Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

A businesswoman who has described herself as “a real Democrat,” Ms. Newman also ran in 2018 against Mr. Lipinski and lost by about 2,000 votes.

“Marie Newman is a textbook example of one of the ways that we could be better as a party — to come from a deep blue seat and to be championing all the issues we need to be championing,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview.

Of Mr. Lipinski, she said: “The fact that a deep blue seat is advocating for many parts of the Republican agenda is extremely problematic. We’re not talking about a swing state that is being forced to take tough votes.”

...
“This campaign is about putting someone in place that is in alignment directly with the district on issues like affordability for the middle class and working families, the Green New Deal,” Ms. Newman said in an interview on Monday, adding that she and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez “share some very similar values.”

lpetrich · Sep 18, 2019

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-Style Challengers Looking to Unseat the Democrats’ Top Brass in 2020

Several of these primaries will air substantial policy differences over the issues dominating debate among Democrats right now, like Medicare-for-All. In other races, the ideological daylight between candidates will be slim.

But on the whole, 2020’s bumper crop of challenges centers on how well a new generation of Democrats can sell the idea that the party’s old guard is no longer capable of forcefully leading on a range of key issues—including, as Gaetz’s trollish interlude underscored, their commitment to holding Trump’s feet to the fire.

According to Neal Kwatra, a Democratic strategist in New York, the phenomenon amounts to an escalation in Democrats’ internal debates over what they stand for. “What you’re seeing is, these broader challenges are much less about ideology and more about the fighting spirit of the party, what it’s willing to do, how it’s going to hold Trump and the Republican Party writ large accountable,” Kwatra told The Daily Beast. “I think that’s a generational challenge.”

AOC: WeWork shows why private markets are risky to retail investors - Business Insider

At a congressional hearing last week, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed to WeWork as an example of the dangers of opening up private markets to everyday investors.

Unlike public companies, private companies aren't required to disclose to ordinary investors audited financial statements or other information those investors might need to determine a fair value for the companies' stocks, she said.

After being valued at $47 billion in a private funding round in January, WeWork is now considering going public at a valuation of as little as $10 billion.

If an everyday person had invested in WeWork at a $47 billion valuation, that investor would be "getting fleeced" now, she said.

She quizzed some people about how little such companies have to disclose, finding that in one case, a newspaper article was the main info about the company's financials. Her time ran out when she said that WeWork investors are "getting fleeced", which she followed with a laugh.

She herself once tried to start a business, a book-publishing company called Brook Avenue Press, but it failed before it released anything. She was also involved in another startup, but it disappeared without a trace.

angelo · Sep 18, 2019

lpetrich said:
PyramidHead, I concede that I was being broad about "average", including not only the mean, but also the median.

GDP wage: $58/hr

Mean wage: $36/hr

Median wage: $23/hr

This is called Capitalist Democracy! It's far from being perfect, but sure beats the hell out of any of the alternatives!

lpetrich · Sep 18, 2019

AOC Is the Trump-Era Hero We Need | Common Dreams Views

On Monday evening, President Trump pressed send on a tweet declaring that in the next week, ICE would begin removing “the millions of illegal aliens” who are in the United States. This, of course, was not true. ICE deports about 7,000 immigrants per month, which is rather short of the roughly 10.5 million undocumented immigrants currently residing in the United States. The tweet, coming two days before Trump’s big reelection rally, seemed tailor-made to send Democrats into paroxysms of rage and force us into a law-and-order debate in which we stand on the side of the lawbreakers.

AOC's response was to focus on the inhumanity of the detention camps, calling them "concentration camps" and saying about them "never again". The right wing fell for what she said, making a lot of people discuss concentration camps.

Some Democrats are very uncomfortable with her.

They are afraid that her prominence as a Democratic messenger will make it easier for Republicans to caricature Democrats as having been taken over by the “loony left.” I have news for you — they’ll do that anyway.

