What Kamala Harris’ Candidacy Means
After weeks of internal and external pressure, on Sunday President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, for the Democratic Party nomination. Harris quickly received more than enough pledges from delegates to become the likely nominee at the Democratic National Convention in August. Her campaign announced it raised a record-breaking $100 million in donations in just days.
In 2020, Harris became the first woman and the first woman of color to ever be vice president. If elected this November, her presidency would be equally groundbreaking on the issue of demographic representation.
Aimee Allison, founder and president of She the People, a national organization building the political power of women of color, spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about Harris as presidential nominee.
Sonali Kolhatkar
joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.
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