Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris dishes on her favorite way to unwind, in a newly released interview from 2019 with the late activist Ady Barkan.
“What I do to decompress is I cook,” then-Sen. Harris tells Barkan in the video, which posted to YouTube this morning. “So let me tell you, I woke up at five o’clock this morning and I’m making these Vietnamese short ribs, so you may smell the garlic and ginger and lemongrass on me right now, and it’s just about being with family and I just love being with family and cooking for them. That’s what I do to decompress.”
Harris was running for the Democratic presidential nomination at the time of the conversation with Barkan [watch the video below]. She eventually abandoned her White House bid, joined nominee Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate and after his election made history as the first woman and first person of color to serve as VP. On Tuesday, she could be elected the nation’s first female president.
The interview was originally recorded for the 2021 documentary Not Going Quietly, directed by Nicholas Bruckman, a film that explores Barkan’s advocacy for health care reform that he pursued vigorously even after he was diagnosed with ALS. The 42-minute video was released on the one-year anniversary of Barkan’s passing from ALS at the age of 39.
Barkan, communicating through a speech generating device, asked Harris to expand on her cooking enthusiasms. (It’s unclear how much time she’s been able to spend in the kitchen since becoming vice president – presumably, very little).
“I love doing a roast chicken,” Harris shared. “One of the things I love about being home is I have an herb garden and I have rosemary, I have thyme and sage, and I go in the garden and I chop all that up and then I grate lemon rind and I chop garlic and then I put all of that in the chicken and I roast it, slow roast it, and it’s one of my family’s favorites.”
The preliminary “how you unwind” question out of the way, Barkan got down to the meat of the interview – probing Harris about her stance on expansion of access to health care – then perhaps the top issue for Democrats.
“I’ve always been for Medicare for all and still am obviously, and Bernie’s bill is good, but we could do better,” she said, referring to legislation proposed by then fellow Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, senator from Vermont.
As observers of Harris’s current campaign will note, the VP has since changed her position on that issue. “Harris rejects Medicare-for-all altogether,” the Washington Post’s Dan Diamond reported in September, “saying she plans to build on the nation’s existing health-care system rather than replace it.”
At the lone presidential debate with Republican nominee Donald Trump in September, Harris said she supported private health care options. “What we need to do is maintain and grow the Affordable Care Act,” she said. (Trump has falsely claimed he didn’t try to repeal the Affordable Care Act while he was president).
On the campaign trail, Trump has maligned Harris as a “very low-IQ individual” (a taunt he has similarly directed at former Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Maxine Waters, while reserving the adjacent jibe “bird brain” for his former rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Nikki Haley). In the interview with Barkan, Harris offered what could be considered a preemptive rebuttal to Trump, describing herself modestly as “a fairly intelligent person.”
Her self-assessment came in the context of a discussion about assimilating complex medical information when a loved one is receiving treatment for a serious condition. Harris and her younger sister Maya faced that challenge when their mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, told them she had been diagnosed with terminal colon cancer.
“That was one of the worst days of my life, truly,” Harris recalled to Barkan, becoming emotional. Of the health care system, she said, “There are elements of it that work and elements of it that do not work… We have a health care system that is very difficult to navigate and the experience of going through my mother’s illness with her was the experience of a number of things — seeing how you go to different specialists for different kinds of treatment and the medications that they’re prescribing is different. And, so, you’re looking at the charts. I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person, but I don’t know medicine, I don’t know the language of medicine and looking at charts and figuring out, ‘Well, this is not reflective of this chart in terms of the medication she’s supposed to be taking,’ or, ‘What’s on that chart is clearly a medication that I recognize her saying had really adverse impacts on her and she didn’t like it.’ So, it’s about being an advocate for your family member, somebody you love.”
(The portion of the interview relating to Harris and her mother’s cancer treatment was previously released a few months ago by Bruckman, the Not Going Quietly director).
People’s Television, the production company and creative studio founded by Bruckman, and Be A Hero, the progressive organization co-founded by Barkan, posted the full video today “in commemoration of Ady’s legacy and mission,” according to a press release.
“This footage highlights the power of Barkan’s legacy and arrives at a crucial time,” the release observes, “inviting viewers to see Harris’ character and reflect on health care access, economic justice, and the urgency of political engagement as we approach a pivotal election.”
Bruckman said in a statement, “Documenting this conversation I witnessed firsthand how Ady had an incredible ability to call leaders into moral clarity while calling us all into action. In releasing this conversation in its entirety, we hope to bring his voice into this urgent moment, and honor his commitment to a more just, compassionate country.”
“Ady was an incisive and big-hearted activist who knew the power of connecting our lived experiences to policy demands,” added Jamila Headley, executive director of Be A Hero. “His conversation with then-Senator Harris is a master class in how we can advance our fight for healthcare justice by sharing our stories, pointing out how policy is failing patients, and getting commitments from elected officials that make a difference in people’s lives.”
You can watch the video here:
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