They’ve been using Pelosi and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Hillary Clinton as boogeymen for years, distorting their positions and caricaturing them in a misogynistic way, and they’ll continue to do so, with or without AOC. But these donors and establishment types don’t recognize how brilliantly effective AOC is as a messenger for Democrats in the Trump era.

She has also described Puerto Rico as an American colony, and she has described the Electoral College as electoral affirmative action.

southernhybrid · Sep 18, 2019

Looks like our dear little AOC is growing up. Good for her.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/us/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-washington.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

WASHINGTON — Less than two weeks after being sworn in last year, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a young progressive star fresh off an upset of one of the top Democratic leaders in the House, put her fellow Democrats on notice that she would soon be coming for them, too.

Appearing in a promotional video for Justice Democrats — the insurgent liberal group dedicated to unseating entrenched Democratic lawmakers that helped sweep her to power — Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx firebrand, urged her supporters to recruit candidates to run against her new colleagues. She was flanked by the group’s three founders, two of whom had just taken top jobs in her office. There were even whispers that she might try to oust Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a rising star regarded by many Democrats as a future speaker.

But after nearly nine months, with her eyes now wide open to the downsides of her revolutionary reputation and social media fame, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has tempered her brash, institution-be-damned style with something different: a careful political calculus that adheres more closely to the unwritten rules of Washington she once disdained.

“I think I have more of a context of what it takes to do this job and survive on a day-to-day basis in a culture that is inherently hostile to people like me,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview.

SIGN UP

“It’s not just about being an activist,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “It forces you to grow. So it doesn’t mean you don’t endorse activists, but it also requires an assessment for a capacity of growth and how you navigate a space like this.”

When she first arrived on Capitol Hill, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and her team made it clear they planned to use their perch inside Congress as a platform for their divisive, outsider brand of politics. On her first day of orientation, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez joined protesters camped outside Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office agitating for the Green New Deal.

“It could have made people mad; they could have put me on the dog walking committee,” she joked later that week on a Justice Democrats conference call promoting the organization’s candidate recruitment campaign. “They still might.”

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez may have meant it as an offhand quip, but her comment underscored a reality on Capitol Hill that she and her team were slow to fully appreciate: the extent to which power and the ability to get things done in the House were dependent on personal relationships and respect for the hierarchy.

The first-term congresswoman enjoys rich public support outside Congress, particularly on the social media platforms where progressive activism thrives. But the approach that she and her cohorts champion — pulling the institution to the left in part by threatening the careers of any Democrats who fail to embrace their ideas — quickly alienated many of her colleagues, and has made it difficult for her to get anything done.

In private conversations, many of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s Democratic colleagues routinely complain that in her zeal to build her social media celebrity and political brand, she is too quick to cast aspersions on her fellow lawmakers, painting them as apologists for the status quo.

lpetrich · Sep 18, 2019

Yes indeed, How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Learned to Play by Washington’s Rules - The New York Times - she'd wanted primary challenges of several Democrats. She's backed away from doing that, sticking to only those that some of her fellow Democrats also support, like Marie Newman vs. Dan Lipinski in Illinois.

“In many ways, I feel like I walk around with a scarlet letter because many members who just have any primary, whether I know about it or not, tend to project that onto me,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview. “In many ways, I feel like I walk through that body as a symbol of someone who should not be there and a threat to the way power is organized.”

She said she has gone through a “loss of innocence and naïveté,” realizing that it was impossible to separate the legislative work of serving in Congress with the politics of re-election campaigns.

“They are frankly much closer in that dynamic and much closer in overlapping than a lot of people tend to realize,” she said.

That article also mentioned Saikat Chakrabarti's comparison of centrist Democrats to Southern segregationists. AOC reportedly called it "divisive". Two weeks later, he resigned. His replacement, Anita Eckblad, had earlier worked for Kamala Harris.

