For Harris, memories of mother guide bid for vice president

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

Though more than a dece has passed since Shyamala Gopalan died, she remains a force in her daughter’s life as she takes a historic spot on Democratic ticket besides former Vice President Joe Biden. Those who kw California senator expect her campaign for vice presidency to bring repeated mentions of woman she calls her single greatest influence.

“She’s always told same story,” said friend Mimi Silbert. “Kamala h one important role model, and it was her mor.”

Her mor gave her an early grounding in civil rights movement and injected in her a duty t to complain but rar to act. And that -nsense demear on display in Senate hearings over special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, Supreme Court minee Brett Kavanaugh and more? Onlookers can credit, or blame, Gopalan, a cruser who raised her daughter in same mold.

“She’d tell us: ‘Don’t sit around and complain about things. Do something.' So I did something," Harris said Wednesday in her first appearance with Biden as his running mate.

Harris’ parents met as doctoral students at University of California, Berkeley, at dawn of 1960s. Her far, a Jamaican named Donald Harris, came to study ecomics. Her mor studied nutrition and endocrilogy.

For two freethinking young people drawn to activism, y landed on campus from opposite sides of world just as protests exploded around civil rights, Vietnam War and voting rights. ir paths crossed in those movements, and y fell in love.

At heart of ir activism was a small group of students who met every Sunday to discuss books of Black authors and grassroots activity around world, from anti-aparid Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa to liberation movements in Latin America to Black separatist preaching of Malcolm X in U.S.

A member of group, Aubrey Labrie, said weekly garing was one in which figures such as Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro were mired, and would later provide some inspiration to founders of Black Panr Party. Gopalan was only one in group who wasn’t Black, but she immersed herself in issues, Labrie said. She and Harris wowed him with ir intellect.

“I was in awe of kwledge that y seemed to demonstrate,” said Labrie, who grew so close to family that senator calls him “Uncle Aubrey.”

couple married, and Gopalan Harris gave birth to Kamala and n Maya two years later. Even with young children, duo continued ir vocacy.

As a little girl, Harris says she remembers an energetic sea of moving legs and cacophony of chants as her parents me ir way to marches. She writes of her parents being sprayed with police hoses, confronted by Hells Angels and once, with future senator in a stroller, forced to run to safety when violence broke out.

Sharon McGaffie, a family friend whose mor, Regina Shelton, was a caregiver for girls, remembers Gopalan Harris speaking to her daughters as if y were ults and exposing m to worlds often walled off to children, wher a civil rights march or a visit to mom’s laboratory or a seminar where mor was delivering a speech.

“She would take girls and y would pull out ir little backpacks and y would be in that environment,” said McGaffie.

A few years into marri, Harris’ parents divorced. senator gives pain of parting only a few words in her biography. Those who are close to her describe her childhood as happy, smells of her mor’s cooking filling kitchen and sound of constant chatter and laughter buffeting air.

mor’s influence on her girls grew even greater, and those who kw Harris say y see it reflected throughout her life.

“You can’t kw who @KamalaHarris is without kwing who our mor was,” her sister Maya tweeted Tuesday after Biden anunced his pick. “Missing her terribly, but kw she and ancestors are smiling today.”

As a kindergartner, Stacey Johnson-Batiste remembers Harris coming to her aid when a classroom bully grabbed her craft project and threw it to floor, which brought retaliation from boy. He hit future politician in he with something that caused eugh bleeding to necessitate a hospital visit, cementing for Johnson-Batiste a lifelong friendship with Harris and a view of her as a woman who embodies ethics of her mor.

“Even back n,” Johnson-Batiste said, “she has always stood up for what she thought was right.”

As a teenr, after her mor got a job that prompted a family move to Montreal, Harris began seeing how she could achieve change in ways small and large. Outside her family’s apartment, she and her sister protested a prohibition against soccer on building’s lawn, which Harris said resulted in rule being overturned. As high school wound down, she homed in on a career goal of being a lawyer.

Sophie Maxwell, a former member of San Francisco Board of Supervisors, said Harris wasn’t choosing to eschew activism but rar to incorporate it into a life in law: “Those two things go hand in hand.”

In college, at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Shelley Young Thompkins recalls a classmate who was certain of what she wanted to do in life, who was serious about her studies and who put off fun of joining a sorority until her final year even as she me time for sit-ins and protests. Thompkins and Harris both won student council posts.

In her new friend, Young Thompkins saw a young woman intent on t squandering all that her mor h worked to give her.

“We were se two freshmen girls who want to save world,” she said.

From re, Harris’ story is much better kwn: a return to California for law school; a failed first attempt at bar; jobs in prosecutor’s offices in Oakland and San Francisco; a brazen and successful run at unseating her former boss as district attorney; election as state attorney general and U.S. senator; and a run for president that launched with fanfare but dissolved before first votes were cast.

Each step of way, friends point to influence of Gopalan Harris as a constant.

Andrea Dew Steele remembers it being apparent from moment y sat down to craft very first flyer for Harris’ first campaign for public office.

“She always talked about her mor,” Dew Steele said. “When she was alive she was a force, and since she’s passed away she’s still a force.”

