“Chicagoan from Kamala Harris family’s hometown in India among many women of color hosting debate watch parties”, Chicago Sun-Times

By Maudlyne Ihejirika, The Chicago Chronicles, Oct 7, 2020

The inbox filled pretty quickly throughout the day, with invites to vice presidential debate watch parties being planned across Chicago on Wednesday night, hosted by women of color.

That’s a voter base heavily supporting U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, the first Black American woman and first South Asian American ever to grace a major party ticket in our presidential elections.

A large segment of Black women, of course, have claimed the Democratic vice presidential nominee as their own. But her mixed-race heritage offers binate benefit.

Harris enjoys strong support from a large segment of the South Asian community — particularly women, who claim similar ownership in her ascent to the national stage.

“She checks a lot of boxes,” said Bernadette Chopra, 60, of Streeterville, who hails from the same neighborhood in the same town in India where Harris’ late mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, grew up. It’s where Harris herself spent a lot of time while growing up, returning with her mother and younger sister to visit family there every couple of years.

Harris’ mother, a renowned biologist who died of colon cancer in 2009, was born in the Besant Nagar area of Chennai, a city on the southeastern coast of India. She immigrated to the United States in the late 50s to attend a doctoral program at the University of California at Berkeley, where she met her husband, Donald Harris, who had emigrated from Jamaica.

“My home is about 10 miles from the place that Kamala’s grandfather lived, where her mother grew up, so all the neighborhoods she has been talking about on the campaign trail are around my home,” said Chopra, who planned to watch the 8 p.m. debate at home, with husband Vivek Chopra, couchside.

The Chopras son, Sid, and his wife, in Vernon Hills, and their daughter, Sonu Merfeld, and her husband, in Madison, Wisconsin, were going to be a group text away, as the family prepared to share commentary with one another, marking the highs and lows of the debate between Harris and Vice President Mike Pence.

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“Kamala was my first choice for the presidential ticket. From the first time I met her five years ago, I saw in Kamala a woman who was fearless, powerful,” said Bernadette Chopra, a retired nonprofit executive who is currently active on the boards of several organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

“It was so exciting when she was announced as vice presidential nominee. It’s inspiring to hear her describe our little town as a place that shaped her public service aspirations, through her experiences there with her grandfather,” Chopra said.

“To see a woman who identifies as Black but also has a strong lineage in her blood from an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, a heartbeat away from the presidency, is historic. On so many levels, she represents everything about the pivotal moment we find ourselves in on race relations in this country right now.”

Harris, who was raised by her mother after her parents divorced when she was 7, frequently talks of receiving her political bent from her grandfather, P.V. Gopalan, a civil servant in India, with whom she would walk and talk on the beach in Besant Nagar.

“When she speaks of our hometown, and her grandfather’s involvement in the freedom struggles in the ’60s there, it’s all so relatable for me. It takes me back to India,” said Chopra.

“I always tell people, ‘Do not underestimate women from the South of India, because we come from a certain strain. I, too, grew up with a mother who was so politically charged, it seeped into me as well. So when Kamala speaks about getting her civil rights commitment instilled in her by her mother, it’s like she’s talking about my own mother,” Chopra said.

Harris also was the first South Asian American to serve in the U.S. Senate when elected in 2016. She was the second African American woman — Chicago’s Carol Moseley Braun was the first. Harris previously served as California’s attorney general — the first African-American and first woman to serve in that position when elected in 2010.

“I will be glued to the television. I’m hoping Sen. Harris will ask the vice president some of these questions all Americans have right now about the current state of affairs regarding that COVID-19 ‘superspreader’ Supreme Court nomination event at the White House we’ve all been reading about the last week,” said Chopra, who first met Harris at a 2015 fundraiser in Chicago, when Harris was running for the senate.

“I would like to see her question the vice president about the White House coronavirus response, because he was heading the COVID-19 task force. He needs to answer the nation on that,” Chopra said. “I have a lot of hope and faith in Sen. Harris and believe this is going to be her moment. Remember, she’s a prosecutor at heart.”

Chicago Sun-Times