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Vice President Kamala Harris warned on Monday that American freedom was “under profound threat” in a speech honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in South Carolina, amplifying a message that the Biden administration has made a rallying cry of its re-election bid.
Ms. Harris used her keynote address at a South Carolina N.A.A.C.P. event to highlight curbs placed on civil rights by Republican lawmakers and the Supreme Court in recent years. She urged the crowd of more than 100 to continue to fight for the constitutional promises Dr. King spent his life holding America accountable for.
“If he were here, I think Dr. King would be the first to say that yes, we have come far, and though we have come far, in this moment it is up to us to continue that fight to cash that promissory note,” she said, making a reference to his “I Have a Dream” speech.
Ms. Harris criticized “extremists” who have passed laws rolling back voting rights and reproductive rights, orchestrated book bans and denied parts of the nation’s Black history.
“They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, in an attempt to divide and distract our nation with unnecessary debates,” she said, adding that under attack were “freedom from fear, violence and harm; freedom to vote, to live, to learn, to control one’s own body; and the freedom to simply be.”
She punctuated her speech by illustrating the fights that await future generations.
“This generation has witnessed the highest court in our land, the court of Thurgood, take a constitutional right that had been recognized from the people of America, from the women of America,” Ms. Harris said. “This generation now has fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers.”
The speech was part of a daylong trip to Columbia, the vice president’s eighth visit to South Carolina, which helped revive President Biden’s campaign four years ago. Ms. Harris visited Myrtle Beach on Jan. 6, the third anniversary of the deadly attack on the Capitol, and delivered a similar message as she and Mr. Biden, who was in Charleston two days later, try to rally Black voters.
In Columbia, Ms. Harris stopped at a campaign event, where she reiterated to supporters that there was “a full-on, intentional attack against hard-fought and hard-won freedoms and rights.”
Ms. Harris also told supporters that it was South Carolinans who helped inform some of the administration’s most successful policies, such as expanding access to high-speed internet in rural areas, tackling the removal of lead pipes and lowering insulin prices.
She credited those in the crowd with helping to deliver her and Mr. Biden to the White House in 2020 by helping to secure historic voter turnout, and urged them to do so again, starting with the state’s Democratic primary election on Feb. 3.
“South Carolina set the path for Joe Biden to become president of the United States and me to be the first Black woman vice president,” she said.
But supporters were clear that Ms. Harris played just as big a role in the victory.
Darrell Jackson, a South Carolina state senator who introduced Ms. Harris at Big T’s Bar-B-Que, where the event was held, said that he was proud of what the administration had accomplished — and that he had supported Ms. Harris since she made her own bid for president.
“When she decided to support President Joe Biden, so did we,” he said.
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