Top Quotes: “AOC: The Fearless Rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and What It Means for America” — Lynda Lopez
“The local child poverty rate is a staggering 40 percent. In health outcomes for its residents, the Bronx ranks dead last in the state of New York: 62nd out of 62 counties, when counting health factors such as obesity rates, smoking, mental health, the quality of air and water, access to healthy foods, unemployment, and income inequality. Schools here are at 105 percent capacity. The poorest of the country’s 435 congressional districts is in the Bronx. The economic realities of this place mean that, for most residents, the security of enough doesn’t exist; lack defines the lives of too many.”
“Ocasio-Cortez was living in this reality in the Bronx when her parents decided to move the family to a suburb 40 minutes north. It was meant to be a step toward a better outcome for her life, but it didn’t suddenly set the family in economic stability. The loss of her father while she was in college meant that, after graduating, she worked to help her mother fight off foreclosure of their home. Her mother still eventually had to sell the house, and Alexandria moved back to the Bronx. It’s from that place that she decided to run for Congress.”
“AOC’s insistence on a living wage for her congressional staff, Kumar believes, was transformational. “I used to be a congressional staffer. When I got to Congress, I was earning so little that I was considering taking on another job. That sounds fine, except when you’re a legislative aide, you might work until 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. I was getting paid so little that I qualified for low-income housing. A starting salary of $54,000 a year (for AOC’s staff) is not only a living wage, it allows someone of my background, who did not have connections, to be at the table. It allows for you not to be shut out of the market because you actually couldn’t do it, financially. That is not small.”
“A lot of the young people who are on Capitol Hill are subsidized by their parents. That was never an option for me. AOC, all of a sudden, created a real meritocracy by allowing anyone to apply, regardless of zip code.””
“”Sandy,” as her family and mends affectionately call her, says she was a “dorky kid.” She was a driven student, the type who asked her parents for a microscope on her birthday, who read the New York Times daily, and who at one point in her childhood wanted to become an obstetrician or gynecologist. In 2007, she won second place in the microbiology category at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for her project on the effects of antioxidants on the life span of roundworms. As a prize, an asteroid was named after her: the 23238 Ocasio-Cortez.
Her high school science teacher, Michael Blueglass, told the New York Times that Alexandria’s passion for science often had a political lens. “She was interested in research to help people in all areas, including developing nations, not just for the people with money,” he said. That nascent political consciousness was developed in great part because of her father, Sergio. “I would always ask about the world. Even when I was a kid, he always treated me like an adult in these conversations,” she said. “He didn’t hide the ugliness of the world for me.
“He would just say, ‘This is what it is.’ And I would say, ‘Well, we need to fix that.’ And he was like, ‘Yes, we do.’
Alexandria grew up aware that she was different from most of her neighbors in the Yorktown Heights community. “I went to public school in a town where no one looked like me,” she said in the documentary Knock Down the House. Yorktown Heights is nearly 90 percent white and the median household income is around $115,000. Even though Alexandria and her family had made it out of the Bronx, they were by no means well-off. “In any affluent area there’s an underclass of people who serve the people who live there.” she said. “And that’s what my family was. My mom cleaned the houses of the kinds of people who I went to school with. And my dad really struggled to start his own small business… It was really picking up towards actually the end of his life.” Oftentimes Blanca would clean houses in exchange for her clients tutoring her daughter for the SAT. Ocasio-Cortez said that their family friends in the area were typically other workers like her parents, to whom they could relate.
When Alexandria was 16, Sergio was diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer. By then his architecture business was going well, but he had no health insurance. Cancer’s financial fallout disrupts the lives of millions of Americans: around 42 percent of patients drain their life savings within two years of their diagnosis. The Ocasio-Cortez family was not immune to the financial strain. “He was in experimental trials in order to save his life,” Ocasio-Cortez said of her father’s illness at a prescription drug prices hearing held by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in July 2019. “My family almost lost our home in order to try to keep him alive and just try to keep our family together.”
