VP Harris lays out stakes of election at SF campaign event amid pro-Palestinian protest

While over 100 pro-Palestinian protesters chanted outside The Chapel, a venue in San Francisco’s Mission District, Vice President Kamala Harris was greeted by an equal number of supporters inside for a reelection campaign event on Wednesday. 

Introducing Harris at the funeral parlor-turned concert venue was Manny Yekutiel, who owns a local restaurant that hosts political talks and events. He rallied the crowd by asking if they were going to stand by the vice president in the face of negativity and darkness and hatred and division. The crowd replied with a shout, “Yes!”

Harris opened her statements by saying, “This year, everything is at stake.”

She was briefly interrupted with a protester who had gotten inside and was shouting, “You’re supporting the genocide!”

The protester was drowned out by supporters who chanted, “Four more years!” 

Harris began again by addressing the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

“Starting with Oct. 7, some 1,200 people were massacred, including young people attending a concert. Women were violently raped.”

Then she stated President Joe Biden’s position.

“The president has been very clear. This war must end. We need a ceasefire, meaning the hostages out. We need aid going in, and we need to be committed to a two-state solution,” she said as the crowd applauded.

Harris pivoted to what she described as a full-on attack on freedoms and rights across the country.

“The attack is against the freedom that each person should have to love who they love openly and with pride. Book bans in this year of 2024, are you kidding me?”

She also mentioned a law in Georgia that makes it illegal to give people food and water for standing in line to vote as another attack on civil rights.

Harris recalled her time serving as district attorney in the city of San Francisco.

“I was proud to be one of the first people in the country, Valentine’s week in 2004, to perform some of the first same-sex marriages,” she said.

Most of her statements were about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“Look at what happened almost two years ago when the highest court in the land, the court of Thurgood and R.B.G., took a constitutional right from the people of America, from the women of America,” she said, listing how several states had restricted access to abortion by passing their own laws. 

“State after state, extremists are passing laws that will criminalize health care providers, she said. “In Texas they could get prison for life and are making no exception for rape or incest.”

She told the story of a young woman, Amanda, in Texas who was denied care during a miscarriage because the hospital staff were afraid they would be put in prison, so Amanda was not given care until her condition worsened into sepsis. 

Harris also told a story about why she decided to become a prosecutor.

“When I was in high school, I learned that one of my best friends was being molested by her own father. And I said to her, then you have to come to live with us. I called my mother, and I told her what was going on, and she said, of course she has to come live with us. And she did. So, early in my life, I decided I wanted to take on harms against women and children.”

‘Not a time to throw up our hands’

Harris turned to the issue of the United States’ reputation internationally. She said other world leaders have asked her if the United States was going to be OK.

“It was surely out of self-interest because what they understand is what we hear now. The impact in this election profoundly impacts the people of our nation and people around the world. It is all at stake,” she said.

Harris quoted Coretta Scott King in saying that that the fight for civil rights must be fought and won with each generation. 

“This is not a time to throw up our hands, it’s the time to roll up our sleeves,” she said. “San Francisco knows how to build community, to build coalitions, to remind people of the basic principle that nobody should be made to fight alone. We are all in this together, and what we all know is when we fight, we win.”

Harris was first attending a campaign event in Oakland before coming across the Bay to the San Francisco event.