Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
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U.S. Senator Kamala Harris announced on Monday that she is running for President, joining an already-crowded field of Democrats who are making or considering bids to take on Donald Trump. “The future of our country depends on you and millions of others lifting our voices to fight for our American values. That’s why I’m running for President of the United States,” the Senator representing California said in a video posted on Twitter. Many contenders Ms. Harris made the announcement on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. “I’m honoured to be able to make my announcement on the day that we commemorate him,” Ms. Harris told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “My parents were very active in the civil rights movement and that’s the language that I grew up hearing. And it was about a belief that we are a country that was founded on noble ideals and we are the best of who we are when we fight to achieve those ideals,” she said. She joins Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, among others, in vying for the 2020 Democratic nomination. After two terms as District Attorney of San Francisco (2004-2011), she was twice elected as Attorney-General of California (2011-2017), becoming the first woman to serve as chief law enforcement officer of that populous State. Then in January 2017, she took the oath of office as California’s junior U.S. Senator, making her the first woman Senator of South Asian descent. Ms. Harris often proudly recalls that as a prosecutor she fought big banks during the 2008 financial crisis to defend families. She casts herself as a champion of middle class families “living paycheck to paycheck” and denounces police brutality and the killing of unarmed Black men. The daughter of immigrants — her father is from Jamaica and mother from India — Ms. Harris grew up in the 1960s in the progressive hotbed of Oakland, California, proud of the struggle her parents waged for civil rights. But after her parents separated when she was about five years old, it was her mother who raised her and her younger sister, Maya, who went on to become a lawyer and an adviser to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign. Nearly 22 months before the 2020 election, the battle for the White House is already firming up, as Americans begin to assess who might be the Opposition party nominee to challenge Mr. Trump for control of the White House.
