Let's Celebrate Kamala Harris Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

SPINNING YOUR GOLD: WORDS THAT OPEN HEARTS AND INSPIRE ACTION

You may recall that at the Vancouver Peace Summit in September 2009, His Holiness the Dalai Lama declared that “The world will be saved by the Western woman.”

The fallout and op-eds crashed around even this holiest of holy souls for his ‘feminist’ statement as if being a feminist was terrible.

Well, I’ll take a cue from him and boldly declare that she’s arrived to represent --for this slice of time -- all western and eastern women and to help save the world. 

Announced yesterday by Joe Biden, presumptive Democratic candidate for POTUS, she’s the vice-presidential candidate for the November 3 election in the still greatest country on earth.

She is Kamala Devi Harris. 

Say her name.

“My name is pronounced “comma-la,” like the punctuation mark,” Kamala Harris writes in her 2018 autobiography, The Truths We Hold.” It means ‘lotus flower,’ which is the symbol of significance in Indian culture. A lotus grows underwater, its flowers rising above the surface while the roots are planted firmly in the river bottom.”

Whatever your politics or opinions, it’s a her-storical moment to be celebrated by every woman, of every age, everywhere, and not dissected or dismissed.

Harris now rises like the lotus flower from the mud and muck of our times to help us see and embrace a new American light.

I agree with Isaac Newton, who believed ‘If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.’ Consider and celebrate the shoulders of Giants that have (and will) help Harris see further:

The giants of politics - Harris is the third woman to run as a vice-presidential candidate for a major U.S. party. It’s unimaginable to believe that only four women have found space and recognition on America’s national ballot after 200 years of elections!

In 1984 Geraldine “Gerry” Ferraro (D-NY) became the first female vice-presidential nominee representing an American major political party.  She joined Walter Mondale (D-MN) for a presidential bid losing to Ronald Regan. Sarah Palin, the Republican governor of Alaska, was second as the running mate of Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in 2008. 

“Service is the rent your pay for room on this earth.” -Shirley Chisholm (1924 -2005)

Let’s not forget Shirley Chisholm (D-NY). Her-story shows that ‘In the 1972 United States presidential election, she became the first black candidate for a major party’s nomination for President of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.’

While pondering the lacking representation of female leadership, contrast it with population facts: The population, female (% of total) in the United States was reported at 50.52 % in 2019, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources, according to TardingEconomics.com. 

In 2020 numbers, that translates to 162 million males and 169 females—7 million more women!

As Chisholm encouraged, “If you’re not invited to the table, bring a folding chair.”

Parents of Kamala Harris celebrating her election to California’s Senate. Photo (L-r) Donald Harris, Kamala Harris, and the late Shyamala Gopalan Harris.

The giants of ancestors - Born in Oakland, CA, she imminently qualifies as a western and eastern woman. The sacred soil of her beginning originated in diverse parents with an Indian-born mother, and a Jamaican-born father.

The giants of suffragettes - With the global pandemic occupying much, if not all, of our personal and media attention, let’s not forget that 2020 is the 100^th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing and protecting women’s constitutional right to vote. 

Did you know that on August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment was certified into the U.S. Constitution, forever protecting American women’s right to vote? So, it makes sense that August is National Women’s Suffrage Month. 

(Sadly, African-American women didn’t receive this voting right until 1965, and the unjust struggle remains in many states.)

It wasn’t easy to secure a woman’s right to vote. Hard-fought and often bloody battles led by the-then radical American suffragettes won the war for equality with support from global sister activists and other progressives.

Many women (and men) were imprisoned, beaten, and some died while working on getting the white, male-dominated federal government to allow women to vote. Giants of voting equality included names like Susan Brownell Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Emmeline Pankhurst, Carrie Chapman Catt, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, Kean, and Millicent Garrett Fawcett.

Say their names. 

Say all their names.

For today, I pray that ...

Poets poet,

Writers write,

Musicians sing

And people everywhere, celebrate Kamala Devi Harris standing on the shoulders of Giants.

Say her name.