Lessons learned from the night’s end of Democratic National Convention
‘Central Park Five’ member: Trump ‘wanted us dead’
By Eric Bradner, Arit John, Gregory Krieg
Aug 23, 2024 05:13 AM
CNN —
Vice-President Kamala Harris has concluded what was one of the more remarkable months in the history of modern politics the night of Thursday by delivering an address that brought together Democrats on the theme of patriotism, and portrayed Donald Trump as the enemy of the classic American ideals.
“In the ongoing conflict between democracy and tyranny I am aware of where I where I am. And I am aware of which part of we are in the United States belongs,” she stated.
With the style of a courtroom prosecutor, Harris delivered on the pledge that of the many Democrats recognized in her when she announced her presidential run in the year 2005 and when Joe Biden selected her to be his running mate for 2020.
Harris was direct in her attack on her Republican opponent. Harris outlined the president’s legal problems. The former president was blamed by her for the calamities some women have endured due to the strict implementation of state-wide abortion laws. She issued a warning of what she described as “chaos and calamity when he was in office.”
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“Out of their minds”: Kamala Harris goes after Trump and the GOP on abortion
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“In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man,” she added. “But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.”
Harris has also gone into her own positions on policy especially on foreign policy. Harris said she’d like to be a president that is “realistic, practical and has common sense” -an obvious rebuttal of Trump’s efforts to portray her as liberal.
The difference of Harris’ address that she delivered in Chicago and the speech Trump delivered in the month prior to the Republican convention in Milwaukee could not be more obvious. It also set the tone for the run-up towards the election on November 5 which will feature head-to-head contests in the debates to come.
Here are eight key takeaways of the 4th and last evening of the Democratic National Convention:
Harris promises a return the normalcy of pre-Trump
Harris gave a simple message to Americans The message was simple: You don’t have to live in this way any longer.
In some instances, explicitly and included in the underlying message of her comments, Harris offered voters a complete escape from Trump time period and its gnarly instability and uncertainty.
“We are not going back,” Harris stated repeatedly, just as she and other people – like those who chanted in the United Center – have done since she was announced as the presumptive candidate. While the slogan is a critique of Trump’s policies as well as an assurance of change but it also resonates more specifically as a promise for the immediate future.
The idea is to “not go back” to just one week ago, prior to her presidential campaign taking off.
Harris The campaign has also been talking at long about “freedom,” seeking to redefine issues like reproductive rights as a matter of interference from the government.
What was at stake in the presidential election, Harris said, were “the freedom to live safe from gun violence, in our schools, communities, and places of worship; the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride; the freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis; and the freedom that unlocks all the others: The freedom to vote.”
At this time, though it was difficult not to feel the call for “freedom” from the anger and divisions that are both fundamental and personal that have shaped the last year in American life.
Harris is a personal friend
Harris has struggled for a long time to speak out about her personal experience. No longer.
Through her brief campaign, she has spoken in more detail about her mom and her growing up in middle class, as the child of immigrants, academics, as well as her path to political leadership.
In her speech on Thursday Harris discussed how her father an economist named Donald Harris, encouraged her to play freely in the playground, even though her mother warned her to be cautious. Harris told the crowd about her mother’s passing, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, biomedical scientist who hoped to beat breast cancer. She also had two daughters after her divorce. She also talked about the tense community that has helped her raise her as well as her sister, Maya.
“My mother was a brilliant, five foot tall, brown woman with an accent, and as the eldest child, I saw how the world would sometimes treat her,” Harris stated. “But my mother never lost her cool.”
The vice president didn’t specifically make a comparison between her life and Trump’s, however other speakers have pointed out a sharper distinction between her upbringing and Trump’s own life in the role of son to a property magnate.
Harris has recalled an earlier childhood event that shaped her career. When she was in high school, her classmate Wanda Kagan confided in Harris that she was sexually abused by her stepfather, Harris said that her friend should be at home with her parents.
“This is one of the reasons I became a prosecutor, to protect people like Wanda,” she added.
