It Doesn't Take a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows

If a President Harris is true to form, yes, she will, or at least will try.

They won’t even let any Palestinian American give a couple minute speech. But Kamala Harris is going to exert massive pressure on Israel to end the conflict? https://t.co/MIbHz901TN

— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) August 22, 2024

The refusal to give a platform to a Palestinian-American to bash Israel does not at all suggest that a President Kamala Harris won't "get up every morning" to try to put an end to a war, even if it means sabotaging a loyal ally.  Summarizing a July, 2020 report in The American Prospect, The Crime Report a few days later explained

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), a leading candidate for vice president, openly defied U.S. Supreme Court orders to reduce overcrowding in California prisons while serving as the state’s attorney general, reports the American Prospect. Working with Gov. Jerry Brown, Harris and her legal team filed motions that were condemned by judges and legal experts as obstructionist, bad-faith, and nonsensical, at one point suggesting that the Supreme Court lacked the jurisdiction to order a reduction in California’s prison population. Judges seriously considered holding the state in contempt of court. Observers worried that Harris’s office had undermined the ability of federal judges to enforce their legal orders at the state level. The resistance to a Supreme Court ruling was aimed at preventing the release of some 5,000 nonviolent offenders, whom courts had cleared as presenting next to no risk of recidivism or threat to public safety.

Despite a straightforward directive from the Supreme Court to identify prisoners for release over a two-year period, the state spent most of that time seesawing between dubious legal filings and flagrant disregard. By early 2013, it became clear that the state had no intention to comply. Harris refused to comment to the Prospect, which reviewed in detail the events leading up the 2011 Supreme Court ruling that required a reduction in the California prisoner count. In the 5-4 decision, conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy joined the court’s liberals, condemning the state for facilitating “needless suffering and death.” Under Attorney General Harris, the state delayed compliance, and by 2012, a report surfaced that proved the state actually intended to increase its prison population.

Not to worry, though.  That was the, but eight or so years later, the same Kamala Harris seems to have undergone a sea change in her perspective.

If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota. https://t.co/t8LXowKIbw

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) June 1, 2020

The Minnesota Freedom Fund was formed to bail out protesters arrested after the murder of George Floyd. However, with Kamala Harris' endorsement, the MFF raised approximately $35 million while most of the individuals arrested were released on their own recognizance. Hence, the organization had a lot of money to spend and few black lives matter protesters to spend it on.  Thus, most of the money went to bail out individuals arrested for common criminal infractions, the majority of whom did not commit violent offenses while awaiting return to court.

Unfortunately, "most of them" did not include Shawn Michael Tillman or George Howard.  Mr. Tillman in December 2021 was charged with gross misdemeanor indecent exposure. In May, the MFF posted $2,000 bail for him and he was released but

soon after, Tilllman was accused of killing Demitri Ellis-Strong. After a Ramsey County jury convicted Tillman, 36, of first-degree murder, a judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Court records from an unrelated case show that the fund also bailed out George Howard on a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge in early August of 2021. Later that month, Howard fatally shot a man in a road rage incident on I-94 in north Minneapolis. Howard, 50, who’s also known as Ricco Lamont Passmore, pleaded guilty in the case, and is serving a nearly 15-year sentence.

The typical person probably would not have expected that money given to bail out individuals protesting police behavior toward blacks would be diverted. However, Harris was not a typical person. She had been a state Attorney General- a prosecutor, as she reminded us three times during her acceptance speech:

She stated "this is one of the reasons I became a prosecutor" because "everyone has a right to safety, to dignity and to justice." Well, everyone except the likes of Demitri Ellis-Strong and Damian Martinez Ortiz.

She bragged "as a prosecutor, when I had a case, I charged it not in the name of the victim but in the name of the people, for a simple reason. In our system of justice, a harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us." That, and in most jurisdictions, that is routine for a prosecutor's office. Harris added ""every day, in the courtroom, I stood proudly before a judge...." Remarkable humility, there.

Harris boasted also "as a young courtroom prosecutor in Oakland, California, I stood up for women and children against predators who abused them." Prosecuting individuals charged with a felony was her job, though if she was at all typical, there were many more plea bargains than trials. This emphasis on her prosecutorial experience was unsurprising given

Throughout the convention, speakers echoed a similar message: “Donald Trump rants about law and order as if he wasn’t a convicted criminal running against a prosecutor,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday.

Angela Alsobrooks, a former prosecutor who is running for Maryland’s open Senate seat, said during her primetime speaking slot at the DNC on Tuesday that Harris is the right candidate to prosecute the case against Trump: “Getting justice for others isn’t a power trip for her—it’s a sacred calling,” she said. “And hear me—Kamala Harris knows how to keep criminals off the streets. And come November, with your help, she’ll keep one out of the Oval Office.”

And yet, in the summer of 2021, Kamala Harris' priority was not "to keep criminals off the streets" but instead to encourage followers to contribute to a fund to bail out protesters. That, it turned out, was unnecessary, something a prosecutor should have been able to ascertain before she tweeted.

So is Kamala Harris the public official who disregards court orders to keep nonviolent offenders locked up- or the "swing the jail doors open" ex-California senator? 

She could be either, which is why her erratic behavior toward the rights of criminal offenders is instructive in trying to discern a President Harris' approach to Mideast policy. The refusal of the presidential nominee in concert with the party's national committee to permit a Palestinian-American to give a speech at the convention is an indicator of nothing. 

Attorney General Kamala Harris, finger sensitive to wind direction, defied the Court to keep inmates, disproportionately black, in prison. In the summer of 2020, Senator Harris' finger again was sensitive as she demonstrated an ability to determine in which way the wind was blowing, toward condemning alleged racial bias.  In the case of the war in Gaza or policy toward Palestinians or Israelis, a President Harris may be neither left nor right but a mere barometer.

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