Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 22, 2024. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
CHICAGO | Closing out the Democratic National Convention Aug. 22, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a rousing acceptance speech in which she laid out the case against Donald Trump and touched on a number of high-priority policy issues.
Harris began by describing her immigrant parents and their family’s middle class life in the Bay Area, detailing how a formative experience in her girlhood — helping a friend who was being sexually abused — had shaped her decision to become a prosecutor.
From the courtroom to the San Francisco district attorney’s office to the California attorney general’s office to the Senate and vice presidency, Harris detailed her journey to become her party’s presidential nominee — explaining how she was serving the people every step of the way.
“Kamala Harris for the people,” she would tell the judge each day in the courtroom, while Trump, by contrast, has only ever looked out for himself, she said.
In keeping with the theme of many speeches during the convention this week in Chicago, Harris explained how she would chart a new, brighter way forward as commander-in-chief, working to uplift Americans regardless of their differences.
“With this election, our nation has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism and divisive battles of the past,” she said. “A chance to chart a new way forward. Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.”
She repeatedly made the case against Trump, detailing how he is not only “unserious” but also dangerous — a threat to world peace, America’s democratic institutions, the rule of law, women’s rights and more.
The vice president presented another argument that had been a throughline in remarks by other primetime speakers, the “fundamental freedoms” at stake in this election and how she would protect them while Trump has vowed to take them away.
She ticked off “the freedom to live safe from gun violence — in our schools, communities and places of worship” as well as “the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride” and “the freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.”
Harris noted that the “freedom to vote” is “the freedom that unlocks all the others,” retreading some of her earlier remarks about Trump’s efforts to undermine American elections.
The vice president’s second reference to LGBTQ+ rights came with her proclamation that “America cannot truly be prosperous unless Americans are fully able to make their own decisions about their own lives, especially on matters of heart and home.”
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