(Fox News) 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.
A clip of Vice President Kamala Harris from 2017 calling on “everybody” to be “woke” resurfaced on social media.(Reuters/Hannah Beier)
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.”
We have to stay active. We have to stay woke. #codecon
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) June 1, 2017
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.
Kamala: “Everybody needs to be woke”
The ads write themselves these days.
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 5, 2024
Kamala Harris says “everybody needs to be woke.”
Nah, we’re good. pic.twitter.com/ZyLBah9PlO
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) August 5, 2024
Radical Kamala Harris: “Everybody needs to be WOKE” pic.twitter.com/dsjk6FvoMX
— Kingsley Wilson (@KingsleyCortes) August 5, 2024
“We have to stay woke. Everybody needs to be woke.”
Kamala Harris is too radical for the White House. pic.twitter.com/xOrgBzniRO
— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) August 5, 2024
