Interview with Hillary's Senior Advisor Maya Harris (Hillary Group) [View all]

[BootinUp]

WHEN HILLARY CLINTON NEEDS ADVICE, SHE TURNS TO MAYA HARRIS

Hillary's senior policy advisor on social justice, activism, and leaving work to go get her kid.

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At 29, Harris became one of the youngest law school deans in the country, and she did so while raising her daughter on her own. Since then, she's tackled the criminal justice system and taken politicians who've yet to realize the power of women of color at the polls to task. She's served as the former vice president of democracy, rights, and justice at the Ford Foundation and was previously an esteemed fellow at the Center for American Progress​.

You once said that your childhood dinner table was "all justice all the time," which is a nice alternative to what dominates most American families' evening conversations. How has your understanding of justice changed?

I don't know that I would say that it has changed, really. Because I think that the notion of justice and the issues and values that I understood growing up and [have] continued to embrace throughout my life and into my career have been the same. My parents met during the Civil Rights movement in the late '50s and early '60s, and much of what they were fighting for then we continue to fight for today—voting rights, policing issues. We've grappled with these issues for decades. To me, I think the core values that will help create the world that we're striving to live in are constant.

In a very candid conversation with Black Lives Matter activists earlier this year, Hillary Clinton addressed the complex relationship between politics, policy, and activism. She spoke to the fact that sometimes activism isn't enough. To see a real difference, she said that policies need to change. As someone whose parents were committed to activism, what do you make of that? What convinced you that you needed to work in politics and policy?

I went to law school because I understood what the power of the law is to make a difference in people's lives. I think throughout my life I've had an appreciation for how all of these things have to come together in order to realize and then sustain change. You need the activism. You need people who are organized and willing to bring light to injustices in society. And, on the other side, you need people who are shaping and advocating for the actual policies and structural changes that need to occur in order to address those issues. That's where the politics and the political leadership matters.

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