Never miss a story.<\/strong> Sign up for The Oaklandside\u2019s free daily newsletter.<\/strong>Email<\/p>\n\n\n\n On a sunny day in January 2019, some 20,000 massed around Oakland City Hall, eagerly waiting to watch Kamala Harris announce her run<\/a> for U.S. president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOakland, are we proud that we are Kamala Harris\u2019 hometown?\u201d called out then-Mayor Libby Schaaf, introducing the candidate from the podium. Applause erupted. \u201cShe has got Oakland\u2019s progressive values and a vision of inclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The celebration raised some eyebrows in Berkeley, the neighboring city where Harris actually lived<\/a> and went to school as a child. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Harris was born at Kaiser hospital in Oakland but spent the beginning of her life in the smaller city to the north, where her parents met as graduate students and Civil Rights Movement activists. After a short stint in the Midwest, Harris returned to Berkeley for elementary school. She left again at age 12 for Montreal. She lived in Oakland later, as a young adult and prosecutor starting her career in the Alameda County District Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harris wrote extensively about her early years in Berkeley in her 2019 memoir The Truths We Hold.<\/em> And she\u2019s spoken often about her experience as a first grader participating in Berkeley Unified\u2019s landmark school integration<\/a> <\/strong>experiment in the late 1960s. But during her short-lived 2019 primary campaign, she associated herself more with Oakland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This time around, Harris seems to be taking a different tack, not focusing on either city. Thrust into the candidacy four months before the election, Harris didn\u2019t have much time to plan out how she would tell her story this time around. And her first campaign rally was in Wisconsin, not California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, when her childhood home on Bancroft Way appeared on the screen, its location was labeled \u201cEast Bay,\u201d not \u201cBerkeley.\u201d Harris\u2019 upbringing was frequently recounted during the jam-packed four-day affair, but the name Berkeley was mentioned only once. Oakland was uttered five times \u2014 but just once onstage by the candidate, referencing her career, not her youth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Harris, I was born in an Oakland hospital, grew up in Berkeley and live (or lived, in her case) in Oakland as an adult. While I\u2019ve never considered myself \u201cfrom\u201d anywhere other than Berkeley, I don\u2019t pretend to know how the vice president identifies and what she truly feels is her hometown. As with most people in the region, her life wasn\u2019t confined within one city\u2019s limits; she went to church and protests in Oakland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And as a Black and South Asian girl growing up in redlined Berkeley<\/a> in the 1960s and 70s, Harris\u2019 experience was undoubtedly different in many ways than mine was as a white child in the 90s and 2000s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Litigating where Harris is from is not really the point, anyway. And when I tried to do that on X<\/a> a few weeks ago, many people were unhappy about it, reading a lot more into my fact-checking than I\u2019d intended it to say. I shouldn\u2019t have been surprised. As I know well, people from both Berkeley and Oakland are fiercely (and righteously!) proud of our respective hometowns. A presidential candidate who\u2019s from here, and possibly the first Black female president at that, means a lot to people who support her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But we can learn something about our political climate \u2014 and how Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco figure into national narratives around big issues confronting our society \u2014 by looking at how candidates talk about their backgrounds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Harris has at times embraced one of these cities over the other, linking her life story and reputation to the values of Oakland or what Berkeley instilled in her. And others have tied her to San Francisco\u2019s political culture, for good or for ill. Most recently, Harris seems to be deliberately toning down the Oakland and Berkeley talk altogether. There are likely a number of strategic reasons why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cKamala Harris\u2019 story begins in a middle-class neighborhood in the East Bay,\u201d the video blared at the DNC this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the nominee took the stage in Chicago, she repeated a version of the sound bite. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBefore she could afford to buy a home, she rented a small apartment in the East Bay,\u201d Harris said of her mother. \u201cIn the Bay, you either live in the hills or the flatlands \u2014 we lived in the flats. A beautiful, working-class neighborhood.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Four years earlier at the 2020 DNC, however, she had described being pushed in a stroller at protests on \u201cthe streets of Oakland and Berkeley.