Sen. Kamala Harris on Monday joined the crowded field of Democrats running for president in 2020, vowing to restore the values she said had been degraded under President Trump.
“Justice, decency, equality, freedom, democracy. These aren’t just words. They’re the values we as Americans cherish. And they’re all on the line now,” the California Democrat said in a video released by her campaign.
The release dovetailed with the 54-year-old senator’s New York City appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” where she announced her presidential bid.
“I love my country. I love my country,” she said on the show. “This is a moment in time when I feel a sense of responsibility to stand up and fight.”
Afterward, she wasted no time partaking in a campaign-trail tradition: noshing on the local cuisine. Her campaign released a photo of her enjoying an egg-and-cheese sandwich at a Penn Station deli.
Harris, a former attorney general for California, is now the fourth woman to announce a 2020 White House run, following Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii).
If successful, Harris, the daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, would be the second African-American president and the first woman to win the office.
She timed her announcement for Martin Luther King Jr. Day as well as this week’s anniversary of Democratic Rep. Shirley Chisholm of Brooklyn entering 1972’s presidential race as the first black woman from a major political party to run for the office.
Harris, recently on tour for her book, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” outlined in the video why she’s running.
“The future of our country depends on you and millions of others lifting our voices to fight for our American values,” Harris says. “I’m running to lift those voices. To bring our voices together.”
She has already visited Iowa and South Carolina, a state she will return to late this week.
Other announced and expected candidates also commemorated MLK Day by campaigning.
Gillibrand, speaking at a celebration in Harlem, urged women to enter the “battlefield for justice” and ripped Trump for dividing the country, saying he “has inspired a hate and darkness.”
Both Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who ran for president in 2016, and Cory Booker of New Jersey, who is expected to run, spoke in South Carolina on King’s legacy.
“We don’t just celebrate King’s holiday. We recommit ourselves to be agents of change,” Booker said.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, also a possible candidate, spoke at a breakfast in Washington, DC, about racial injustice.
“White America has to admit there’s still a systematic racism,” he said. “And it goes almost unnoticed by so many of us.”
Biden, a former senator, also apologized for the mass-incarceration polices of the 1990s that resulted in a disproportionate number of black men being sentenced to prison on drug charges.
“It was a big mistake that was made,” said Biden, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. “We were told by the experts that ‘with crack, you can never go back.’ It’s trapped an entire generation.”
Speaking at the same event, ex-Mayor Mike Bloomberg said his work advocating for gun control was guided by a desire to help those at the “greatest risk of gun violence — young men of color.”
In Boston, Warren said “people of color have been systematically denied” the right to vote and called for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right for every American.