Read on Twitter
As a California native the prospect of my home state Senator Kamala Harris becoming Vice President is extremely disturbing to me. Her real record may have been ignored when she was running for president but we can't afford to ignore it any longer.
Thread: (1/?)
Thread: (1/?)
In 2003, San Francisco had a progressive District Attorney named Terrence Hallinan. Halinan supported abolishing the death penalty and legal medical marijuana. Naturally, this resulted in ire from San Francisco’s right-wing establishment.
Kamala Harris ran a right-wing campaign against him in 2003 hitting him on not scoring enough felony convictions. Running against the most progressive prosecutor in America, she was supported by police organizations like the San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs Association.
Harris ran a conservative, tough-on-crime campaign where she and her surrogates attacked him for not prosecuting anti-Iraq war protesters for property damage. In Harris's words, “It is not progressive to be soft on crime" https://www.sfweekly.com/news/kamalas-karma/
Here’s an excerpt from a 2003 SF Weekly article that should give you a good idea of what this race was really about. One of the candidates was pro-incarceration and anti-police reform, and it certainly wasn’t the progressive incumbent.
Here’s a Kamala Harris mailer from her 2003 campaign against a progressive DA she criticized for being soft on crime. Words cannot even begin to describe just how offensive this is.
Here's another Kamala Harris mailer from her 2003 DA campaign hitting her progressive opponent for not convicting and imprisoning enough people.
Given she was running a tough-on-crime campaign against a progressive incumbent, it’s no surprise that she was supported by the richest people in San Francisco. Her campaign even broke financing law in 2003. https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Harris-violated-S-F-campaign-finance-law-D-A-2554388.php
The millionaires and billionaires of San Francisco were apoplectic about Hallinan not prosecuting homeless people for panhandling and the other progressive reforms he instituted. They found their candidate in the race and won.
Halinan was a progressive who ended the persecution of homeless people for panhandling and even helped progressive group Food Not Bombs distribute food to the homeless. There's a reason they hated him the way they did.
Unsurprisingly, San Francisco’s conservative establishment did not support Halinan’s attempt to end police brutality and the persecution of the homeless. They supported anti-reform candidate Kamala Harris in order to restore “law and order”.
While in office, Kamala Harris reversed most of her predecessor’s progressive reforms. She and her surrogates bragged about how much higher the city’s conviction rate was under her versus Hallinan in 2007.
“Kamala has spent her entire professional life in the trenches as a courtroom prosecutor… she has raised conviction rates in her community to the highest in 15 years”.
Of course, talking about Harris's tough-on-crime tenure as District Attorney is painting only part of the picture. We need to talk about her egregious record as California Attorney General as well.
During her tenure, Harris was "tough-on-crime" in every regard except, notably, police brutality. Harris refused to launch an independent investigation into the tragic police murder of Manuel Angel Diaz despite getting urged by thousands to do so.
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/police-shooting-prompts-angry-response-in-anaheim/1929285/
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/police-shooting-prompts-angry-response-in-anaheim/1929285/
Oh, and how can I forget about Harris's draconian truancy policies or how she literally laughed about the prospect of jailing parents over their child's truancies? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/31/kamala-harris-laughed-jailing-parents-truancy
This video is almost unwatchable but it's something that needs to be watched. Again, this is not a "progressive prosecutor". Not by any stretch of the word. https://twitter.com/i/status/1089831581030797312
Harris in 2013 equating AirBnB and Uber with - I'm not even joking - the discovery of the wheel and fire. https://twitter.com/i/status/1090331815573897221
Harris:
""By the way, I don't feel sorry for you and I'm not going to forgive you for committing a crime," she says."
(re: prosecuting first-time drug offenses) https://twitter.com/i/status/1146167180620435456
""By the way, I don't feel sorry for you and I'm not going to forgive you for committing a crime," she says."
(re: prosecuting first-time drug offenses) https://twitter.com/i/status/1146167180620435456
Of course, I haven't even brought up Harris's failure to prosecute Steven Mnuchin's bank OneWest Bank for foreclosure violations. https://populardemocracy.org/news-and-publications/kamala-harris-fails-explain-why-she-didn-t-prosecute-steven-mnuchin-s-bank
...or when she refused to probe Herbalife despite their fraudulent marketing practices. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-did-kamala-harris-let-herbalife-off-the-hook_n_5c8fab16e4b03e83bdc39a37
Worthwhile article from US News and World Report re: the criticism Harris has received from victims of sexual abuse. https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2019-06-26/victims-question-kamala-harris-record-on-clergy-abuse
Worthwhile: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/26/kamala-harris-has-complicated-history-with-wall-street.html
Harris as late as *2014* was defending her draconian truancy policy she put in place as DA. Yes, 2014, not 2004. This isn't ancient history. This is what she believes in. https://twitter.com/i/status/1090372923293138944
Kamala Harris in 2017 pledging to stand up to the United Nations because of their condemnation of illegal Israeli settlements. She boasts about sponsoring a resolution to tackle "anti-Israel bias at the United Nations". https://twitter.com/i/status/1090005545489219584
Somehow I forgot to include perhaps the single most disturbing video of Harris (and trust me, that's saying *a lot*) - In this she openly laughs at and mocks protestors for saying "build more schools, less jails". It's downright chilling: https://twitter.com/i/status/1272522866546876423