And while it is not clear how many more Justice Democrats Ms. Ocasio-Cortez will endorse, she said she was still “very wedded” to the insurgent theory of change that propelled her to Congress.

“Change by nature takes friction,” she said. “It’s just a question of how we move through it.”

On the plus side, she has also been very diligent, and some of her hearings have become legendary. I'd say the Michael Cohen one and the Corruption Game one.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "What great news!
Shout out to all our non-binary fam in the world, and the activists who’ve worked hard to let us celebrate the full spectrum of humanity

*

https://t.co/BkpdVPleNe" / Twitter
Merriam-Webster on Twitter: "The nonbinary pronoun 'they' has been added to the dictionary. https://t.co/tadl1VdfB0" / Twitter

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "In America, people aren’t paid a living wage, healthcare isn’t guaranteed, and educating yourself to skill up will likely put you thousands of dollars in debt.
Tip.
If you want to change that, tip and join the progressive movement. See you in the streets.

https://t.co/NWqUSU0Qhs" / Twitter noting
The New York Times on Twitter: "To tip, or not to tip — that is the question many customers face when using touch-screen payment systems in restaurants. A travel writer wonders if there is enough consensus on a standard etiquette, or if data could help. https://t.co/M5T8NqcjIT" / Twitter noting
Counter Service Tipping: Who Gives? - The New York Times
Activism is what will work, and it's activism that we will need. So try to get involved. Even some behind-the-scenes role would be good.

lpetrich · Sep 19, 2019

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Instagram: “Who do you call when White House ethics are on fire?

*

”
With a picture of AOC next to a big wooden box that is full of fire extinguishers and with "AOC Fire Extinguisher" spraypainted on it.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Today was Puerto Rico Advocacy Day in DC

Here’s what we’re fighting for:
1. Full audit of Puerto Rico’s debt
2. Cancellation of PR’s debt
3. End La Junta and establish oversight accountable to the people
4. A #GreenNewDeal to rebuild PR https://t.co/VVNCYPL6qR" / Twitter

AOC claims that PR's debt is illegal and the result of Wall Street profiteering. She also says that it is important to act as a movement, that no one person can do it. Not even herself, as I'm sure she would agree. Hopefully eventually leading to self-determination for the island.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Y aquí tratando en Español y Spanglish (fue un poquito difícil

¡perdón!) https://t.co/xGUCWaRM7C" / Twitter
(Google Translate) And here trying in Spanish and Spanglish (it was a bit difficult

sorry!)
With an embarrassment(?) emoji. Her audience helped her out a bit with her Spanish version of these four demands.

lpetrich · Sep 19, 2019

I think that AOC would agree with EW here: Elizabeth Warren on Twitter: "If we're going to make big, structural change, we're going to need someone leading from the inside—but we'll also need a grassroots movement pushing from the outside. The selfie line gives me a moment (or a few thousand moments) to meet that movement. https://t.co/yN2J4GjC5t" / Twitter

- Hunch - "adventures in learning and social enterprise" - A blast from the past, courtesy of the Internet Archive. A short-lived blog from her college years and a little after. The only surviving page has entries from late 2011 to early 2013.

AOC: "What Are You Waiting For?" - on publishing one's work.

AOC: "The $30,000 Kindergarten: Learning and the New Economy"

She started with "Plato was one of the first thinkers to compare how societies function to how individuals function." Dunno about that, but his student Aristotle wrote the book "Politics", a book that got into that a lot, not only what we now call politics, but also what we'd call sociology. She then got into stages of development:

"Traditional economies, typically in their first phase, are natural-resource based." - extraction-based: farming, foraging, logging, mining, ...
"Manufacturing-based"
"innovation (or knowledge)-based." - or more generally, service-based

Economies are mixtures of extraction, manufacturing, and services. I note that preindustrial ones were dominated by extraction, and the Industrial Revolution produced dominance by manufacturing. Over the last half-century, services and knowledge have emerged as dominant factors. She continues by stating that this makes education important, as a way of preparing for such an economy.

