Kamala D. Harris is a lifelong public safety and civil rights leader, and is currently serving as a U.S. Senator from California. Her new book is The Truths We Hold: An American Journey.From her interview with Wei Tchou for The Cut:
You wrestle with the idea of power and how people who are in power help people who are disadvantaged by the system. How do you think about power as somebody who has had a lot of it?--Marshal Zeringue
I mean here’s the thing. First of all, my first and my entire career was as a prosecutor. Until I came to the United States Senate. And at a very young age in my life and my career I spoke these words, which I write about in the book, but it was part of my identity which I would declare every time I walked into the courtroom: “Kamala Harris for the people.” And I took it very seriously.
So the concept there, and how I wrote about it in the book, is that “for the people,” not “for the victim” alone, but “for the people” because our system of justice was designed with an understanding that a harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us. And I feel very strongly about that in terms of how we should proceed and then think of and handle any one of us being harmed. We should proceed and think of this as a harm against all of us.
And if you study our system of justice, that’s a value that was a founding principle of our justice system and therefore who we are as a country. And so I’ve used my positions to...[read on]