Key Highlights from the Final Night of the Democratic National Convention

Democratic National Convention 2024: Vice President Kamala Harris offered one of the most inspiring speeches Thursday night in what has been one of the most dramatic months in American politics by encouraging Democrats to stand for American principles against Donald Trump as the ‘other’.

“In this continuing civilizational clash between liberty and oppression,” she said, “I know which side I am on and the place of the United States in the world.

Harris came through that pledge in the way that Democrats had hoped when they first bought into her when she initially ran for president in 2019 or when Biden tapped her for the vice presidency in 2020.

Harris also stepped boldly toward her Republican opponent. She enumerated the various legal woes of the former president. She narrowed the suffering that some women have experienced in the past as a result of compliance with strict state-level abortion laws to him. To this end, she gave a warning of what she referred to as the ‘lawlessness and disaster that characterized his presidency’.

“To a large extent, Donald Trump is just a troll,” she said. “But the risks of returning Donald Trump to the White House are very serious.”

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Harris also became more forthcoming in her personal policy stances, especially on the issue of foreign affairs. She vowed that she will be a president who is “realistic, practical and has common sense”—a direct counter to Trump’s attempt at tarnishing her as a liberal.

The contrast could not have been greater between Harris’ speech in Chicago on Wednesday and Trump’s speech last month at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, raising the stakes for the final month before the November The head-to-head debates are yet to come.

Here are eight takeaways from the fourth and final night of the Democratic National Convention:

Harris offers a return to pre-Trump normalcy

Harris delivered a simple message to Americans: It doesn’t have to go on like this any longer.

Harris promised voters a fresh start form the trump era of constant uncertainty and political chaos, both directly and in the background of her speech.

Kamala Harris said multiple times that “we are not going back” she and many others, including thousands of people chanting inside the United Center, have said this since she become the likely nominee. The phrase was targeting straight to Trump’s policies and the promises that he make, it also has a more specific meaning as a promise for the near future.

To “not go back” to even a few weeks ago, before her campaign really took off.

Harris’ campaign has also focused on the word “freedom” a great deal, trying to portray topics like contraception as the government getting in the way.

At stake in the election, Harris said, were “the freedom to live safe from gun violence in our schools, communities, and places of worship; the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride; the freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis; and the freedom that unlocks all the others: having a free vote. ”

On this night, however, one also could not help but hear the promise of “freedom” from the petulant rage and vendettas, great and small, that have characterized so much of the last decade of American existence.

Harris gets personal

For most of her career, Harris has been very reluctant to share any aspect of her life’s narrative. Not anymore.

In the short campaign, she devoted more time to speaking about her mother, about growing up as the middle-class child of two immigrant parents who were professors, and about her way into politics.

On Thursday, she mentioned how her father, one-time economist Donald Harris, told her to play freely on the swings while her mother warned her to be careful. She spoke to the audience about her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a biomedical scientist who had hoped to eradicate breast cancer and who was a single mother to her two children after her divorce. She also mentioned the supportive family that more or less raised her and her sister Maya.

“My mother was a brilliant, fabulous five-foot brown woman with an accent, an extremely hardworking woman and because I was the first child, I began to see how the world could sometimes be to her,” Harris said. “But my mother never lost her cool.”

Though the vice president didn’t draw a parallel between her childhood and that of the former president’s, other speakers this week have drawn an even starker contrast between the two backgrounds: raised by a single mom after having lived in the White House herself versus the life of the former president, born to a real estate tycoon.

Harris for the second time, discussed a childhood experience that influenced her career choice. When Harris was in high school, Wanda Kagan told her about the sexual abuse by her stepfather. Harris told her friend she should move back with her family.

“This is one of the reasons I became a prosecutor—to protect people like Wanda,” she said.

