Kamala Harris

It's important to have people in your life who will applaud your ambition.

We need to incorporate that age-old concept of redemption into the work that we do in the criminal justice system in California.

History has proven that each generation of Howard graduates will forge the way forward for our country and our world.

My mother... would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, 'I don't know what's wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?' You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.

I was born realizing the flaws in the criminal justice system.

My mother was and will always remain my greatest hero.

I believe a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime. So I decided I was going to start prosecuting parents for truancy.

I grew up hearing stories about my grandmother - my mother's mother - who used to go to villages in India in her little VW bug. My grandmother would take a bullhorn and make sure women in these villages knew how to access birth control.

Here's the thing: every office I've run for I was the first to win. First person of color. First woman. First woman of color. Every time.

When you achieve equality, and freedom, and fairness, it's not because I grant it to you. It's because you fought for it because it is your right. This is not about benevolence or charity; it is about every human being's God-given right.

So many people trip in front of them because they're looking over there or up ahead.

That's what justice represents to me - it's about empowerment of the people.

I know that every trial requires fairness and truth. Any trial that abandons the pursuit of truth cannot be considered fair or just.

And so I would not enforce a law that would reject people and turn them away without giving them a fair and due process to determine if we should give them asylum and refuge.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

We don't want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful - not only to that member of the community but the entire community.

My mother was very proud of her Indian heritage and taught us, me and my sister Maya, to share in the pride about our culture. We used to go back to India every couple of years.

As a former prosecutor, I understand the importance of holding powerful people accountable.

People who work for me know that family comes first. And I'm fortunate to have a family that is very supportive of the work I do, so I don't have to live two separate lives.

My mother instilled in my sister, Maya, and me the values that would chart the course of our lives. She raised us to be proud, strong Black women. And she raised us to know and be proud of our Indian heritage.

I did not learn the flaws of the criminal-justice system in law school or college or by reading about it. I grew up knowing the flaws and how it was disproportionately impacting the black community. It's not academic for me.