She mentioned elite NYC families paying $30,000 per year for kindergarten. I doubt that such an education is much better than a good middle-class one, however. It seems like a way of maintaining some exclusive club.

"Brook Avenue Press -- the children's book venture a group of NYC middle schoolers and I are working on -- is a tiny, experimental attempt at human capital investment in an unconventional place. With some luck, a story might prompt an interesting conversation or provoke a question that a child hadn't thought of before. What would happen if we all tried to stir the pot, in our own unique way?" - that was AOC's publishing company. All that survives of it is her plug for it on YouTube and a preview page showing "L = laundromat, M = Metrocard, N = newspaper".

AOC: "What you do < Why you do"

She notes that "what do you do?" often has a simple answer, but for some people, it does not describe them very well. Like her:

"It is much easier for me to answer what I believe and what I am working toward rather than what I do, mainly because my actions are a smattering of different activities that fit within a central narrative of who I am and what I believe. If I described to you what I do – create curriculum, write, teach, launch projects, read, play piano, paint – it wouldn't make much sense without the context of my beliefs – one being that we as a nation must carry our strengths and principles into the 21st century, and the place to start is in revolutionizing education."

AOC:

“It's always been most important for me to figure out "my space" rather than trying to check out what everyone else is up to, minute by minute. Technology is making it easier to connect to other people, but maybe harder to keep connected to yourself-- and that's essential for any artist, I think.”

- Jay Z, Decoded

AOC: "The Creative Mandate" - describing how she decided to return to the Bronx where she graduated, because that is where she spent her early years and because that is where she is rooted. "There are certain experiences a book can never teach."

alexocasio | Flickr - AOC's visit to Mexico City in 2011 - she went to the art museum there.

lpetrich · Sep 19, 2019

Futuring and digital storytelling with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez | Bryan Alexander - discussing the "futuring" and the digital storytelling in it.

This video has many features well known in the futures community. It sketches out a scenario of what the world could look like if certain things come to pass – in this case, if some form of the Green New Deal came into being. It combines both large-scale trends (policy changes, ecological transformation) and personal details (our heroine’s career). The details give us enough grounding to imagine not only this possible future, but ourselves within it.

BA then describes how Amazon and Anon do product and project pitches: show what the completed ones would be like.

It starts off with “Ah, the bullet train from New York to DC…” and Future AOC with a different hairstyle, one with a strip of her hair dyed white.

Like Edward Bellamy's 1889 "Looking Backward" (from 2000), William Morris's 1890 "News From Nowhere" (from a distant time), or 2009 "The Age of Stupid" (from 2055).

Looking back from the future enables looking into the past, and this video covers that also. It starts in the 1970's, advances to the present, complete with Present AOC, then gets into its optimistic future.

As a digital story, “Message” does some interesting multimedia things. It pairs spoken word narration (one transcript here) with reflective images, the latter being (or simulating in the process of being) hand drawn. AOC’s voice brims with energy and passion, a good example of what StoryCenter refers to as “the gift of voice.” Several sound effects accentuate key details, like a boiling sound behind a rising temperature or a ticking clock backing words describing a tight timeline. The musical soundtrack is fairly low-key, and only appears during the first 45 and last 80 seconds, but still emits a quietly propulsive energy, ultimately accentuating the theme of progress.

A transcript

Though the video is about large-scale events, it does have characters, the narrator and Ileana, a sort of AOC Junior.

Molly Crabapple, the artist: “Me and Naomi and Avi and Kim and Jim and Alexandria, we wanted to create a vision of a hopeful, beautiful future, of a future that we wanted to live in.”

lpetrich · Sep 19, 2019

Badrun Khan to challenge Ocasio-Cortez in Democratic primary | TheHill

A local activist in Queens announced a primary challenge against New York progressive heavyweight Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) on Wednesday.

