Kamala Harris’ recent boasts about her tough-on-crime record as California Attorney General have brought back into the spotlight her arrest and prosecution of single black mother Cheree Peoples in 2013, a tragedy I recount in my new short documentary, Arrested by Kamala: A Black Mother’s Story.
There is a three minutes only version of the interview on You Tube as well, Arrested by Kamala.
The story is also told in a riveting rap song of the same name: Arrested by Kamala.
In no small part, Harris ascended to power on the backs of minority women, women like Cheree Peoples, a victim of Harris’s crackdown on truancy. At the time, Harris was not shy about explaining the rationale for the crackdown.
California schools are funded according to average daily attendance, at the time about $30 per student per day. Harris, whose supporters included teachers’ unions, spoke openly about the need to increase school attendance in order to obtain more money from the state and federal governments.
In addressing this issue, Kamala once declared on camera, “I want money!”
Harris instituted a program in San Francisco beginning in 2007 to threaten parents with arrest and a year in jail if their children missed school. When she became California State Attorney General in 2010, Harris took her “arrest the parents” program statewide. She openly laughed on camera about mailing parents letters that threatened jail time, and boasted about sending her most vicious prosecutors from gang and homicide units to intimidate and prosecute parents who had been arrested.
Cheree Peoples paid little attention when the crackdown was announced. Although her daughter Shayla missed considerable school time, Shayla was handicapped. She was born with the debilitating disease Sickle Cell Anemia. She spent many painful days in the hospital receiving blood transfusions and frequent emergency medical care to manage her pain.
Then too, all of Shayla’s absences were excused by her school by way of doctor’s letters from Children’s Hospital. In addition, Cheree Peoples had a “504 Agreement” with the school district which excused Shayla’s absences due to her severe handicap and frequent hospitalizations.
Despite Shayla’s well-documented condition and documentation received by her school, Cheree Peoples was suddenly arrested on orders of Kamala Harris at her home in Buena Park, California, on April 18th, 2013. Among the charges was “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” and other which made Shayla out to be a gang member.
The media, tipped off in advance, photographed Cheree being humiliated as she was “perp walked” in handcuffs to a police car to be booked and fingerprinted at the Santa Anna police station. The degrading photo of the arrest appeared in the local newspaper.
Cheree spent the next two years in court resisting Harris’s crack prosecutors who pressured her to plead guilty. She could not afford a year in jail with Shayla in need of constant car. However, due to the constant court appearances, Cheree could not take care of Shayla and maintain a job. As a result, she lost her apartment and became homeless, moving into a motel with Shayla.
Under all the duress of her mother’s prosecution, Shayla suffered a stroke at only 12 years of age, resulting in permanent paralysis of her right arm and right leg. Because Cheree bravely fought the charges and refused to plead guilty, Kamal Harris’s prosecutors finally just dropped the case against Cheree in 2015.
In 2018, the California Supreme Court ruled that Kamala Harris’s policy of arresting parents for truancy was unconstitutional and her abusive program was ended. In 2019, in her aborted run for the presidency, Harris tried to disown the truancy crackdown, falsely claiming that she had few arrests and no one was jailed.
Cheree was appalled when she heard this. The pain and suffering of two years in court and the humiliation of her arrest are a constant reminder of Harris’ soullessness. Will Kamala Harris apologize to Cheree and so many other women of color for arresting and prosecuting them? Cheree is not holding her breath.
In “Arrested by Kamala,” Cheree calls out Harris’s hypocrisy and declares, “I am not a political person. But I want people to know what Kamala Harris did to me. If she does it to me, she will abuse anyone if you give her the power. My message to all Americans, especially black Americans is, do not trust Kamala Harris!”
Hollywood film director Joel Gilbert is president of Highway 61 Entertainment. Among his many films are political documentaries including The Climate According to AI Al Gore, The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America; Trump: The Art of the Insult; There’s No Place Like Utopia; Dreams from My Real Father; Atomic Jihad; and Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and the Revolt of Islam and the new film and book Michelle Obama 2024: Her Real Life Story and Plan for Power.
Image: Screen shot from Joel Gilbert documentary, by permission
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