On Fighting for Justice:
All the Smoke: “So, to the people who say, ‘Why are we still marching in 2024 when it’s common sense what people need?’, what do you say to that?”
Vice President Harris: “[My parents] also taught me this: Don’t fall asleep on that stuff. Don’t fall asleep on it. Don’t sit back and get comfortable, like ‘Oh, that’s done.’ You know, there’s this old saying, it’s Coretta Scott King. She said – I paraphrase all the time – ‘the fight for civil rights,’ which she meant the fight for justice, the fight for equality, ‘must be fought and won in each generation.’ And I think what she meant is, one, understand whatever gains we make may not be permanent. And two, therefore, you must be vigilant; you gotta stay on top of it.”
On Running a Historic Campaign:
All the Smoke: “As someone who has broke a ton of barriers throughout your journey, and your journey has continued to elevate, what does it mean to you to be the first woman president and the first Black woman president?”
Vice President Harris: “Well, not there yet. Knock wood. My mother had many sayings, and one of them, she would say to me, ‘Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, make sure you’re not the last.’ And I take that so very seriously. I have had the good fortune to mentor a lot of people along the way. Including to this day. For me it’s about one, understanding the shoulders I stand on, we talked about Shirley Chisholm and so many people who are alive who have mentored me and held me up. And I just feel so strongly that, you know, each one, pull one. You’ve got to leave that door open more than it was when you walked in. And, that’s what it means to me. I feel a great sense of responsibility. I mean, you talk about your daughter, and what she’s doing at school, I look at our sons. I mean, I feel a sense of responsibility to hopefully remind them that you should never hear ‘no,’ you should never hear ‘nobody like you has done that before,’ or ‘it’s not your time,’ or ‘they’re not ready.’ Don’t hear that, don’t hear that, I eat no for breakfast. That’s my saying. I eat ‘no’ for breakfast.”
All the Smoke: “You’ve got to see it to believe it.”
On Creating an Opportunity Economy:
All the Smoke: “Economy. Small business, Black business. We actually just started our business in January. So, you know, we’ve grown from a show to a whole entire company. What is, kind of, your economic plan moving forward for people who are living paycheck to paycheck, struggling for groceries and rent, and homeowners?
Vice President Harris: “So, look, I grew up – so my sister and I were raised by our mother. We lived for a long time in an apartment on top of a childcare center. That childcare center was actually owned by a woman who lived two doors down from us, Mrs. Shelton, who was, by all of our accounts and feelings, our second mother. She helped raise us. And, so she was a small business owner. So I’ll start with small business, and congratulations on what you guys have done.
“I, from a child, knew who our small business owners are, right? I mean, you’re business leaders, but you’re also civic leaders. You take seriously your voice, and how you can mentor, how you can grow communities, and the sense of communities. I love our small businesses. And so a lot of my work, in terms of building and growing the economy, has focused on small businesses. And my vision overall is we need to build an opportunity economy in which we increase opportunity for all, including small business owners. So, a lot of my work even in the Senate was about increasing access to capital through our small businesses and, in particular, for our community banks. So, I’ve been responsible for billions of dollars more now going into our community banks, because they’re in the community and then they know who’s in the community and where the talent is and who’s doing good in the community, what the community wants. And so, part of my plan as president is to give small businesses, startups, a tax deduction of $50,000 to start up. Because right now the tax deduction is $5,000–”
All the Smoke: “Can’t do nothing with that.”
Vice President Harris: “That’s exactly right. And see, the thing we know is that most our small businesses – our entrepreneurs who want to start a small business, got a great idea, have an incredible work ethic, but, you know, they weren’t handed a bunch of money on a silver tray. And they just need to get their foot in the door. So there’s that. There is what I need to do, and what we need to do around making housing and rent more affordable. Part of the problem there is we have a housing supply shortage. My plan includes giving tax incentives for home builders to build three million more homes by the end of my first term to increase supply and bring down cost. And to increase home ownership, a $25,000 down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers. Because, again, people just need to get their foot in the door.”
All the Smoke: “They’ll grind after that.”
Vice President Harris: “That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And we know home ownership, especially for the community, that’s the fastest, most effective, and most sure ways to build intergenerational wealth. It’s then when your child says ‘I want to go to an HBCU or some other college,’ and you say, ‘well honey, you don’t have to take out a student loan, I’m going to take some equity out of the house.’ Or your child says ‘I want to start a small business,’ and you can say, ‘let me take some equity out and help you.’ … It’s about intergenerational wealth, because see, here’s how I feel about the economy and the economy I want to grow. We have, over the last four years, reduced Black unemployment to the lowest it has been in decades, okay? That is an accomplishment. However, we – I – believe, need to measure our success not just only about everybody’s working, but can you build wealth? … Can you start saving? Can you buy a home? Can you start saving to take your family on vacation from time to time? Can you save enough so that Christmas time for you and your children is not stressful, but something enjoyable, right? And so, it’s about, yes, we’ve got to make sure that we have high employment, but also that we create opportunities for people to build wealth.
“Part of my plan is also to expand the child tax credit. $6,000 in the first year of your child’s life.”
