Vice President Kamala Harris took a moment out of her time after attending the National Baptist Convention to call into the Willie Moore Jr. Show to talk about some of the issues that are happening in the African American community. There have been an array of issues currently happening in our country and around the world, and it’s sometimes hard to keep up with all the happenings in the news cycles.
They kick off the conversation by sharing what was discussed at the convention & what it means to put faith into action, “And I think of faith as a verb. You know, it is what you believe, it is what you believe in, even when you can’t see it, but it’s also how you live. And so I talked a bit about what we have to do to continue to fight for, you know, the spirit of the teachings is right to heal the sick.”
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The current VP explains what the administration has been able to accomplish so far, including capping the cost of insulin and the recent student loan forgiveness program, and what they continue to still strive to achieve.
Another issue, maternal health, maternal mortality is something I’ve been working on forever, putting, highlighting the fact that black women are three, four times more likely to die in connection with childbirth, than what we need to do to do things like extending postpartum care, Medicaid, postpartum care for women from two months to 12 months because after they’ve given birth to a child, they need more than two months support. These are some of the examples including access to capital, we have so many entrepreneurs in the community and small businesses. And so we have put just recently in the last year and a half 12 billion more dollars into community banks to increase access to capital. And one of the other things the President and I are committed to doing is to increasing federal contracts to minority-owned businesses by 50%. Because we want to make sure that our minority-owned businesses have equal access to those federal contracts, which are really significant,
Another campaign promise from this current administration was geared around student loan debt, and now the program is in place to forgive $10,000 for some, and up to $20,000 if you have a Pell Grant. The one major point she wanted to emphasize to Willie was that this does not only apply to those who have graduated college.
“And also to emphasize Willie, that, that is the case, even if you did not graduate. Right. And I emphasize that because sadly, we do have so many folks who were not able to see it through in terms of graduation, so either they had other demands in their life, or they had to get the work or they couldn’t afford to stay in school. So it’s important to know if you accumulated that debt during the time you were in college, even if you didn’t graduate, you still qualify.”
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Prior to wrapping up the conversation, Willie opens up to VP Harris about his own story of being adopted and wanted to know from her specifically now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, what other resources are being put into the likes of foster care and adoption, as it pertains to the overflow of children that he believes will be happening soon because of this ruling.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS ON THE SUPREME COURTS DECISION TO OVERTURN ROE v. WADE
VP Kamala Harris: And first of all, thank you for sharing your beautiful story, too, points, one, on the issue of Roe itself, let’s recognize that with that Supreme Court decision, the Supreme Court took a constitutional right that had recognized from the women of America. And here’s the bottom line, you do not have to abandon your faith or your religious beliefs to agree that a woman should be able to make that decision for herself regarding her own body and not have a government tell her what to do. So in that regard, elections matter, find out who’s running at a local at a state and federal level, in your community, and, and find out where they stand on this issue, because it’s very important because it’s about fights. And in a lot of places, I’m saying the same people who are attacking a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body, are the same people in many places who are attacking voting rights, who are attacking individual rights, attacking LGBTQ rights. And so let’s understand what’s happening and what’s at play on the issue of foster care. You know, when I was attorney general, I actually created what I call the Bureau of children’s justice. And one of my main areas of focus was to make sure we were protecting and supporting our children who ended up in the foster care system, because I want that every child would have the experience that you have had, which is to be nurtured, to be loved, to be supported, to give to be given opportunities to do what to reach their God given potential. And so one of the things that we are doing right now is we are actually proposing a $10 billion investment in child welfare to actually strengthen what we can do to support children in the foster care system. Because if you and I know, children end up in that system through circumstances, they have no power over. And far too many of them getting neglected in, you know, in the system, and we’ve got to understand those babies, those young people deserve every opportunity to have loved to thrive, and to reach their capacity and feel so very strongly about that. Because sadly, we know plenty of stories that are not your story, Willie. And it breaks my heart and I think we all have to agree. These are the children of the community. And we should all feel a personal sense of responsibility to make sure that they are protected that they are safe and they are given resources.
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You can watch the entire interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and Willie Moore Jr. in the video above!
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Vice President Kamala Harris Details $5 Billion For HBCU Support & Student Loan Forgiveness was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
