VP-elect Kamala Harris remembers her late mother, says 'I am thinking about her and the generations of women'

DN Bureau

US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris honoured her late mother Shamala Gopalan Harris and said she reflects on the "struggle" and "determination" of women in America, including her mother, who came from India to the US at the age of 19.

US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris
US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris


Wilmington: US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on Saturday (local time) honoured her late mother Shamala Gopalan Harris and said she reflects on the "struggle" and "determination" of women in America, including her mother, who came from India to the US at the age of 19.

Addressing the nation after becoming the US-Vice Presidential elect, Harris said that she might be the first woman as the vice president but she will not be the last. She wore an all-white suit for her first speech as history-making vice-president-elect.

"When she came here from India at the age of 19, she maybe didn't quite imagine this moment," Harris said during her opening remarks. "But she believed so deeply in America where a moment like this is possible."

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"So I am thinking about her and about the generations of women, Black women, Asian, White, Latina, Native American women, who throughout our nation's history have paved the way to tonight. Women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all. Including the Black women who are often, too often overlooked but so often proven they are the backbone of our democracy," she added.

"All the women who have worked to secure and protect the right to vote for over a century, 100 years ago with the 19th Amendment. Fifty five years ago with the Voting Rights Act, and now in 2020, with a new generation of women in our country who cast their ballots and continued the fight for their fundamental right to vote and be heard," she further said.

Harris will become the US first Black and Indian-origin vice president, and first woman to hold that office.

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"What a testament it is to Joe's character that he had the audacity to break one of the most substantial barriers that exist in our country and select a woman as his vice president," Harris said of President-elect Joe Biden.

Biden has become the President-elect of the United States after victory in the battleground state of Pennsylvania which took him past the electoral college threshold of 270 votes. The Democratic presidential candidate defeated President Donald Trump in a closely contested election and will be the 46th president of the United States. He is the oldest person elected President in the history of the US.

In this, his third attempt at the White House, Biden, a four-decade Washington figure as a Senator and then a vice president, received more than 74 million votes, 4 million more than Trump, and more than any other presidential candidate. (ANI)










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