Harris: Detroit key to fighting virus
In Mich. visit, she urges battle for voting rights, boosting vaccinations
The Detroit Youth Choir sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” and a crowd of people at Detroit’s TCF Center cheered Monday as Vice President Kamala Harris took to the podium to speak during her first visit to Michigan since the 2020 election.
“I’ve been here many times, so I say this with knowledge: Detroit really is the definition of resilience,” she said. “Time and again, this city has been rebuilt. This city has been reborn. Time and again, this city has helped lead our nation through war, through recession, and most recently through this pandemic.
“At the very start of the pandemic, companies in Detroit from small-batch manufacturers to Big Three automakers converted their factories and produced protective gear and ventilators for our nation’s hospitals. You did that not only for the folks locally, but nationally.
“As COVID-19 cases rose, it was Detroit’s front-line workers who worked around the clock to help care for those who were sick.”
Harris noted that TCF Center is the place where a field hospital opened during the state’s first COVID-19 surge, and it’s also where the city launched a mass drive-up vaccine clinic in mid-January — among the biggest and first of its kind in the state — inoculating thousands of residents and their “good neighbors” who volunteered to drive them to the convention center.
In the months that have passed since, interest has waned and demand for vaccines has slowed. Detroit — the biggest majority Black city in America — now has the second lowest vaccination rate in the state.
Just 38.34% of city residents ages 12 and older have gotten a single dose of a coronavirus vaccine, which is about 213,000 people, state data show. About 31.5% of Detroiters are considered fully vaccinated.
Only Cass County in southwestern Michigan, has a lower rate of coronavirus vaccine uptake. Statewide, 62.2% of residents 16 and older have gotten at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the state’s firstdose tracker.
“There are still a whole lot of folks who are not yet vaccinated, and that is certainly true here in Detroit,” Harris said, urging people to reach out to their friends and family to encourage them to get COVID-19 vaccines.
Getting a COVID-19 vaccine, she said, is about loving your neighbor. That neighbor could be the person who lives next door, the man on the side of the road, a friend or a stranger.
“Detroit, you know better than most: Resilience is not automatic. Not everybody has it. Resilience is made. Resilience takes determination and it takes work. And resilience requires love. So in that spirit and the spirit of resilience, let us rise up, Detroit. Let us rise up, Michigan. Let us rise up, America, and let us end this pandemic once and for all. We can do this together. I know we can.”
The administration plans to support initiatives to go door to door with vaccines, to “bring the vaccine directly to the people,” Harris said.
“We shouldn’t require that people knock on our door to find out what’s going on,” she said. The Biden-Harris administration is distributing vaccines to pediatricians and primary care doctors, she said, standing up mobile vaccine clinics, too, in hopes of boosting the vaccination rate to protect more people from the highly contagious delta variant, which is now dominant in the U.S.
“Getting vaccinated is the single best defense against COVID-19 and its variants,” she said. “It’s the single best defense. And folks, this delta variant is no joke. Detroit, this delta variant it spreads faster, and it is in many cases reported to be much more serious in terms of its impact, and the vaccine will protect you from it.
“Virtually every person in the hospital sick with COVID-19 and dying from the virus now is unvaccinated.”
Earlier in the day, during a listening session about voting rights with Michigan State Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, lawmakers and community advocates, Harris said “fighting for the right to vote is as American as apple pie. It is so fundamental ... fighting for the principles of our democracy.”
She’s been traveling the country in recent weeks, applauding voting rights work in states such as South Carolina, Texas and Georgia.
In Michigan, which flipped from red to blue
in the 2020 election, Harris said the people turned out “to do what was necessary, to stand in line, to mail in ballots, to vote. And you turned out extraordinary numbers. And when people ask, ‘Well, why is my vote important?’
“Well, we know the people here in Michigan voted because they wanted on the issue of the pandemic a national plan for vaccinations. They voted and they got that. The people of Michigan said, ‘We’re gonna vote because we want more jobs.’ Well, they voted and we have 3 million more jobs.
“The people of Michigan said, ‘We’re going to vote because we want to see children in America lifted out of poverty.’ They voted and we got the child tax credit expanded so that we will lift half of America’s children out of poverty. The people of Michigan have a strong and important voice. And I’m here ... to make sure that all Americans, unencumbered, are able to express their voice through the ballot and through their vote.”
The convention center Harris visited Monday is the same place where eight months ago, chaos erupted around the validity of the Detroit
vote in the 2020 presidential election. As absentee ballots were counted in the belly of TCF in the hours after the Nov. 3 election, waves of poll challengers descended upon it, and Detroit became an epicenter for false claims of voter fraud.
Harris’ visit also comes as Michigan Republican lawmakers aim to pass new, strict voter ID laws that the GOP says would ensure the accuracy and security of the vote.
The legislation would require anyone who tries to vote without identification in the state to cast a provisional ballot that would be counted only if that voter goes to the local clerk’s office and presents an ID and documents verifying their current address within six days of the election.
It also would require security measures for ballot drop boxes that some jurisdictions would likely struggle to afford, ban prepaid postage for absentee ballots and bar the secretary of state from mailing unsolicited absentee ballot applications.
Harris, a former Democratic U.S. senator and California attorney general, is pushing alternative measures.
She announced last week a $25 million expansion of the Democratic National Committee’s “I Will Vote” initiative to make it easier to cast a ballot — whether in person or absentee.
The effort will spend that money to boost voter registration, fund legal challenges to protect voting rights, pay for advertising, social media campaigns and educational materials to get out the vote and use technology and data to fight voter suppression.
Later, during a fund-raising event for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s campaign, Harris lauded the governor’s leadership through the pandemic — despite controversy and multiple protests at the state Capitol over coronavirus restrictions she and her administration had put in place.
“She is an extraordinary, courageous, brilliant, committed leader not only for Michigan, but she is a national leader,” Harris said. “Her
leadership has been ... during some of the most difficult times our country could imagine, extraordinary. During this pandemic, where we saw an incredible loss of life, a loss of jobs, a loss of hope ... she never waned.
“She got up every morning ... to fight for the people of Michigan. I will tell you, she made many a call to the president and to me during this time, talking about the needs of the people of Michigan. She is one of those rare leaders who puts what’s right ahead of what’s popular to represent the people, as they should expect a governor to represent them.
“That makes some people really fearful because that’s some strong powerful stuff to be that kind of leader.”
U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland, said Monday morning that he hoped Harris’ trip to Michigan would not be “just a grip and grin and raise some money for the governor kind of a trip.”
“I hope that she is actually going to listen to community leaders, and make sure that the focus of this administration is on helping Michigan and not hurting it,” he said as the U.S. border with Canada remains closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has had a detrimental impact on the state’s economy.
When it comes to vaccines, Huizenga said: “If you’re not aware of vaccines, at this point, you really are living under a rock. I’m not sure what more, the federal government can or frankly even should do on this.
“That’s the problem with this administration. They think everything needs a federal solution, everything. And sometimes that simply isn’t the case.”