Kamala Harris scripted history on Wednesday when she accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president and became the first black woman and Indian descent individual on a major party's White House ticket. At the event, she was joined by former president Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who criticised President Donald Trump's profound "failure" as a leader. The nomination is the latest in a series of firsts for 55-year-old Harris, the daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, who were immigrants to the US.
Here are the top quotes from Kamala Harris's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention:
• "There is no vaccine for racism...For George Floyd, for Breonna Taylor, for the lives of too many others to name, for our children and for all of us. We have got to do the work to fulfill that promise of equal justice under law. Because here is the thing. None of us are free until all of us are free."
• "We must elect a president... who will bring all of us together — Black, White, Latino, Asian, Indigenous — to achieve the future we collectively want. We must elect Joe Biden."
• “The constant chaos leaves us adrift, the incompetence makes us feel afraid, the callousness makes us feel alone. It’s a lot.”
• "This week marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment. And we celebrate the women who fought for that right. Yet so many of the Black women who helped secure that victory were still prohibited from voting, long after its ratification. But they were undeterred."
• "Without fanfare or recognition, they organised, testified, rallied, marched and fought -- not just for their vote, but for a seat at the table. These women (Mary Church Terrell, Mary Mcleod Bethune, Fannie Lou Hamer, Diane Nash, Constance Baker Motley and Shirley Chisholm) and the generations that followed worked to make democracy and opportunity real in the lives of all of us who followed. They paved the way for the trailblazing leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton."
• "There's another woman, whose name isn't known, whose story isn't shared. Another woman whose shoulders I stand on. And that's my mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris. She came here from India at age 19 to pursue her dream of curing cancer. At the University of California Berkeley, she met my father, Donald Harris, who had come from Jamaica to study economics."
• "My mother (/topic/mother) taught me that service to others gives life purpose and meaning. And oh, how I wish she were here tonight but I know she is looking down on me from above."
• "In the streets of Oakland and Berkeley, I got a strollers-eye view of people getting into what the great John Lewis called 'good trouble."
• "On that day, she probably could have never imagined that I would be standing before you now speaking these words -- I accept your nomination for Vice President of the United States of America," she said.
(With inputs from agencies)
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