A 2017 clip of Vice President Kamala Harris urging “everybody” to be “woke” has resurfaced on social media, prompting critics and conservatives to denounce the Democratic nominee as a “Communist functionary” who is “too radical” to serve as president.
“We have to stay woke. Like everybody needs to be woke. And you can talk about if you’re the wokest or woker, but just stay more woke than less woke,” Harris said in 2017 when she was still a Senator.
Kamala Harris says "everybody needs to be woke."
Nah, we're good. pic.twitter.com/ZyLBah9PlO
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) August 5, 2024
Harris reinforced her stance in a message posted to X the following day, stating, “We have to stay active. We have to stay woke.”
We have to stay active. We have to stay woke. #codecon
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) June 1, 2017
The conference addressed topics like immigration and the environment, with Harris criticizing the Trump administration’s drug and immigration policies just moments before urging Americans to be “woke.”
“I get upset when we say we’re going to shut our door to refugees who are fleeing such atrocities and have been standing in line for two years to qualify for refugee status, and they arrive here, and we turn them away. Yes, I’m gonna get mad about that. I’m gonna get mad when we have an attorney general who’s trying to resuscitate the war on drugs. And he thinks the greatest evil that mankind has ever seen is marijuana. … Leave grandma’s medical marijuana alone,” Harris said.
The vice president has come under heavy fire for the comments she made seven years ago. Conservative author James Lindsay described Harris as a “Communist functionary.”
“Kamala is a low-level Communist functionary, and I’m tired of being told we have to pretend she’s not,” he wrote.
The clip resurfaced shortly after President Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race late last month and subsequently endorsed Vice President Harris as his successor. On Friday, Harris officially secured her party’s 2024 presidential nomination, receiving a majority of votes from convention delegates, according to the DNC.
Several media outlets, Fox News, reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on the clip and criticism, but did not immediately receive a reply.