Allies return to Harris in Harris’ resume
Through her 2020 presidential campaign, Harris sought to escape the stigma of being an “cop” and out of line with left-wingers in criminal justice reform. As she’s attempted to make herself known to the general public as a presidential contender, she’s relied on her resume as a source of strength. Every night, she’s focused on her work against sexual assaulters, transnational gangs along with corporate evil actors.
A number old colleagues during her time in her time in the Alameda County district attorney’s office through her tenure in the position of California attorney general were on hand on Thursday night to present an argument that she acted on her work with kindness and determination.
“For Kamala, practicing law was always about protecting the vulnerable and giving the victims a voice,” said Amy Resner, a former deputy district attorney of Alameda County and a longtime acquaintance.
Lisa Madigan, the former attorney general of Illinois spoke about her work in conjunction with Harris during the economic crisis to stop families from being forced to foreclose on. Nathan Hornes, a former student at Corinthian Colleges, a defunct for-profit institution, spoke about her success in bringing charges against the school for committing fraud on students.
The most memorable testimony was from Courtney Baldwin, a youth organizer and survivor of human trafficking who recalled the way Harris was instrumental in shutting down the website used by traffickers to make it easier for her and others to undergo sexual sex.
“She’s protected people like me her whole life,” Baldwin stated.
Meet the members of the Harris family
Trump and other Republicans over the years have made a big deal of making up Harris his first name.
Thursday evening, Harris’ two young grand-daughters, Amara and Leela Ajagu and aided by actor Kerry Washington — appeared on stage to deliver the message that it’s simple for children to accomplish it.
“First you say comma, like a comma in a sentence,” Amara told me.
“Then you said la, like la, la, la, la, la,” Leela added with a singing voice.
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Kamala Harris’ grandnieces teach DNC crowd how to pronounce her name.
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A number of Harris family members were also present.
Amara as well as Leela’s mom, Harris’ niece Meena Harris Meena Harris, told the media she believes that vice-president Obama “guided me; now she’s guiding my own children.” Harris’ stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, said that when they were 14 when they first met, Harris “was patient, caring and always took me seriously.”
“She taught me that making a difference means giving your whole heart and taking action,” said Harris his goddaughter, Helena Hudlin.
Then, Maya Harris, the vice president’s daughter, spoke about their mother who passed away in 2009.
“I so wish that Mommy could be here tonight,” she stated. “I could see her smile, telling how she’s proud of Kamala. Then, without skipping an ounce, she’d tell her”That’s enough there’s still work to complete.'”
An empathetic moment from a group of people impacted by gun violence
Before Biden announced his resignation, Harris was a leading voice within the administration regarding the issue of gun control. Thursday night affirmed that when the convention focused on individual stories from those who have been affected by gun violence, from mass shootings to deaths caused by violent partners.
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Americans affected by gun violence share their stories at DNC
02:58 – Source: CNN
The method was similar to the storytelling of storytellers who told stories about abortion throughout the course of the week. With a backdrop of black participants shared their stories of loss.
In a short video, Georgia Rep. Lucy McBath told her story of having a child prior to her son’s murder in 2012. McBath has used the murder of her son as an motive for running for office, claimed that she discovered “firsthand the power of telling our stories” during the time she was working for gun control organizations like Moms Demand Action.
“You’ve just heard mine, but there are many more to tell,” she explained in her turn, before talking about mother’s who’ve lost children in the mass shootings that occurred at Sandy Hook and Uvalde schools. Sandy Hook and Uvalde school shootings and Melody McFadden the mother of whom she lost due to domestic violence as well as Edgar Vilchez, who lost his fellow classmate.
The violence-related portion of the evening ended with the former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords who was killed at a political event in the year 2011.
“I almost died, but I fought for my life, and I survived,” Giffords declared.
‘Central Park Five’ member: Trump ‘wanted us dead’
Trump has a long record of using racial hatreds to achieve political gain, including promoting “birtherism” during Barack Obama’s presidency, and also the imposition of a travel ban in United States from United States from six majority Muslim countries.