Badrun Khan, whose website describes her as an activist who has “spent her entire life fighting for justice, equality and fairness in her community,” says she is fighting for “REAL Results... Not Empty Promises,” suggesting how she views Ocasio-Cortez’s progressive platform.

Khan lists a handful of policy positions on her website but doesn't touch on top progressive priorities.

Her site: Badrun Khan for Congress - Democratic Candidate Challenging Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

She favors expanding Social Security and Medicare benefits and ensuring health care “is made available for all and that those who have existing coverage can choose to keep what they currently have.” She stops short of declaring support for any variant of “Medicare for All.”

But Khan voiced support for a lobbying ban on former members of Congress that has gained popularity among Democrats.

So she expects to get "REAL results" by not trying to do very much.

Ocasio-Cortez responded to Khan's candidacy on Wednesday by saying, “I just focus on delivering for my district and doing the best job. I try not to focus too much on other folks in the field.”

Commendable sentiment, but sooner or later, she will have to take note. Will she argue that BK promises to get "REAL results" by not promising to do very much?

Loren Pechtel · Sep 19, 2019

lpetrich said:
AOC claims that PR's debt is illegal and the result of Wall Street profiteering. She also says that it is important to act as a movement, that no one person can do it. Not even herself, as I'm sure she would agree. Hopefully eventually leading to self-determination for the island.

The left will never believe that budget problems are due to leftist policies. PR borrowed and borrowed for social spending, we see the result. The result should be a bankruptcy so the bondholders are wiped out and people will be reluctant to buy bonds from governments that can't pay them back. That would make the problem come home to roost much sooner rather than letting it wreck a place.

lpetrich · Sep 19, 2019

Katie Boué on Twitter: "As a young latinx woman fired up on political action, standing outside of @AOC’s office today between outdoor lobbying meetings was a powerful feeling.
And yes, I cried. https://t.co/4e9uMwygzd" / Twitter - AOC's office door continues to have lots of notes on the walls around it from well-wishers.

AOC fighting to block massive ‘Walmart of Liquor’ from her Queens district - it would use liquor as a loss leader for selling its other items.

Neighborhood liquor merchants applauded AOC for going to the mat for them after appealing to her office for help.

“We’re very pleased the congresswoman is getting involved. She’s got a big voice and she’s standing up for small family businesses,” said Bobby Battipaglia, owner of Grand Wine & Liquor in Astoria.

Battipaglia said he met with a top AOC staffer to plead his case and urged the congresswoman to write the letter.

Meet the Democrat challenging Ocasio-Cortez in 2020 - YouTube - Badrun Khan. She blamed the failure of the Amazon Queens HQ2 deal on AOC, and Fox quoted a clip of AOC saying that she was happy that local people got active and defeated it. She also made a big issue about the cost of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. She even claimed that AOC is not very active in her community.

Strikes me as Foxbot nonsense. AOC has shown up in her community MUCH more often than her predecessor, Joe Crowley.

AOC participated in today's hearing on DC statehood, and she summarizes what she said in it:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "DC was the 1st territory in the United States to free the enslaved.
It’s where Black Americans fled the tyranny of slavery & towards greater freedom, to DC. Yet today it’s where 2nd class citizenship reigns, and the right to vote is denied.
It’s time to recognize DC statehood. https://t.co/AkfaRHw38C" / Twitter

lpetrich · Sep 20, 2019

In response to that recent NYT article about AOC:
Cynthia Nixon on Twitter: "Sorry ⁦@nytimes⁩, if you pushed aside your desperate desire for a taming of the shrew moment, you would be reporting rather on @AOC’s preternatural ability to play a sublime inside-outside game that moves her agenda forward. https://t.co/Mzsl5F6QZc" / Twitter

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "@CynthiaNixon @nytimes There will always be powerful interest in promoting the idea that the left is losing power 1 way or another.
The big way they try to dismantle the left isn’t to attack it, but to gaslight & deflate it.
Dripping condescension that I’m being “educated” should be a big red flag

" / Twitter

Ocasio-Cortez blames 'hazing mentality' for opposition to student loan debt forgiveness | Fox News
Ocasio-Cortez: Opposing Student Loan Forgiveness a 'Hazing Mentality' - YouTube - "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said that Congress should pass free public college tuition at the same time as student loan forgiveness as a way to tackle student loan debt for future students."

