Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who dropped out of a criminal justice forum at a black college in South Carolina to protest a sponsor giving President Donald Trump a "Bipartisan Justice Award,” dropped back in on Saturday.
On Friday, the campaign for the Democratic presidential hopeful announced she wouldn’t attend the Benedict College forum because the organizer, 20/20 Bipartisan Justice Center, had given Trump an award, and that only a limited number of students were allowed to attend his remarks.
But Columbia, S.C., Mayor Steve Benjamin announced Saturday the forum's part of the event were sponsored only by him and Benedict College, not the 20/20 Justice Center, NBC News reported.
The senator will take part now that the other sponsor isn’t included and because the forum is "free and open to the public, and more [Historically Black College and University] students at Benedict have been included," the campaign said, multiple outlets reported.
Harris' original argument had been that “as the only candidate who attended an HBCU, I know the importance that these spaces hold for young Black Americans."
"Today, when it became clear Donald Trump would receive an award after decades of celebrating mass incarceration, pushing the death penalty for innocent Black Americans, rolling back police accountability measures and racist behavior that puts people’s lives at risk, and then learned all but ten Benedict students are excluded from participating, I cannot in good faith be complicit in papering over his record," Harris said in pulling out.
The event's organizer, the 20/20 Bipartisan Justice Center, had cited Trump's work in getting the criminal justice reform measure, the First Step Act, passed as the impetus for the award.
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