(UnitedHeadlines.com) – During her Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech Jan. 15 in South Carolina, Vice President Kamala Harris pleaded with black voters to join Democrats in saving the country from a “profound threat.”
Harris was the keynote speaker at the NAACP’s annual King Day at the Dome event in Columbia, South Carolina, which included marching to the South Carolina House of Representatives and a prayer service. In her speech, she called on Democrats to help protect the country from Republicans, a central message of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.
Harris quoted King’s late widow, Coretta Scott King, that “Freedom is never truly won” but instead won and earned with every generation. She urged voters to roll up their sleeves to save the country from threats to democracy. Harris said a “full-on attack on hard-fought, hard-won freedoms” is happening today, citing such things as Roe v. Wade being overturned by the Supreme Court, gun violence and long voting lines.
Protesters who were chanting and waving Palestinian flags, a sign of dissent within the Democratic Party about Biden’s policy on Israel, were outside the venue while she spoke.
Her speech comes not long before the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary scheduled for Feb. 3, as South Carolina is home to a hugely influential black voting bloc. The first black vice president in the history of the U.S., Harris is doing outreach to young voters and people of color, two voting groups whose support for Biden has waned. The plea for support comes as polls such as the Economist/YouGov survey show that only 67 percent of black adults have a favorable view of the president as economic anxiety and policy disappointments rise.
While Harris was in South Carolina, Biden spent the holiday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, volunteering for the hunger relief group Philabundance. While there, he loaded packages containing fresh fruit and milk onto a conveyor belt.
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