Kamala’s raisin d’etre: Harris claims she didn’t eat a grape until she was in her 20s because she wanted to show solidarity with boycotting farmers
- Vice President Kamala Harris gave a Labor Day interview to The National about her childhood growing up amongst pro-worker activists
- She appears to have mixed up the timeline of California’s grapes boycotts
- The last and longest of three boycotts took place between 1984 and 2000
- Harris told The National: ‘I didn’t eat a grape until I was in my 20s…It was absolutely ingrained so deeply in me: Never cross a picket line’
Vice President Kamala Harris claimed Monday to have never eaten a grape until she was in her 20s, citing her belief to ‘never cross a picket line.’
Growing up with progressive activist parents, the vice president recounted her years-long support for labor movements including the grapes boycotts in her home state of California.
The last and longest took place from 1984 through 2000.
Harris would have been 19 or 20 when it started, and it ended the month after she turned 36.
‘The farmworkers movement was very much a part of my childhood,’ the vice president told The Nation.
‘This sounds quaint, and so I’m reluctant to say it, but, you know, I didn’t eat a grape until I was in my 20s. Like, literally, had never had a grape.’
She continued, ‘I remember the first time I had a grape, I went, “Wow! This is quite tasty.” It was absolutely ingrained so deeply in me: Never cross a picket line.’
Vice President Kamala Harris said during an interview with The Nation that she did not eat a grape until her 20s due to boycotts in her state
If that’s true then Harris would have run afoul of her own moral code at a time when the United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez were pushing for fairer conditions for workers.
DailyMail.com has reached out to the Harris’ office for comment.
The first grapes strike was organized by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and lasted 1965 through 1970.
Harris, born in 1964, would have spent her earliest years growing up as labor activists shunned the fruit.
Another occurred in 1973, initiated by Chavez and the United Farm Workers.
Harris’ Monday comments are not the first time she’s offered a timeline that has prompted questions.
However, her 20s occurred during the third and largest grapes strike, which took place between 1984 and 2000 (pictured: Farm labor leader and activist Cesar Chavez stands in front of a supermarket as he leads a demonstration in Philadelphia, Penn., on Nov. 14, 1985)
Kamala Harris eats a pork chop at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S. in 2019
Harris grilled the pork chops at the Iowa Pork Producers Association tent in before gobbling down one
‘Oh my God. It’s so good,’ Harris said as she sunk her teeth into the fair treat
After an appearance on The Breakfast Club radio show in February 2019, Harris was initially mocked for suggesting she listened to Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur while smoking marijuana in college.
The two artists’ first albums came out in the early 1990s, after Harris would have graduated.
However, a fuller version of the clip than the one shared by her critics appears to show the vice president could have been responding to a different question.
Radio show co-host DJ Envy asked the then-candidate, ‘What does Kamala Harris listen to?’
Before she could answer, co-host Charlamagne Tha God interjected, ‘What was you listening to when you was high? What was on? What song was playing?’
DJ Envy offers, ‘Snoop?’
Harris, clearly looking at DJ Envy, responds: ‘Oh my goodness. Oh yeah, definitely Snoop. Yeah, Tupac, for sure.’
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