For Kamala Harris, memories of a warrior mother guide her campaign

[DesertRat]

NEW YORK (AP) — Speaking from the Senate floor for the first time, Kamala Harris expressed gratitude for a woman on whose shoulders she said she stood. In her autobiography, Harris interspersed the well-worn details of her resume with an extended ode to the one she calls “the reason for everything.” And taking the stage to announce her presidential candidacy , she framed it as a race grounded in the compassion and values of the person she credits for her fighting spirit.

Though a decade has passed since Shyamala Gopalan died, she remains a force in her daughter’s life and her White House bid. Again and again in the campaign, those who gather around the California senator are hearing mention of the diminutive Indian immigrant the candidate calls her single greatest influence.

“She’s always told the same story,” says friend Mimi Silbert. “Kamala had one important role model, and it was her mother.”

Her mother gave her an early grounding in the civil rights movement and injected in her a duty not to complain but rather to act. And that no-nonsense demeanor on display in Senate hearings over special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and more? Onlookers can credit, or blame, Gopalan, a crusader who raised her daughter in the same mold.

https://www.apnews.com/0b55116cc42c4a80b3a34b5080e98e40

[sheshe2]

1. K. R.

warrior mother guide

I love this. Love her.

Gotta go. Late and will read tomorrow.

Thanks~

[brer cat]

2. That was a very interesting read.

Thanks for the OP, DesertRat.

[DesertRat]

5. You're welcome!

Shyamala Gopalan sounded like an a remarkable woman whose values and activism had a lasting effect on Kamala.

[DCofVA]

3. I love the expression, Warrior Mother

She fights and wins battles without guns or bombs. She fights oppression and injustice with persistent resistance.

[DesertRat]

4. I love it too. It sounds like she was a remarkable woman

Gopalan Harris defied generations of tradition by not returning to southern India after getting her doctorate, tossing aside expectations of an arranged marriage. Her daughter portrays her mother’s spirit of activism as being in her blood. Gopalan Harris’ mother took in victims of domestic abuse and educated women about contraception. Her father was active in India’s independence movement and became a diplomat. The couple spent time living in Zambia after the end of British rule there, working to settle refugees.

Joe Gray, who was Gopalan Harris’ boss after she returned from Canada to the Bay Area to work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, struggles to describe how a 5-foot-1-inch woman managed to fill a room with her commanding presence.

Gray, now a professor at Oregon Health and Science University, didn’t see Gopalan Harris as a “crusader in the workplace” but says she insisted on racial and gender equity, would make known her disapproval to an insensitive comment and was assertive in defending her work in cancer research.

Even from a distance, he’s struck by how much Harris reminds him of her.