identity be considered when making housing assignments” and ensuring “all transgender inmates in federal correctional facilities have access to appropriate doctors and medical care — including OBGYNs and hormone therapy.”
The most important aspect lies here: Donald Trump ran a presidency full of hate, greed, xenophobia, misogyny and racism. He has largely presented himself as an incompetant president, one whose key policies have caused massive suffering and death. Trump’s rise to power is, in many ways, the logical product of the U.S. as a failed state. No one should minimize the dangers of Trump remaining in office. And his reign will hit the most vulnerable the hardest, much like the coronavirus, and the terrors will ricochet for many years to come.
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