A 9-year-old girl named Violet wears a T-shirt that says “First but not the last” (a phrase Kamala Harris uses to describe herself as the country’s first female vice president). was standing outside the elementary school. Although he had attended once, he was worried about his future if former President Trump was elected next month.

“It’s scary that abortion is no longer an option,” said Violet, who has not been able to vote for nearly 10 years.

Much has changed since Harris, 60, was a girl growing up in Berkeley, but progressive activism remains central to Berkeley’s DNA and, for many, a normal part of childhood. The liberal Bay Area city, known for its hippie counterculture, free speech, and antiwar movements, helped shape Harris early on.

Harris’ ambitions blossomed at Thousand Oaks Elementary School, where she was the first to be bused to the new school as part of Berkeley’s voluntary desegregation program while other parts of the country resisted school district mergers. I was made to do so.

“The students were from all over, so it was a very diverse group. Some grew up in public housing, some were professors’ children,” Harris wrote in her 2019 memoir, “We “The truth held by”.

Just minutes from the famous UC Berkeley campus and located on a quiet street near a charming plaza filled with vegan cafes and “zero waste” shops, the grounds of Thousand Oaks Elementary School are home to graduating students. It features a colorful mural of Harris and other barrier-breaking women. As a group of girls danced to a TikTok trend on a sunny, blue-sky day earlier this month, fourth-grader Allie Van Trump quickly announced that she was “not related to any president.” ” he declared.

“I think it’s really great to be in a place where everyone comes together and feels like Black Lives Matter and all that,” she said of her hometown, which she shares with Harris.

In between learning lessons about California’s mission. Ruth Acty Van Trump, Berkeley’s first black teacher, has heard concerns about Project 2025 from his classmates. She supports Harris and hopes for more humane solutions to immigration and homelessness.

“I hope she becomes president and makes history. It’s like showing other countries that we’re ready to not be racist or sexist,” said the 9-year-old. the boy spoke.

Students at Thousand Oaks Elementary School in Berkeley, the vice president’s alma mater, are ready to talk politics even when they’re not playing, even in fourth grade.

(Peter DaSilva/For the Times)

Harris describes her formative years in a Berkeley duplex as an ideal place for a child of immigrants and an influential introduction to black leadership.

Her parents came to Berkeley from overseas. Her father, Donald Harris, was from Jamaica, and her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was from India. The two “met and fell in love” in college “while participating in the civil rights movement,” Harris writes in “The Truth About Us.”

She talks about her mother’s life-changing experience of seeing outspoken activists on a soapbox in UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza. He marched with Vietnam War protesters and heard Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech.

Harris spent much of her childhood in: rainbow sign, Berkeley’s Black Cultural Center, where singer Nina Simone performed at the age of 7 and famous authors Maya Angelou and Alice Walker signed autographs.

Kamala Harris (left) and her younger sister Maya were raised primarily by their mother, Shyamala Gopalan, among Berkeley activists and professors.

(From “Our Truth: An American Journey” by Kamala Harris)

She wrote that the future vice president “could begin to imagine what the future holds.”

“It was the only national upbringing I knew and I thought everyone else was going through it.”

Aaron Peskin, a San Francisco Board of Supervisors member who is running for mayor, said Berkeley is “where it all started” for Harris. Peskin was Harris’ classmate at Thousand Oaks Elementary School. A black-and-white photo in her memoir shows him sitting cross-legged near little Harris, wearing a pig’s tail, in a first-grade classroom.

Harris said she had a special friendship with her mother, an Israeli immigrant who lashed out at President Ronald Reagan at the family dinner table.

“A lot of original and really important American work started in Berkeley and San Francisco,” Peskin said.

Ms. Peskin met Ms. Harris again in August when they stopped by a glitzy fundraiser at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel. He caught her eye and she waved at him, he said. Secret Service agents made a way for them and they exchanged hugs.

“I thought, ‘How cool is this?'” he said. “He’s my friend from kindergarten.”

State Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) is another politician shaped by a passionate city. She moved from Palos Verdes in the 1970s to study environmental science in college, but said she had no political ambitions. But she soon found herself drawn into the fight over Roe v. Wade, persuading others to vote for Shirley Chisholm, the first black person to run for president of a major party.

“There was this enthusiasm, this pride, this deep discussion,” said Skinner, who served on the Berkeley City Council as a student before being elected to the California State Assembly. “As a kid, I didn’t even know who my congressman was, and now everywhere I go there are political forums and signs with recruiters trying to get me to register to vote or walk around my precinct.” was affixed.

Berkeley has long been known as a center of counterculture activity, represented by People’s Park at UC Grounds since hippies helped build it in 1969.

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Harris is Not exactly embracing far-left cities. (Only 3% of voters are registered Republicans.) She aims to appeal to moderate voters in swing states in a high-stakes presidential race. But Berkeley certainly accepted her.

Campaign signs for Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, are everywhere. website of berkeley school district and City Tourism Bureau Here is a page honoring Harris’ childhood. And many tout their old ties to the history-making presidential candidate.

Skinner once lived on Bancroft Way, just a few blocks from Harris’ childhood home painted yellow, city officials said. We are considering creating an official landmark.

Berkeley City Councilman Ben Bartlett said he once babysat Harris while she was in middle school at her aunt’s house in Oakland.

Mr. Bartlett’s story is typical Berkeley. Bartlett said her mother was an early member of Berkeley. black panther party, A radical political group that disbanded decades ago. his father He was a champion of social justice and fought for affordable housing. His uncle was Ron Dellums, a landmark U.S. congressman from California.

“This is a very community-oriented place, so you can talk politics with people on the street. And we do, we definitely do,” Bartlett said. “All of us have contributed to making this place a place of freedom.”

Earlier this month, standing outside Harris’ former elementary school, a group of knowledgeable fourth graders were ecstatic about the possibility of one of them becoming America’s first female president.

“We’re all feminists, aren’t we?” one girl said with a big nod. Another woman corrected a classmate’s pronunciation of the candidate’s name.

Emmy Feeley, wearing a Thousand Oaks Elementary School T-shirt and dangling yellow duck-shaped earrings, recently wrote a letter to Harris.

Salma Mukhtakir (left) and Emmy Feely, both 9 years old, were enthusiastic about the possibility of someone from their world coming to the White House.

(Peter DaSilva/For the Times)

Emmy’s neighbor told her he was Harris’ art teacher when she was the same age, and she wrote pencils to the politician, saying things like, “You’re my hero,” and “When she was 5 years old. I’ve been looking up since then,” he wrote. To you. “

In her letter, Emmy told Harris that she was a pescatarian and liked to bake. However, the girl was carefully considering whether or not she should mention that she was Jewish. She knows Harris’ husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, is also Jewish, but worries about anti-Semitism.

“What if that letter accidentally falls somewhere on the way to the White House or wherever she lives? … What if it falls into the wrong hands?” she wondered. Ta.

Emmy told Harris anyway. She has a plan to get this letter to her attention. She plans to color the letter hot pink and neon green to make it stand out from all the other mail the vice president receives (which is probably in a boring white envelope).

“I hope she can help those who need it most – those who are sick and don’t deserve to go to prison. And she can protect the environment and animals,” the girl said. As he spoke, he envisioned President Harris. “Especially the penguins.”