Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: The Antidote To Republican Racism
Posted on 8 August 2019
A rising Democratic politician in New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stands on a platform of equality and dignity – fighting racism and injustice.
Democratic Socialist
Elected in 2016 to the House of Representatives for Queens, New York, Ocasio-Cortez belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) making her the party’s joint-first ever female Representative, together with colleague Rashida Tlaib. The Democratic Socialists of America is an organization of democratic socialist, social democratic and labour-oriented members who live in the United States.
At 29, she was the youngest ever member elected to Congress.
Republicans are terrified of who she is and what she represents – the end of old white man thinking and the rise of young brown skinned thinking.
Republican Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, said:
“You look at this girl Ocasio-Cortez or whatever she is, I mean, she’s in a totally different universe. It’s basically socialism wrapped in ignorance.”
Ron DeSantis
In a tweet, Ocasio-Cortez replied:
“Rep DeSantis, it seems you‘re confused as to ‘whatever I am.’ I am a Puerto Rican woman. It‘s strange you don’t know what that is, given that 75,000 Puerto Ricans have relocated to Florida in the 10 months since [Hurricane] María. But I’m sure these new FL voters appreciate your comments!”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Progressive Values
For her 2016 electoral campaign, Ocasio-Cortez was endorsed by progressive and civil rights organizations such as Justice Democrats and Black Lives Maters. She supports progressive policies such as universal healthcare, full employment, tuition-free public college, ending the privatization of prisons and tightening gun control laws.
On environmental issues, Ocasio-Cortez advocates for the United States to transition by 2035 to an electrical grid running on renewable energy. She is also a champion for the Green New Deal, in which the federal government would invest in the construction of a large scale, green-focused, infrastructure project.
Ocasio-Cortez, also campaigns vigorously for the rights of Puerto Ricans, a territory of the United States, whose citizens face untold hardship in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
On her 2016 campaign video she began by saying, “Women like me aren’t supposed to run for office.”
Later in 2018 she appeared on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, taunting Donald Trump that he doesn’t know, “How to deal with a girl from the Bronx.”
The Squad
Ocasio-Cortez is a member of an informal group of progressive freshmen members of Congress called The Squad, along with Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib.
On 14 July, 2019, Trump attacked The Squad in a tweet, saying that they should “go back and help fix” the countries they came from rather than criticize the American government. He continued to make the same kind of comment over the next several days, even though three of the women, including Ocasio-Cortez, were born in the United States.
Ocasio-Cortez responded in a tweet that “the President’s words [yesterday], telling four American Congresswomen of color ‘to go back to your own country,’ is hallmark language of white supremacists”.
She later added, “we don’t leave the things that we love, and when we love this country, what that means is that we propose the solutions to fix it”.
Image from www.dreshare.com/