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt the convention, Harris needed to introduce herself as a three dimensional person to voters newly tuning into this race,\u201d said Anat Shenker-Osorio, a political communications strategist for progressives. \u201cAt the same time, she needed to make herself relatable to Americans across places, in the face of tired right-wing attacks about our corner of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Painting with a broad Bay Area brush could be her attempt to connect with a wider audience. Notably, Harris in her DNC speech also mentioned her time in Illinois and Wisconsin, even though she rarely brings up her Midwestern years when talking about her childhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But both of those locations happen to be swing states, and she was speaking from a podium in Chicago, pointed out Shenker-Osorio. Harris was telling voters that she \u201cgets Americans across places, backgrounds, races and genders,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harris inevitably had a different strategy during her 2020 run than in this election, said Jim Ross, a Bay Area political consultant. The first time, she was running in a Democratic primary, trying to appeal to progressives. It was a safer bet to link herself directly with Oakland or Berkeley, considered liberal bastions. In a general election, \u201cshe\u2019s talking to a broader audience of voters, who are much more moderate,\u201d Ross said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The old photos and housing in Harris\u2019 West Berkeley stomping grounds<\/a> \u2014 like the pictures shown at the convention \u2014 could look to national voters like a \u201ctypical middle-class upbringing and neighborhood,\u201d Ross said. Or at least that\u2019s what the campaign is likely aiming for. That desire could have also played into her decision to launch in Oakland in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whereas Berkeley in the 1960s is associated with \u201cthe Free Speech Movement and the \u2018Bezerkeley\u2019 thing\u201d \u2014 radical, pot-smoking hippies \u2014 Oakland \u201cis kind of a tough, blue-collar city, which I think she wanted to embrace,\u201d Ross said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Harris has undoubtedly given thought to these associations. In her memoir, she writes that strategists thought she\u2019d lose the 2015 race for California attorney general because of her ties to \u201cwacky San Francisco.\u201d Harris worked in the San Francisco District Attorney\u2019s Office in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and was elected DA in 2004, serving until 2010. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Harris faces extra pressure to demonstrate her relatability, according to Shenker-Osorio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWomen, and especially women of color, have to prove they get \u2018everyday Americans,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In her memoir, Harris writes in detail about her childhood in Berkeley, where she and her sister were enfolded into their parents\u2019 community of intellectuals and activists. Harris listened to them and their close friends passionately discuss politics and literature in a living room on Harmon Street. And her mother brought them weekly to the Rainbow Sign<\/a>, a Berkeley Black cultural institution on Grove Street (now Martin Luther King Jr. Way) that drew the likes of Maya Angelou and Nina Simone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Harris writes that she lived on the \u201cboundary between Oakland and Berkeley.\u201d By no stretch of the imagination was her Bancroft apartment geographically close to the border; it\u2019s directly west of downtown. But it may have felt like that as a child, getting whisked to protests in Oakland and living a couple of blocks away from a Black Panthers free breakfast program location. \u201cWe would see Huey [Newton] all the time,\u201d friend Carole Porter told ABC<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n West and South Berkeley had far more Black residents and working- and middle-class families at the time. Decades later, Berkeley\u2019s Black population would steadily decline<\/a> as families moved away or were priced out of the city. Living in a segregated neighborhood, Harris might have felt less of a kinship with the rest of Berkeley \u2014 though she was famously bused to North Berkeley for school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Bay Area was home to so many extraordinary black leaders and was bursting with black pride in some places,\u201d Harris wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dorothy Lazard, author<\/a> and former director of the Oakland History Center<\/a>, grew up in Oakland around the same time as Harris. For Lazard, the city was her entire world. She rarely even left East Oakland when she lived there \u2014 and back then, it had a thriving business district. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But for many people living in Berkeley or Oakland at the time, there was a \u201csieve-like border,\u201d Lazard said. For Harris, \u201cI would imagine growing up in that milieu of intellectuals and activists, she was probably back and forth.