The first instance of Trump making use of this style of politics was during the “Central Park Five.”
In 1989 in 1989, five Black and Latino teens were wrongly found guilty of raping and assaulting an woman who was jogging in New york The city’s Central Park. Trump was, at the time, the day’s New York real estate developer was the one who took out and signed advertisements in the newspaper that called for the boys to be killed.
“Bring to an end the death penalty. We need to bring back the police!” the ads read in massive font.
The boys were later cleared in four cases in 2002, the final in 2022 after another man confessed the crime and DNA evidence substantiated the involvement of that man.
Then on Thursday night five of them were on the stage on stage at the DNC.
“Every day as we walked into courtroom, people screamed at us, threatened us, because of Donald Trump,” Korey Wise said.
Yusef Salaam who is now the New York City councilman, has said that Trump “wanted us dead.”
“He has never changed, and he never will,” Salaam claimed. “That man believes that hatred is the main force that drives America. It’s not the case. We are constitutionally entitled to vote. Actually, it’s an inherent human right. So let us use it.”
Gaza war-related protesters are not allowed to speak on in a specific spot by DNC
In the end “Uncommitted” delegates elected by primary protest votes in opposition to the Biden administration’s policy on Israel in the Middle East and Gaza were left out of the convention.
The leaders in the Uncommitted National Movement – who all claimed to be determined to vote for Harris and have publicly called for Harris to get an Palestinian American address Democrats inside the United Center.
On the night of Wednesday, organizers received confirmation from the convention’s organizers that, as an uncommitted spokesperson told them their campaign “says the answer is no.”
The protesters reacted by launching protests outside the convention. It lasted for around 24 hours, and attracted a number of progressive lawmakers as well as anti-war activists. But, despite a flurry of backing from groups like organizations like the United Auto Workers and other influential organizations, Democrats stood by their decision.
Abbas Alawieh, an Uncommitted co-founder of the company, said it was an unwise move that will make it harder to get back voters from states that swing like Michigan.
“I feel bad for (the DNC and Harris campaign) because they’re out of step with the majority of the Democratic base,” Alawieh declared. “The majority of Democratic voters believe that Palestinian human rights are a priority alongside every other priority we have.”
Harris herself was not apathetic about the issue. She pledged support and defend Israel she condemned the atrocities committed by Hamas the attacks of October 7 and stated it was the intention of her administration to ensure an end-to-end peace in the region.
“At the same time,” she added, “what has happened in Gaza in the last 10 months has been devastating. There have been so many innocent lives lost. People in desperate need of food seeking refuge over and over. The magnitude of the suffering is heartbreaking.”
Celebrities leave their marks
What are the indicators of the speed of change? Political observers use the terms the size of crowds, donations and voter registration, however this convention provided a more regularity event: appearances by celebrities.
The DNC has witnessed a number of celebrities this week, ranging from the surprise performance of Lil Jon at the roll call with stars to Oprah Winfrey’s speech on Wednesday night. Celebrities like Mindy Kaling and Tony Goldwyn were hosts on various evenings of the convention and progressive country stars like Mickey Guyton, Maren Morris and Jason Isbell performed throughout the week.
Stevie Wonder performed “Higher Ground” and John Legend paid tribute to Prince – the governor of Gov. Tim Walz’s home state, Minnesota along with his performance team Sheila E. Pink performed “What About Us” on the last night that was hosted by “Scandal” star Washington.
Only the organizers of the convention have the information on who was invited following Harris became the candidate however it’s evident that her ascent coincided with a surge of energy, which was evident in the program.
Then there was the issue of whether Beyonce was going to perform. The hit single “Freedom” has become the main theme of Harris’ campaign, and also the soundtrack for a couple of video advertisements for Harris. There was speculation throughout the week about whether Beyonce was likely to be a guest as well as several sources who are close to the convention’s planners claimed they believed that she’d be there. On Thursday, however the team of the singer was recorded.
“She was never scheduled to be in Chicago,” the rep for the singer’s agent stated to CNN.