"I think it's kind of this hazing mentality -- like, because I was hazed, now everyone else needs to be hazed in the future," she told journalist Nicholas Ballasy.

"As someone who's paid off thousands of dollars in student loans, I don't think that repeating the same mistake and perpetuating it for the next generation is fair," Ocasio-Cortez said.

"You know, our generation has been screwed over in a lot of ways -- many ways, and student loans is one of them. I think student loan forgiveness is one basic right," she added.

The freshman congresswoman, 28, posted her own student debt at a congressional hearing earlier in September. “I literally made a student loan payment while I was sitting here at this chair, and I looked at my balance, and it was $20,237.16,” she said. “I just made a payment that took me down to $19,000 so I feel really accomplished right now," she added, apparently mocking Republicans.

I think that she is very, very right. It's not good to subject later generations to some burden just because one had to suffer it.

angelo · Sep 20, 2019

It seems to me this " genius" who seeks to be in the limelight so much should really have gone to Hollywood to seek fame and fortune , not a socialist loudmouth member of congress!

lpetrich · Sep 20, 2019

That's in character with AOC's other positions. In an Instagram post some months back, she mused on a shopping basket with food items in it, writing about how she had long been insecure about what her next meal would be, and that she now has security about that. She stated that she will work as hard as she can to ensure that everybody will be in that happy state. Likewise, after driving to a national park in California, she mused on protecting places like that for future generations, and for ensuring that everybody can have the leisure for enjoying such places.

#younggiftedbroke airs TONIGHT on BET! on Twitter: "Today, he is called a hero. Then...a socialist. Sound familiar https://t.co/QUvpmhIfDP" / Twitter noting
Rep. Ilhan Omar on Twitter: "In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called on America to "guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work."
It's time to make that vision a reality. It's time to provide a federal jobs guarantee for everyone who wants to work! https://t.co/fzq1RoYNjg" / Twitter
Ilhan Omar and Sen. Cory Booker have introduced a bill to start a pilot program for doing that in 15 communities. The idea is not new: FDR and MLK had proposed it. I'm mentioning it here because it is one of AOC's campaign promises and because IO is one of AOC's friends in Congress.

AOC mentioned in an Instagram comment this video: A N G E L A R Y E on Instagram: “#WashingtonDC The Squad and I are taking over the #NAACP town hall at #CBCFALC2019! Yesterday, @Ilhan, @AyannaPressley, @RepRashida, and…”

A N G E L A R Y E on Instagram: “Join me and The Squad: @repocasiocortez, @repilhan, @repayannapressley, & @reprashida for @naacp’s The Road to 2020 Democracy in Danger…”

A N G E L A R Y E on Instagram: “What an honor it was to sit with “The Squad,” some of the fiercest women I know, to discuss the most pressing issues facing the country.…”

lpetrich · Sep 20, 2019

angelo said:
It seems to me this " genius" who seeks to be in the limelight so much should really have gone to Hollywood to seek fame and fortune , not a socialist loudmouth member of congress!

Although I'm sure that AOC calls herself a socialist out of what she means by that word, it would fit if she did so to troll the right wing. Likewise with referring to concentration camps. In fact, I'm surprised that right-wingers aren't denouncing AOC as a troll.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Instagram: “Squad . cc @ilhanmn @ayannapressley @rashidatlaib” - the first known reference to this term in this context.

