The tipping point was was when I was at Standing Rock in 2016,
Surely, this bit is not to be forgotten - she is one of the Standing Rock nutburgers. As we have discussed at length, the whole thing was a manufactured issue. There is no real danger to the Mississippi River, the pipeline does not cross Indian land, and the company was willing to change the exact routing numerous times in response to input. The Standing Rock tribe did not want dialogue, they wanted to kill the "Black Snake" by any means necessary.
and I saw how all of the people there — particularly the Native people and the Lakota Sioux — were putting their whole lives and everything that they had on the line for the protection of their community.
They were not protecting anything, as there never was any danger. Hell, even the inlet for tribal water supply is upstream from where DAPL crosses the Mississippi. The whole thing was a farce, best illustrated by this image.
Yes, they are protesting a oil pipeline by driving a gas guzzler for more than a 1000 miles to get there. And then begging for gasoline because you ran out! The irony is thick!
To paraphrase a parody of a German anti-nuke slogan:
Pipelines, no thanks! My gas comes from the gas station!
I saw how a corporation had literally militarized itself against the American people,
Indians really need to choose - do they want to be part of the "American people", or do they want to be sovereign? You can't really be both.
That said, the DAPL constructors were defending themselves against a violent mob that did things like chain themselves or even destroy construction equipment or raise tents in the way of construction. Does AOC really suggest companies should be powerless against an angry mob? If a group of pro-lifers decides to fight construction of a Planned Parenthood clinic by destroying equipment and camping at the construction site, should Planned Parenthood and the construction company be powerless to prevent them doing that? Or does this only apply for left-wing causes like being against pipelines?
I believe that every American should have stable, dignified housing; health care; education — that the most very basic needs to sustain modern life should be guaranteed in a moral society.
We already have free K-12 education and programs like Medicaid and Section 8. However ...
You can call that whatever you want to call that. Legislatively, when I knock on a door, the way that it looks like is improved and expanded Medicare for all; it looks like housing is a human right; it looks like a federal jobs guarantee that guarantees a $15 minimum wage,
Federal jobs guarantee? At $15/h? Who is going to pay for that? And what are all these people with guaranteed jobs going to be doing all day? Not to mention that if this federal job is guaranteed, you can do whatever you want, as there is no incentive to work hard or at all. That was the case in eastern European countries during the era of Actually Existing Socialism. Of course, that is not sustainable in the long run, hence the old Soviet joke, "we will pretend to work as long as they pretend to pay us".
It looks like tuition-free public college,
That's an interesting idea, but needs to be looked at carefully. Countries like Germany have free public universities, but there are some caveats. For one, fewer people attend those than attend university in US - many people go the vocational training route where days at school and on the job training as an apprentice are alternated. Second, German universities tend to be more spartan compared to their US counterparts when it comes to amenities.
it looks like the exploration and expansion of federal student-loans forgiveness. When I knock on a door and tell people that that’s the world that I’m fighting for, it’s a no-brainer. In fact, this has almost been a non-conversation actually for voters. I was expecting it to be a bigger deal than it was, and people don’t even bat an eye.
Sure, everybody would like to have their student loans canceled. But should the taxpayers really pay off over a trillion dollars in outstanding student loans, including say a $200,000 loan for an art history degree from a fancy private liberal arts college? Should people who were responsible, attended a public school with much more affordable tuition and thus were able to be pay off their student loans be asked to pay off student loans of people who were not thinking of having to repay the student loans they signed up for?
She notes correctly that one cannot separate class and race issues, that it's not just white people that are lower-middle-class working people.
The problem is that the left always uses race issues to pit whites against so-called "people of color", which are given preference. Look at the ridiculous debate over "reparations". As if almost 50 years of racial preferences in college admissions and hiring wasn't reparation enough!
