Re “Magic moment,” “Biden-Harris” editorial and “5 faith facts about VP pick Kamala Harris – a Black Baptist with Hindu family,” Free Press Aug. 13-15 edition:

The two articles and editorials in last week’s edition of the Richmond Free Press complement each other as well as culminate the celebratory and honorable selection by Democrat Joe Biden of U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris as his vice presidential pick for the November election.

Her selection is a comforting joy for all Americans, even suburban housewives, after months of President Trump’s irrational leadership, the despair of the novel coronavirus and national protests after the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Together, this Democratic ticket is the change that’s going to come.

The editorial began with a single line, “Kamala!” – her first name alone. It sounds like “Amandala,” a South African Xhosa/ Zulu word that means “power” and was a banner during Nelson Mandela’s political run in the early 1990s there.

Kamala has it now as the Democratic vice presidential pick. She will attract voters across human diversity in this country.

Let’s not be fooled that the Trump campaign will not go after Sen. Harris’ record as California’s attorney general and her policies for criminalizing truancy and her defense for long prison terms for minor offenses. They likely will play the race card in regard to her decisions affecting African-Americans and others of color. She’ll have to answer. Of course, being a former attorney general, there’s always more under the surface that justifies an outcome. Sen. Harris is consciously tough and will prevail.

The article about her faith background captured the internal, spiritual makeup and moral fiber of Sen. Harris and her heritage— Generation Xer, daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, Black Baptist raised on Hinduism, married to a Jewish man, and a former attorney general and current senator. These personas – My God, what more do we want? This vice presidential pick is a superwoman.

The article also defined her name —“...Kamala means ‘lotus’ in Sanskrit, and is another name for the Hindu goddess Lakshmi... Kamala visited India multiple times as a girl and got to know her relatives there.”

Her name struck me to dig a little deeper. Per flowerglossary.com, the lotus flower is a bean of India, an aquatic plant that blooms delicately beautiful. It is a sacred flower, honored in ancient egyptian hieroglyphics and on statues of Buddhist monks.

The lotus is very adaptive and holds tough and strong in its muddy, soiled environment that resembles today’s Republican politics. A popular quote by Thich Nhat Hanh states, “There is the mud, and there is the lotus that grows out of the mud. We need the mud in order to make the lotus.”

Well, President Trump did not drain the swamp. He created more of it with more mud — knee deep. So a lotus was necessary to rise above that swamp. That lotus is Sen. Kamala D. Harris for a better Biden presidency.

ALDRIC CRAWLEY

Richmond