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Allies back up Harris’ resume

Despite this, Harris’s entire 2020 presidential campaign seemed to revolve around her efforts to shed the cop label that put her out of step with progressive activists on criminal justice reform. But as she has tried to introduce herself to American voters as presidential material, her resume has been her forte. Everynight has brought the themes of fighting transnational gangs, sexual abusers and corporations that are also intrinsically bad.

for the few patients I had only in Alameda County and a long-standing friend.

Some of her former subordinates from her days in the Alameda County district attorney’s office and during her time as California attorney general testified on Thursday night that she did her job with both passion and determination while also being understanding of people who needed it.

“For Kamala, practicing law was always, always about defending the weak and advocating for the voiceless.” Said Amy Resner, the former deputy district attorney for Alameda County and a friend of hers.

The former attorney general of Illinois, Lisa Madigan, recalled that Harris fought for the state during the period of the financial crisis to ensure that families would not be foreclosed. Former Corinthian Colleges’ student and Bryan Cutler’s nemesis, Nathan Hornes, praised her success in the effort to prosecute the for-profit school for defrauding students.

Perhaps the most powerful witness of the former sex trafficking victim, Courtney Baldwin, a youth organizer, described how Harris helped her fight to close the website that was used to blackmail her and others into prostitution.

“She has shielded individuals, for example, me, her whole life,” Baldwin responded.

Meet the Harris clan

Trump and many other Republicans for years have lampooned Harris by mispronouncing her first name.

Thursday night, Harris’ two young granddaughters, Amara and Leela Ajagu, with an assist from actress Kerry Washington, appeared onstage to send a message: It is this simple to perform; you could almost give it to a child.

“First, you say comma, which is like a comma in a sentence,” Amara said.

“Then you said la, like la, like la, la, la, la,” Leela mimed, doing the voice herself.

Harris’ niece, Meena Harris, children of Amara and Leela, stated that the vice president has been her mentor, adding that now she mentors children of her own. Ella Emhoff, Harris’ stepdaughter, said that when they met when she was fourteen, the then VP was ‘patient, caring, and has always taken me seriously’.

‘She showed me, indeed, that making a difference involves everything—your spirit and your actions,’ added Harris’ goddaughter, Helena Hudlin.

After that, Maya Harris, the vice president’s sister, discussed their mother, who passed away in 2009.

‘I so wish that Mommy could be here tonight,’ she began. “I could imagine her grinning and asking how proud she is of Kamala, walking and then turning around and telling Kamala that is enough; you have to work.”

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Poignant moment from people affected by gun violence

Harris was one of the early and forceful voices within the Biden administration on gun control, even before the latter suspended his campaign for re-election. Thursday evening confirmed that the convention varied its focus to the experiences of gun victims, not just of the latest mass shooting but of murders by domestic partners. It followed the pattern of the week, where abortion storytellers were employed in the strategy. The concert was staged against a black background and the speakers narrated their losses as personal stories.

In a video, Georgia Rep. Lucy McBath both got personal by sharing her story and spoke of becoming a parent before her son was murdered in 2012. McBath, who runs for office citing her son’s death, noted that she learned when working for organizations such as Moms Demand Action that embracing first-hand experience is powerful in telling our own stories.

“You’ve just heard mine, but there are many more to tell,” she said, before focusing on mothers who lost their children in mass shootings in Sandy Hook and Uvalde, Melody McFadden, a domestic abuse survivor who lost her mother, and Edgar Vilchez, a student who lost a classmate.

The gun violence portion of the night was concluded by a speech by former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head at a congressional campaign event in 2011.

“I was close to death, but since I wanted to live, I struggled and I lived,” said by Gifford.

‘Central Park Five’ member: Trump ‘wanted us dead’

As far as race relations in the United States are concerned, Trump has a particularly sinister record of stoking racial animosity for private profit—of fanning the flames of so-called “birtherism” during the Obama presidency and of instituting a travel ban from six countries, of which five are predominantly Muslim.

The Central Park Five was the first time Trump employed this kind of politics, which he used later in his campaign.

