Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has told supporters that those in power are trying to turn people against each other, which she says is "not our America.''
The first-term California senator spoke at a rally in her hometown of Oakland, the formal kickoff of her campaign for the nomination. She announced her candidacy last Monday.
Speaking at Oakland's City Hall, Harris says the American Dream and American democracy are under attack and on the line like never before. She says that racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and transphobia are real in the U.S. and must be recognized and dealt with.
Harris also took a swipe at U.S. President Donald Trump's border wall proposal, calling it "the president's medieval vanity project'' and saying it won't stop transnational gangs.
Harris, who spent much of her adolescence living in Montreal and graduated from Westmount High School, said that she's running to be "a president by the people. Of the people. For all the people.''
If Harris emerges from a crowded Democratic field in 2020 to become the party's nominee, and then wins the White House, she'd be the first woman to be president, the first African-American woman to be president and the first woman of Asian descent to be president.