Dew Steele remembers when she finally met Gopalan Harris at a campaign event. It immediately struck her: “Oh, this is where Kamala gets it from.”

As much as mor and daughter shared, Gopalan Harris believed world would see m differently. Those who knew her say she was dismayed by racial inequality in U.S. Understanding her girls would be seen as Black despite ir mixed herit, she surrounded m with Black role models and immersed m in Black culture. y sang in children’s choir at a Black church and regularly visited Rainbow Sign, a former Berkeley funeral home that was transformed into a vibrant Black cultural center.

Though senator talks of attending anti-aparid protests in college and frames her life story as being in same mold as her mor, she opted to pursue change by seeking a seat at table.

“I knew part of making change was what I’d seen all my life, surrounded by ults shouting and marching and demanding justice from outside. But I also knew re was an important role on inside,” she wrote in “ Truths We Hold.”

To launch her political career, Harris h to unseat a man of her mor’s generation — a liberal prosecutor who was product of a left-wing family, who was active in civil rights movement and who became a hero to or activists whom he defended in court. To win, Harris ran as a tougher-on-crime alternative.

Once in office, bound by parameters of law and realities of politics, Harris’ choices stirred some to dismiss her claims of progressivism even as many ors fiercely defend her. She frames her philosophy in example of her mor — concentrating on overarching goals through smaller daily steps.

“She wasn’t fixated on that distant dream. She focused on work right in front of her,” senator wrote.

Gopalan Harris defied generations of trition by t returning to sourn India after getting her doctorate, tossing aside expectations of an arranged marri. Her daughter portrays her mor’s spirit of activism as being in her blood. Gopalan Harris’ mor took in victims of domestic abuse and educated women about contraception. Her far was active in India’s independence movement and became a diplomat. couple spent time living in Zambia after end of British rule re, working to settle refugees.

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

Gray, w a professor at Oregon Health and Science University, didn’t see Gopalan Harris as a “cruser in workplace” but said she insisted on racial and equity, would make kwn 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.

“I just get TV persona, but a lot of Shyamala’s directness and sense of social justice, those seem to come through,” he said. “I sense same spirit.”

Lateefah Simon sensed it, too. She was a high school dropout-turned-MacArthur fellow Harris hired to join San Francisco DA’s office to he a program for first-time offenders. Simon was skeptical of taking a role in a criminal justice system she saw as broken and biased, but Harris impressed her, and soon she h a glimpse of her mor as well.

At campaign events, Simon would watch Gopalan Harris, always in front row, always beaming with pride. She saw how both mor and daughter were meticulous about tiny details, how y were hard workers but maintained a sense of joy in labors, how ir laugh would echo in room.

One time, Simon said Gopalan Harris sent her away from a fundraiser because she was wearing tennis shoes, gently reminding her, “We always show up excellent.”

Years later, she heard echoes of same mess when Harris took a break from her Senate race to support her run for a seat on Bay Area Rapid Transit District board. Descending from her campaign bus, Harris was quick with some words of vice for her friend: “Girl, clean your glasses.”

“It’s her saying, ‘I believe in you and I want people to see what I see in you,‘” Simon said. Remembering her brush with senator’s mor, Simon said, “If I got that from Shyamala just in that one moment, can you imagine many jewels Kamala got from her growing up?”

It’s an influence that far outweighed that of Harris’ far. He and her mor separated when she was 5 before ultimately divorcing. She writes of seeing him on weekends and over summers after he became a professor at Stanford University.

In a piece he wrote for Jamaica Global website, Harris said he never gave up his love for his daughters, and senator trumpeted her far as a superhero in her children’s book. But iciness of ir relationship was on display last year when she jokingly linked her use of marijuana to her Jamaican herit. Her far labeled comment a “travesty” and a shameful soiling of family reputation “in pursuit of identity politics.”

senator is curt in responding to questions about him, saying y have “off and on” contact. Labrie said though far attended his daughter’s Senate swearing-in, he wasn’t at her campaign kickoff. He thinks marijuana hubbub worsened ir relationship. “I think that was straw that really broke camel’s back,” he said.

singularity of her mor’s role in her life me her death even harder for Harris. Gopalan Harris relished roles in her daughter’s early campaigns but was gone before seeing her vance beyond a local office. senator says she still thinks of her constantly.

“It can still get me choked up,” she said in an interview last year. “It doesn’t matter how many years have passed.”

senator still uses pots and wooden spoons from her mor and thinks of her when she is back home and able to cook. Her mor’s amethyst ring sparkles from her hand. She finds herself asking her mor for vice or remembering one of her oft-repeated lines.

“I dearly wish she were here with us this week," Harris tweeted Thursday.

She pictures pride her mor wore as she stood beside her when she was sworn in as district attorney. She remembers worrying about staying composed as she uttered her mor’s name in her inaugural dress as attorney general. She thinks of her mor asking a hospice nurse if her daughters would be OK as cancer drew her final day closer.

“re is title or hor on earth I’ll treasure more than to say I am Shyamala Gopalan Harris’ daughter,” she wrote. “That is truth I hold dearest of all.”