“Because, you know what that means? First, that’s such a critical stage of a child’s development, and it’s expensive. A family’s got to buy a car seat, a crib, the clothes … because I start from the perspective that the vast majority of parents want to raise their kids well, they love their children, but don’t necessarily have the resources they need. And if we understand that the children of a community are the children of the community, we’ll understand that an investment in something like the first year of a child’s life benefits all of us. But these are things about building what I call an opportunity economy, which is about helping people not just to get by but to get ahead …
“Most people have ambition, they have aspirations, they have dreams, and they are willing to work hard. And if we give people the opportunity to actually meet those goals, they jump for it every time. But not everybody starts out from the same place in terms of having the opportunity to just get in there. And so, my plans, whether it be $25,000 down payment assistance, whether it be a $6,000 child tax credit, or helping people in terms of what they need to do to be able to start a small business with a bigger tax dedication, the reason I’m saying all that is because when those folks are successful, we are all successful and we actually strengthen the economy overall. When the middle class is strong in America, America’s economy is strong. And it’s a better country for all of us.”
On HBCUs
All the Smoke: “HBCUs are such a big thing now and I feel like, when things get trendy, they become, you know, everybody wants to talk about it and be a part of it. You were someone who went to an HBCU. As an athlete, I’m just like ‘it’s a great idea’ and I wish it was more cooler when I was coming up. But at the same time I don’t think the facilities could have held us.”
Vice President Harris: “So, the history of our HBCUs is a phenomenal history, which again was born out of struggle and people sitting around saying ‘we’re not going to wait for other people,’ right? So, there were a collection of people that were white and Black and of many different backgrounds, who understood that young, Black, bright people were not having equal access to top levels of education. And so, in a nutshell, that’s how our HBCUs got formed. I attended Howard University, which is one of the oldest. And it built up over the years with its purpose and mission being to create national and international leaders. It had a reputation of doing that cause it did that.
“But, over the years, we also know that our students, HBCU students, don’t necessarily, frankly, make the same kind of incomes that people who go to predominantly white institutions do, don’t start out on the same base. So even if they are, they’re also taking care of their parents, they’re also taking care of their younger siblings, and don’t necessarily have the extra to be able to build – for the school – the endowment, which alumni give to that ends up funding things like a first-class program, be it athletic, or scientific, or something else. So a lot of my work, especially in the Senate and now as Vice President, has been to increase federal funding to HBCUs. Because again, I know they are centers of academic excellence, they are centers of academic excellence, but don’t necessarily have the same kind of resources. And so far, we’ve given now, under our administration, as I’ve been vice president, 16 billion more dollars to our HBCUs. When I was senator, I was responsible for helping to get billions into upgrading literally the physical structure because they’re old. And I think, increasingly, to your point, more people are understanding – it’s like, we maybe skipped an era but we’re getting back to a place of more people understanding hat our HBCUs do and giving more support financially to them. But, we have to. It’s an incredible experience to walk on campus and everybody looks like you.”
On Her Blended Family:
Vice President Harris: “I am a daughter of divorced parents. My parents were divorced when I was five. And, just being very frank and candid with you, when Doug and I started dating, you know, his parents have been married over 60 years. I had to explain to him what it is like to be a child of divorced parents. And, including that, it was really important to me that I knew what he and my relationship would be, before I formed a relationship with the kids, because that’s just – from my perspective – an experience not fair to children, because, you know, children form attachments. So, I was very intentional about waiting until I knew that, okay, this is a real relationship, before I got to know the kids. And then we became, I mean, thick as thieves. And I love those children. They are my children. And, you know, we talk about, we have a modern family. And maybe the blessing that I have, that not everyone has – although I think everyone should try and work on it – is, I have a very close because it is a very respectful relationship with their mother … But you have to work at it …
“Here’s the thing that we have to remember, and I know we do, and we feel that we have to be intentional about it. Because the forces and the emotions will drag us from this point. The most important thing is that our kids grow up healthy. And you know, I think of the many things that we role model, probably the thing we role model the most that we don’t realize is how to form healthy relationships. We teach our kids how to drive, we will sit down and do homework with them, but one of the things we are teaching them every day, and we have to be intentional – we will not be perfect, we will fall short – but it’s how to develop healthy emotional relationships. One of the ways, especially in that dynamic, when you’re talking about my husband’s ex wife, is how to be respectful. And I was very intentional about, for example, knowing that the kids, as they got to know and form relationships with me, would not want to feel like they were somehow being disloyal to their mother. And I knew that. And so I was very intentional about always making sure that I was clear with them, that I would say things like, ‘How does your mom do it?’ You know, I love to cook. ‘How does your mom – show me how you do it?’ And I think that’s really important, because, you know, this is the thing that I think has become clear, especially as I’m now running for president, and these kind of conversations are becoming more prevalent, like, what does it mean to be a step parent? What the people who don’t get it are understanding is there are a whole lot more of these kinds of relationships than people realize, this is not the 1950s.”
All the Smoke: “Blended is a new norm. Blended family is the new norm.”
Vice President Harris: “It is. It is. It is and they’re beautiful, and it’s a beautiful way to live, to build and grow your family. You know, I talk about, even in my speech at the convention, I have, and I grew up with, the family that is my family by blood and the family that is my family by love … and I think increasingly people, especially younger people, understand that, right? There’s the family you’re born into, and then there’s the family you choose. And it’s on you to make a decision about what you want and how you define your family, and you have the right to do that. I was fortunate enough to go to UCLA and it was like being a professional athlete. And we were speaking to, you know, some of the brightest minds come from these HBCUs but the conditions aren’t what some of these other schools are.”
On the Vice President’s Views on Marijuana:
All the Smoke: “We’re running short on time, we’re going to finish up with quick hitters. First thing to come to mind, let us know – cannabis?”
Vice President Harris: “I just feel strongly people should not be going to jail for smoking weed. And we know historically what that has meant and who has gone to jail.
“Second, I just think we have come to a point where we have to understand that we need to legalize it and stop criminalizing this behavior. Actually, this is not a new position for me. I have felt for a long time we need to legalize it. So that’s where I am on that.”
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