NAACP Live Town Hall: Road to 2020 - video at Facebook

Started out with AR asking all four of RT, AOC, AP, and IO some quick-response questions, like Uber or Lyft for RT and stilettos or running shoes for AOC. She responded stilettos, but she said that she should do running shoes more.

RT talked about going door-to-door rather than trying to get big money. AOC talked about building one's own political organization rather than depending on existing ones. Also using social-media tools. IO talked about increasing the voterbase, and about meeting lots of potential voters.

RT then talked about how connected she is to the black community in Detroit, how supportive they were, even though she is racially off-white (my term for Caucasoid/macro-European without being officially "white"). AOC then talked about her experience as an educator and a community organizer, though she notes that being a waitress/bartender was great preparation in some ways. Such things as sexual harassment, working for tips on less than minimum wage, going home on a subway train at 3 am. So she had a lot of preparation. AOC also says that Republicans are afraid of her and what she represents, and that some Democrats don't appreciate her as much as those Republicans do.

AR then asked what made her panelists reject incrementalism. AOC responded to drastic solutions being called "unrealistic" by describing as "unrealistic" rent rising with wages not rising for the last 30 years, with NYC having the highest rates of homelessness since the Great Depression. For every homeless person, there are "several" vacant apartments in Manhattan, used by the economic elite to launder their money. As to climate change, not responding with a solution as big as the magnitude of the crisis. Like Miami not existing in a few years.

Then RT on how it isn't all that expensive to help many of the unfortunates that she and others have been talking about. Then stuff like grotesquely expensive insulin. Stuff like the BOOST act to fix it. IO mentioned military bases all over the world. AP intends to release a bill to abolish the Federal death penalty.

Then how does one get through the hostility that one suffers from. AOC answered that the first step is to recognize that one is not the crazy one, that one is in a hostile environment, that one's worth does not depend on the approval of one's opponents. She says that she prays for such people, because they carry what she calls a weight and an ugliness and an anger within them -- it is their burden but not one's burden. The second step is to center one's spiritual self in whatever way one does that, whether by prayer or by reading or by contemplation / meditation. She thinks that we feel connected to a greater force and to a greater humanity. We need to connect ourselves to that not just occasionally, but every day, since one is in a hostile environment. Also be aware that one is on the front lines of a battle, one that will open paths for many other people.

AOC likes to think of

Ruby Bridges, a black woman who went to an all-white school in 1960 as a 6-year-old girl. Something that caused a lot of outrage and boycotting - she was escorted by Federal marshals, all but one teacher refused to teach her, and many parents pulled their children out of that school. But many people, both black and white, were supportive of her and her family. She thought of that when at the detention facility in Clint, TX, where she and fellow Congressmembers were subjected to hateful and bigoted nastiness from right-wing protesters. She also said that RB was doing it not just for herself but for the whole nation. She then summed up her advice, and recommended not giving in to dehumanization.

AP then said that we should "inform joy in our lives". IO's response to hatred is to be loving. AOC noted that one ought to be super clear whose approval counts. When she goes to work, she knows whose opinions to care about and whose opinions not to care about. Some people will criticize out of good faith and love for community, and AOC will listen. However, she does not care what the President thinks of her. She cares about what these people think: her family, friends, community, "a sisterhood", "the movement". But she recognizes that some people don't care about her well-being, and she ignores such people.

IO noted that one might not have a family or friends or community that understand or approve of what one wants to do, so one must center oneself.

RT adds that one might want to assert oneself by announcing one's presence ("Boo!") and agrees with AP that one shouldn't let other people take one's joy away. She also likes to use humor, even "inappropriate" humor.

AOC sometimes says some very enlightened things, and it's great that she is where she is. Even her mistakes can be interesting.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Contributor

Contributor

Contributor

Contributor

Contributor

Contributor

Deleted

Contributor

Contributor

Contributor

Contributor

Contributor

Contributor

Contributor

Super Moderator

Contributor

Contributor

Deleted

Contributor

Contributor