The highly anticipated 2024 Democratic National Convention, which has been given new life since Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden, got underway on Monday night with a bang of the gavel from Jaime Harrison, the event’s chair.
Harrison offered stirring opening remarks that ended with a call to “rescue our democracy with our MVP, Kamala Harris, and our coach, Tim Walz!” Harrison was the first African American elected to chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, which he left to take the position at the DNC. As Rep. Maxine Waters was presented, the stadium, which was not quite packed with delegates and other spectators, was buzzing with excitement.
Waters, 86, heated the audience even more with a story about civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, who famously and terrifyingly demanded, “Is this America?” before the Democratic National Convention’s Credentials Committee in 1964. After that, Waters turned to Harris.
“Our nominee is no better leader to marshal us into the future,” Waters said. “Kamala has been a courtroom prosecutor, a district attorney, an attorney general, a United States Senator, Vice President of the United States. And when the dust settles in November and Americans of all stripes have elected her president, I know she’ll be thinking about Fannie Lou… In that moment, all of us, from New York to Pennsylvania to Arizona to California — we can ask ourselves, ‘Is this America?’ And we will be able to say loudly and proudly, ‘You’re damn right it is.’”
Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, a wheelchair-using civil rights leader with Parkinson’s disease, came after Waters. Despite being unable to talk due to the illness, Jackson, a 1988 presidential candidate, was brought onto the United Center stage with his family. When the 82-year-old planted a kiss on the audience, many people started crying.
Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles and a potential candidate for Harris’s vice president position in 2020, praised her longtime colleague when she stood up. As their careers as California political figures date back 20 years, Bass, who spent 11 years serving in the House of Representatives and the California State Assembly from 2004 to 2010, took a moment to acknowledge Harris’s decision to establish the state’s Bureau of Children’s Justice in her capacity as attorney general. She also mentioned that Harris even witnessed her swearing in as mayor of Los Angeles in 2023.
“We knew we were sending a message to young women everywhere that they can lead,” Bass said of that moment last year. “She feels the importance of this work in her bones. When Kamala meets a young person, you can feel her passion, you can feel that in her heart, and you can feel her fearlessness, that she is willing to fight for every child. Trust me, Kamala has done this her entire life.”
Delegates enthusiastically embraced Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as their choice for vice president in a voice message from the convention floor, bursting into “U.S.A.” shouts. As the leaders of six significant labor unions, including the AFSCME, SEIU, LIUNA, IBEW, and AFL-CIO, took the stage, the audience could be heard chanting “Union yes!” Kenny Cooper, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, told the assembly that Harris is “bringing back American employment” and that “she is not ashamed to use the word ‘union.'”
Sen. Dick Durbin, a lone white man on the United Center stage on Monday night, took to the podium and launched an offensive against outgoing President Donald Trump, claiming that the “very stable genius” was the first to leave office with fewer Americans employed than when he took office. However, Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow escalated her criticism of the GOP by releasing a bulky novelty book that contained the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump administration—the Democrats’ not-so-subtle tool for scaring voters away from the party.
“Page 873, it says, quote, ‘Conservatives have long believed in either ending law enforcement activities of Independent agencies or ending their independent status,’” McMorrow said. “That sounds pretty boring, but what it means is that under Project 2025, Donald Trump would be able to weaponize the Department of Justice to go after his political opponents. He could even turn the FBI into his own personal police force.”
This is an ongoing news story, please check back for updates.
