Rating: ****
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Political, Political Science, American Government, National, Historical, General, Lang:en
Summary
A New York Times bestseller From one of America's most inspiring political leaders, a
book about the core truths that unite us, and the long
struggle to discern what those truths are and how best to act
upon them, in her own life and across the life of our
country.** Senator Kamala Harris's commitment to speaking truth is
informed by her upbringing. The daughter of immigrants, she
was raised in an Oakland, California community that cared
deeply about social justice; her parents--an esteemed
economist from Jamaica and an admired cancer researcher from
India--met as activists in the civil rights movement when
they were graduate students at Berkeley. Growing up, Harris
herself never hid her passion for justice, and when she
became a prosecutor out of law school, a deputy district
attorney, she quickly established herself as one of the most
innovative change agents in American law enforcement. She
progressed rapidly to become the elected District Attorney
for San Francisco, and then the chief law enforcement officer
of the state of California as a whole. Known for bringing a
voice to the voiceless, she took on the big banks during the
foreclosure crisis, winning a historic settlement for
California's working families. Her hallmarks were applying a
holistic, data-driven approach to many of California's
thorniest issues, always eschewing stale "tough on crime"
rhetoric as presenting a series of false choices. Neither
"tough" nor "soft" but
smart on crime became her mantra. Being smart means
learning the truths that can make us better as a community,
and supporting those truths with all our might. That has been
the pole star that guided Harris to a transformational career
as the top law enforcement official in California, and it is
guiding her now as a transformational United States Senator,
grappling with an array of complex issues that affect her
state, our country, and the world, from health care and the
new economy to immigration, national security, the opioid
crisis, and accelerating inequality. By reckoning with the big challenges we face together,
drawing on the hard-won wisdom and insight from her own
career and the work of those who have most inspired her,
Kamala Harris offers in THE TRUTHS WE HOLD a master class in
problem solving, in crisis management, and leadership in
challenging times. Through the arc of her own life, on into
the great work of our day, she communicates a vision of
shared struggle, shared purpose, and shared values. In a book
rich in many home truths, not least is that a relatively
small number of people work very hard to convince a great
many of us that we have less in common than we actually do,
but it falls to us to look past them and get on with the good
work of living our common truth. When we do, our shared
effort will continue to sustain us and this great nation, now
and in the years to come. **
Kamala D. Harris is a lifelong public safety
and civil rights leader, and is currently serving as a U.S.
Senator from California. She began her career in the Alameda
County District Attorney's Office, then was elected District
Attorney of San Francisco. As California's Attorney General,
Kamala prosecuted transnational gangs, big banks, Big Oil,
for-profit colleges and fought against attacks on the
Affordable Care Act. Harris also fought to reduce elementary
school truancy and pioneered the nation's first open data
initiative to expose racial disparities in the criminal
justice system and implemented implicit bias training for
police officers. The second black woman ever elected to the
U.S. Senate, Kamala has worked to reform our criminal justice
system, raise the minimum wage, make higher education
tuition-free for the majority of Americans, and protect the
legal rights of refugees and immigrants. About the Author