\u201d At UC Berkeley, for example, her parents were part of a landmark Black study group, the Afro American Association<\/a>. Among its members was Oakland community college student Huey Newton, who\u2019d soon co-found the Black Panther Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regardless, \u201cI feel like Oakland can absolutely claim anyone who was born within its borders, no matter how much or little time she spent here,\u201d said Lazard, who was so moved to see local representation at the DNC that she cried throughout the week while watching it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Harris writes that her mother bought a house in Oakland when Harris was in high school in Canada, the first home her family owned. Later, when she worked in the Alameda County DA\u2019s office, she bought her own condo in Oakland by the lake, according to the SF Standard<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harris chose to open her memoir with a scene from inside Oakland\u2019s Ren\u00e9 Davidson Courthouse, a landmark of the criminal justice system and protests on the shore of Lake Merritt. During her 2020 run, she seemed to focus on defending her decision to become a prosecutor to wary progressives, trying to prove her liberal bonafides. For some Democratic voters, particularly many in communities of color, prosecutors are seen as agents of a system founded on racial injustice, with a history of over-policing in their neighborhoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI have spent almost every day since working, in some way or another, on reforming the criminal justice system,\u201d Harris wrote about her election as San Francisco district attorney. \u201cThe courthouse was supposed to be the epicenter of justice; but it was often a great epicenter of injustice.\u201d Some progressive in the Bay Area, however, felt her record revealed a much more conservative bent<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2024, a lot has changed. As the right tries to paint Harris as a \u201cweak-on-crime liberal<\/a>,\u201d she\u2019s been more keen to boast about her days as the DA. After all, she\u2019s running against a convicted felon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Harris became the nominee, many in the Bay Area braced for a skewering of our cities by the Trump campaign and right-wing media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe primary thrust of their critiques is that California is a crime-ridden, immigrant-infested, over-taxed dystopia being overrun by homeless hordes and drag queens\u2026 and, obviously, the Bay Area is the belly of this unholy beast,\u201d wrote East Bay historian Liam O\u2019Donoghue<\/a> in July. Oakland has long been the subject of negative press, and its national \u2014 and international<\/a> \u2014 image has especially taken a hit over the past year or two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of these fears have come true<\/a>. But Ross, the political strategist, said Republicans still seem to largely be \u201clurching\u201d for the right line of attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019ve figured out exactly how to message against her yet,\u201d he said. Trump has claimed Harris destroyed San Francisco, saying it used to be a wonderful city 15 years ago<\/a>. \u201cOf course, that\u2019s exactly when Kamala was the DA in San Francisco!\u201d said Ross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of the problems you have,\u201d he continued, \u201cis, can you really be blamed for the conditions of a place you grew up in?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If Harris wins the election, Lazard said she hopes the new president might take steps to support the cities she from \u2014 and share some good stories about us, perhaps. She\u2019s hopeful that Oakland representation in the White House will also inspire more people at home to get involved in their communities and leadership, and work to make their city \u201ca great place to live for a greater number of people.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n natalie@oaklandside.org<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Natalie Orenstein covers housing and homelessness for The Oaklandside. She was previously on staff at Berkeleyside, where her extensive reporting on the legacy of school desegregation received recognition from the Society of Professional Journalists NorCal and the Education Writers Association. Natalie\u2019s reporting has also appeared in The J Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere, and she\u2019s written about public policy for a number of research institutes and think tanks. Natalie lives in Oakland, grew up in Berkeley, and has only left her beloved East Bay once, to attend Pomona College.More by Natalie Orenstein<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why the presidential candidate might be reluctant to discuss her geographic roots in 2024. by\u00a0Natalie OrensteinAug. 27, 2024, 2:14 p.m. (Oaklandside.org) Never miss a story. Sign up for The Oaklandside\u2019s free daily newsletter.Email On a sunny day in January 2019, some 20,000 massed around Oakland City Hall, eagerly waiting to watch… Continue reading ![\"Kamala](\"https:\/\/oaklandside.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/20240823-233500.webp\")
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Bringing the East Bay to a broader audience<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Growing up immersed in Black pride in Berkeley and Oakland<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Berkeley and Oakland, political boogeymen of the right<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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NATALIE ORENSTEIN<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n