Harris says 'everybody needs to be woke' in unearthed clip spreading like wildfire on social media
A clip of Vice President Kamala Harris from 2017 calling on "everybody" to be "woke" resurfaced on social media, sparking critics and conservatives to lambaste the official Democratic nominee as a "Communist functionary" who is "too radical" to serve as president.
"We have to stay woke. Like everybody needs to be woke. And you can talk about if you're the wokest or woker, but just stay more woke than less woke," then-Sen. Harris said in 2017 during Recode's annual Code Conference, alongside philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, during the conference.
The conference focused on issues such as immigration and the environment, including Harris speaking out against the Trump administration's drug policies and immigration polices just moments ahead of her call on Americans to be "woke."
"I get upset when we say we're going to shut our door to refugees who are fleeing such atrocities and have been standing in line for two years to qualify for refugee status, and they arrive here, and we turn them away. Yes, I'm gonna get mad about that. I'm gonna get mad when we have an attorney general who's trying to resuscitate the war on drugs. And he thinks the greatest evil that mankind has ever seen is marijuana. … Leave grandma's medical marijuana alone," Harris said.
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Harris doubled down on her comment in a message posted to X a day later, which read: "We have to stay active. We have to stay woke."
The use of the word "woke" grew in popularity in 2017, when dictionaries such as Oxford and Merriam-Webster added the phrase to their lexicons, defining it as people who are attentive to issues such as social justice. It has since become a catch-all word for left-wing issues and agendas.
Seven years after Harris joined the 2017 conference, critics on social media are lambasting the presumptive Democratic nominee over the clip, including conservative author James Lindsay describing Harris as a "Communist functionary."
"Kamala is a low-level Communist functionary, and I'm tired of being told we have to pretend she's not," he wrote.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on the clip and criticism, but did not immediately receive a reply.
The clip comes after President Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race late last month, which was shortly followed by him endorsing his vice president to pursue winning the White House in his place. Harris officially clinched her party's 2024 presidential nomination on Friday, earning more than a majority of votes from convention delegates, the DNC reported.
Harris now has fewer than 100 days ahead of Nov. 5 to court voters ahead of facing off against former President Donald Trump at the polls. As Harris builds up her campaign, critics have unearthed a bevy of news articles and video clips of the presumptive Democratic nominee, such as her voicing support to the defund the police movement in 2020, and her praise of a pastor who blamed the U.S. for the 9/11 attacks.
Harris is anticipated to announce her running mate in the race this week, who will head with her to Chicago later this month for the Democratic National Convention.