In 1989, five young black and Latino men were falsely accused of raping and assaulting a woman who was jogging in Central Park in New York City. Trump, at the time merely a property mogul in New York, bought and signed advertisements in England’s leading newspapers insisting the boys be put to death.

The ads say simply: “Bring back the death penalty. Bring back our police!”

In what had also given an insight into why the volunteer system was dumped, those boys were later vindicated—four of them in 2002; the last one in 2022—following the revelation by another man, who said he was responsible for the act and backed his claims with DNA evidence.

And on Thursday night, four of the five were also on the stage of the DNC.

“Every day as we walked into courtrooms, people screamed at us and threatened us because of Donald Trump,” Korey Wise said.

Yusef Salaam, who is now a New York City councilman, said Trump “wanted us dead. ”

“He’s the same man he was when you started knowing him and will be the same man he remains now,” Salaam said. “That man believes that hate is the driving force of America. It is not. That man does not know that voting is not just an American right; no, it is a human right. So why not utilize it?”

Gaza war opponents denied speaking spot by DNC

Finally, uncommitted delegates who gained their positions through primary protest votes against the Biden administration’s policy in Israel and Gaza were excluded from the convention.

A number of leaders of the Uncommitted National Movement—all of whom declared on camera that they were going to vote for Harris—raised up to demand that a Palestinian American speak to Democrats inside the United Center.

Later, Wednesday night, the campaign was given word by convention authorities, as an uncommitted spokesman put it: “Says the answer is no.”

The group responded by starting a protest sit-in outside of the convention. It lasted about 24 hours and was attended by Democrats and Liberals who supported the war, as well as progressives and anti-war activists. However, starting with the increase in support from the United Auto Workers and other important organizations, the Democrats did not waver.

So, when Abbas Alawieh, an uncommitted co-founder, arrogated it as a self-defeating course—one that would only drive more challenges to reclaim voters from swing states such as Michigan,.

“I pity the DNC and Harris campaign; they are moving in the wrong direction in the middle of the majority of the Democratic Party,” Alawieh said. “As the representative of the Democratic voters, I want to emphasize that they believe in the human rights of Palestinians, just as every other thing is important to us.”

Harris herself did not remain indifferent to the problem. She vowed to defend and promote Israel, denounced the acts of terror of the Hamas on October 7, and claimed that the administration was for lasting peace in the region.

‘However,’ she proceeded, ‘what has transpired in Gaza over the past 10 months has been tragic; so many lives have been wasted. The struggle, hunger and need for shelter of the Gazans are atrocious. The loss is unbearable.’

Celebrities make their mark

What does it mean to say that a concept has momentum? Political observers refer to crowd size, donations and voter registration, but this convention offered another standard: endorsements by celebrities.

This week has been packed with stars, from Lil Jon performing during the roll call of states that featured a slew of celebrities on Monday to Oprah Winfrey’s speech on Wednesday. Mindy Kaling and Tony Goldwyn were among the celebrities who hosted different nights of the convention, while the progressive country performances of Mickey Guyton, Maren Morris and Jason Isbell took place during the week of the event.

Stevie Wonder also sang “Higher Ground,”  as well as John Legend, who celebrated Prince, who is from Minnesota, the home state of Governor Tim Walz, along with Sheila E. Pink, who sang “What About Us” on the last night, which was hosted by Washington of the scandal fame.

The names of those who requested an invite after Harris became the nominee are known only to the convention organizers, but what can be stated for sure is that with her, there is a clear increase in activity, and that is reflected in the schedule of events.

My experience of tweeting was, however, not as eventful as Chloe’s but it was still fun and the main concern, as was seen, was whether Beyoncé would perform. Her song “Freedom” became the campaign theme song and was used in at least a couple of Harris’ campaign commercials. The buzz that Beyoncé would attend remained strong all week, and several people involved in the convention planning told HL that they thought she would. But late Thursday, it was the artist’s team’s turn to go on record.