Former Vice President Kamala Harris, before a theater full of supporters in Los Angeles, struck a tone of both defiance and hope, saying that although the present time may appear bleak for those gathered, it’s important to continue fighting for a better America.
“Our spirit cannot be defeated with an election or by an individual or a circumstance. ‘Cause then they’re winning,” Harris said during an appearance at The Wiltern theater on Monday night, Sept. 29.
“The fight does take a while, and we’re in it and we can’t walk away from it,” she continued, adding, “Know times like this require us to fight fire with fire.”
The Los Angeles event was the third stop in her multi-city tour to promote her book, “107 Days,” which was released last week. The title references the length of her unsuccessful presidential campaign last year after then-President Joe Biden ended his bid for reelection.
Monday’s sold-out event, dubbed “A Conversation with Kamala Harris,” was moderated by Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan, hosts of the podcast “I’ve Had It.”
Harris shared with the Southern California audience an experience that at least some likely could relate to: the uncertainty of the January wildfires that swept through greater Los Angeles.
Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, were in the midst of packing up their belongings to prepare for the move from Washington, D.C., back to California in January, at the end of her term as vice president, when the wildfires broke out.
For a while, Harris recounted, she and Emhoff weren’t sure if they would be able to return home to Brentwood as planned since their neighborhood had been under evacuation orders.
“We actually had a mandatory evacuation of our home. And the evacuation didn’t lift until the 19th (of January). And we were supposed to come back to L.A. on the 20th, so we didn’t actually know if we had a house to come back to,” Harris said.
Once home, Harris said, the days were spent “physically and metaphorically unpacking” — unpacking boxes of items she and Emhoff had brought back from D.C., but also, Harris said, truly reflecting for the first time on what happened during the presidential campaign.
One thing she came to realize, Harris said, was that Democrats need to campaign not just on longer-term goals, such as addressing climate change, but they also must focus on the immediate needs of Americans.
For example, she said she would have carried out Biden’s proposed “Build Back Better” agenda differently by first rolling out components related to affordable child care, paid leave and extension of a child tax credit to provide immediate relief to families who are barely getting by.
Harris also offered a piece of advice to political pundits: Stop musing about which one individual or message will save America.
“Enough with the savior complex. … There’s not going to be a Messiah coming to save us,” Harris said.
“We’ve got a lot of stars in the (Democratic) Party, and this whole circular conversation — ‘Who is the one? What is the one message?’ — is so unproductive when we have a lot of work to do. … I’m kind of getting bored with that conversation,” she added.
Unlike her first tour stop last week in New York City, where pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted her talk, Monday’s event was absent such interruptions.
Instead, the few times that members of the audience yelled out, they shouted lines like, “Madame President,” and, at the end of the evening, chanted “MVP! MVP!”
Harris also didn’t shy away from criticizing her recent political rival, President Donald Trump. During the roughly hour-long conversation, the former vice president urged the public to “stay engaged.”
From mass deportations and attempts to cut health care and the federal Department of Education, to attempts to keep journalists from reporting the truth, Harris said Americans cannot normalize the actions of Trump or his administration.
Harris said she predicted most of what has occurred since Trump resumed office in January. However, she said, she did not anticipate the “capitulation” by some universities, law firms and media companies, which she felt had given in to the president’s demands.
“I always believed that if push came to shove, the titans of industry would be among the guardians of our democracy. And I have been deeply disappointed,” she said.
The White House did not respond to a request seeking comment in response to Harris’ remarks.
If any attendees of Monday’s event had hoped to hear Harris share her plans for the future — including whether she intends to run for president again — they left without any firm answers.
The former vice president, who in July announced she would not mount a bid to become California’s next governor, did not offer specifics about her future plans.
For now, Harris, who will turn 61 on Oct. 20, has 15 more speaking engagements lined up to promote her book, including stops in Houston and San Francisco this weekend. She’s scheduled to speak again at The Wiltern in Los Angeles on Oct. 28.
As of Monday, nearly all of the events, including the L.A. stop in October, were listed on the book’s website as sold out.
This story has been updated to include more about the event.
