Anita Hill Announces Support for Joe Biden, Says He 'Should Be Elected in November'
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Anita Hill says she will be voting for Joe Biden in November.
In CNN's upcoming documentary, Fight for the White House: Joe Biden's Long Journey, Hill, 64, announced her support for the former vice president.
"Notwithstanding all of his limitations in the past, and the mistakes that he made in the past, notwithstanding those — at this point, between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, I think Joe Biden is the person who should be elected in November," Hill said. "Its more about the survivors of gender violence. That's really what it's about."
"My commitment is to finding solutions, and I am more than willing to work with him," Hill added, explaining that she is open to working with Biden on issues of sexual harassment, gender violence and gender discrimination.
Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee during the 1991 confirmation hearing of then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas when Hill testified and said Thomas had allegedly sexually harassed her.
Since then, the Democratic presidential nominee, 77, has been criticized for not stopping the verbal attacks on Hill during the hearing. When Biden first launched his 2020 presidential campaign, he personally called Hill to apologize. He also expressed his regret over “what she endured” testifying against Justice Thomas.
REX/Shutterstock Anita Hill Testifies on Clarence Thomas Nomination, Washington DC, America - 11 Oct 1991
“Vice President Biden has spoken with Anita Hill. They had a private discussion where he shared with her directly his regret for what she endured and his admiration for everything she has done to change the culture around sexual harassment in this country,” a spokesperson for Biden said in a statement to PEOPLE in April 2019.
However, in an interview with the New York Times that was published shortly after, Hill said she did not accept Biden’s call as an apology. “I cannot be satisfied by simply saying I’m sorry for what happened to you. I will be satisfied when I know there is real change and real accountability and real purpose,” she said.
“The focus on apology to me is one thing. But he needs to give an apology to the other women and to the American public because we know now how deeply disappointed Americans around the country were about what they saw,” Hill explained. “And not just women. There are women and men now who have just really lost confidence in our government to respond to the problem of gender violence.”
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Hill's openness to working with Biden, if he's elected in November, is a big change for the lawyer and activist.
"One of the impacts of 1991 was my desire not to really work with the government in any way," she told CNN. "I always said, I think I can be more effective as an outsider, as opposed to an insider. And now, I'm willing to evolve myself, to work for change inside."
"What drives me is the people who have experienced [those issues] and the people who will be experiencing them, if we don't do something about it," Hill said. "That is what has opened me up to do something that I probably would not have said I would do a year ago."