Despite the financial difficulties the family faced, their sacrifices paid off. When she graduated high school, Alexandria pooled enough money together from student loans and scholarships to attend Boston University. She chose the science track, majoring in biochemistry.
But as she was starting her sophomore year in the fall of 2008, she got a call from home: Her father was dying. They had a very close relationship. “My father knew my soul better than anyone else on this planet,” she said in Knock Down the House. “He really made me believe I had true power in this world.”
Sergio Ocasio-Roman died on September 8, 2008. He was 48.”
“Alexandria decided to shift her focus from science, changing her major to economics and international relations. She began to really thrive at BU, making the dean’s list.” She worked part-time in the Boston office of the late senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy, a Democrat, where she focused on foreign affairs and immigration services. At BU, Alexandria led “Coffee and Conversations, “Friday-afternoon student discussions,” where she debated everything from public policy to the meaning of love. (It was in one of those meetings that she met her partner, Riley Roberts, a fellow student and now a web developer. They broke up in college but re-connected in their midtwenties.) She launched the student group Alianza Latina and spent a semester abroad in Niger during her junior year before graduating cum laude in 2011.
Ocasio-Cortez’s father died at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, and it was nearly impossible for the family to recover financially. To make ends meet, her mother, Blanca, had become a school bus driver in addition to cleaning houses. At one point, Blanca also worked as a hospital receptionist. “After my husband died, the family went through tough times,” Blanca said.”Alexandria was in college, but I still had her little brother who needed to be put through school.” The family was trying to prevent their house from being foreclosed on while fighting a probate battle with the Westchester County Surrogate’s Court because Sergio had died without a will. Despite Alexandria’s growth as a student and a leader, after she graduated, she was forced to return to her family’s Bronx apartment, which they owned in addition to their Yorktown Heights home, and begin working as a waitress to pitch in.
Like many other young people who came of age after the recession, Alexandria spent most of her early postgrad years living paycheck to paycheck. In 2012, at 22, she launched Brook Avenue Press, a children’s literature publisher that sought to “portray the Bronx in a positive way.” She was also an educator at the National Hispanic Institute. And at night, she would mix drinks and wait tables to supplement her income. By the time she ran for office, she was working at a taqueria called Flats Fix in Manhattan’s Union Square. She told Time magazine that her health insurance plan, which she obtained through the Affordable Care Act, cost about $200 a month and had a massive deductible. She had about $25,000 in student loan debt from her undergraduate education, which translated to a monthly payment of about $300.”
“In December 2016, Alexandria and a few friends crammed into a borrowed 1998 Subaru and drove all the way to Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota. At the time, the Lakota Sioux had been protesting for months against the Dakota Access Pipeline, arguing it would pollute the reservation’s water supplies and endanger the tribe’s sacred sites. Along the way, Alexandria’s group stopped in Flint, Michigan, which had been struggling with a crisis of lead-poisoned water for years after the city changed its water supply to save money.
The trip was transformational for Alexandria. “It was really from that crucible of activism where I saw people putting their lives on the line for people they’ve never met and never known,” she said in late 2018. “When I saw that, I knew that I had to do something more.” As she was on her way back to New York, her phone rang.
In 2016, a group of Sanders campaign alums created Brand New Congress (BC) with the purpose of recruiting progressive candidates who were not prototypically white, wealthy, and politically connected. Alexandria’s brother, Gabriel, a real estate agent at the time, nominated her after the group solicited suggestions of community leaders who might be up to the task. She fit their mold perfectly — and they reached out.”
“Her opponent had deep pockets: Alexandria only had about $250,000 to his $1.5 million war chest.”
“Sánchez Korrol found that the Spanish-speaking postwar newcomers did not, as Glazer and Moynihan’s depiction suggested, resign themselves to the dim fates that the urban political landscape offered. Instead, they organized politically, often with other communities, in a range of ways that improved everyday people’s lives.
