More than a year before the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris visited Northern Arizona University on Oct. 17 to engage young people.
The Flagstaff event was her ninth on a more than monthlong tour of college campuses across the United States.
Harris stopped in Arizona to speak with students and teachers on issues that disproportionately affect young people. Voto Latino Foundation President María Teresa Kumar and actor Jay Ellis moderated the conversation.
Three audience members asked Harris questions about topics including immigration, the Israel-Gaza war, education and mineral extraction on Indigenous land.
Harris spoke about what she called fundamental and hard-fought freedoms.
“The freedom to have access to the ballot box; the freedom to love the person you love openly and with pride. It is the freedom to make decisions about your own body and not have the government tell you what you're supposed to do," said Harris.
"In 2020, we had record number of young voter turnout," Harris said. "And here’s the byproduct of that: It scared some people. And so you saw that almost immediately after that election, laws were being passed to purposefully make it more difficult for people to vote.”
Harris urged young people to register to vote in the next cycle and tell others to do the same.