One of the first groups to build on this organizing tradition and combat municipal neglect during the 1960s was Mobilization for Youth (MFY), formed in 1962 by the African American and Puerto Rican mothers of the Lower East Side. MY emerged just as the Civil Rights movement increased attention to prevailing poverty among African American and Latinx people. The community social work agency used direct-action politics, including school boycotts and sit-ins at the city welfare department, to demand decent, affordable housing and an end to residential segregation. They also participated in the citywide rent strikes of 1964, drawing Lower East Side residents together across race to advocate for decent living conditions and to keep the city’s landlords accountable. These activists, historian Tamar Carroll argues, shaped the national War on Poverty in the process. President Lyndon Johnson’s Community Action Programs in 1964 were modeled after MFY’s efforts, particularly their commitment to the concept of “maximum feasible participation” on the part of local residents along with the direct influx of federal funds.
New York City’s Young Lords Party, established in 1969, became another prominent group in this tradition of Latinx activism. Originally a chapter of the Chicago-based Young Lords Organization and inspired by radical organizations like the Black Panthers, they were comprised of second-generation Puerto Ricans, mostly teenagers and 20-year-olds. The Young Lords challenged the structural poverty that plagued much of urban America during the height of the Civil Rights era with, once again, community-based direct action. In particular, they organized around the rights of New York’s Puerto Rican community, whom they believed Mayor John Lindsay’s administration had shunned, bringing awareness and change on issues ranging from lead poisoning to neighborhood displacement caused by urban renewal. When Young Lords members forcibly occupied Lincoln Hospital in 1970, they did so because they believed that the Bronx’s poor residents deserved basic health care services. As part of their “Ten-Point Health Program” distributed earlier that year, they made their demands loud and clear: “We want “door-to-door’ preventative health services emphasizing environment and sanitation control, nutrition, drug addiction, maternal and child care and senior citizen services.”
Before the Young Lords Party disbanded later that decade, members addressed the lack of garbage service in their neighborhoods, organized a free breakfast program, and tested residents for tuberculosis. They often brought about change through shock tactics (e.g., dumping trash in the middle of the street) that disrupted politics as usual. The collective left behind a powerful ideology that championed community pride as well as direct-action politics.”
“When you speak your first language only at home, it becomes your second. It becomes the carrier of all things domestic, its development stunted like a grown child who never makes it out on their own.
Which is why, the first time I heard AOC speak Spanish on national television, I experienced pride, horror, shame, joy, and relief all in the time it took her to form one sentence. It was for an interview she’d done on Univision, and on Twitter she shared it along with an acknowledgment that, “Growing up, Spanish was my first language — but like many 1st generation Latinx Americans, I have to continuously work at it & improve. It’s not perfect, but the only way we improve our language skills is through public practice.”
“When we talk about the word socialism, I think what it really means is just democratic participation in our economic dignity, and our economic, social, and racial dignity … To me, what socialism means is to guarantee a basic level of dignity. It’s asserting the value of saying that the America we want and the America that we are proud of is one in which all children can access a dignified education. It’s one in which no person is too poor to have the medicines they need to live. It’s to say that no individual’s civil rights are to be violated. And it’s also to say that we need to really examine the historical inequities that have created much of the inequalities — both in terms of economics and social and racial justice — because they are intertwined. This idea of, like, race or class is a false choice.”
“Even the word ‘poverty’ has almost been removed from the political discourse. In 2016, there were 26 presidential debates. Not one was about poverty. Today, few lawmakers talk about how to support the poor — the most notable exceptions being Representatives Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Gwen Moore (D-WI), who speak candidly about how they benefited from public assistance.”
“This is why the “A Just Society” legislative package is so important. It taps into the visionary policymaking of efforts like the New Deal and the Great Society, which demonstrated that we’re capable of implementing bold ideas that match the scale of the problem. And it addresses the modern realities of an increasingly diverse country.
The first bill in the package is a proposal to update the federal poverty measure to take into account new and critical expenses like childcare, Internet access, and where someone lives. Today, over 100 million people in America are economically insecure, balancing precariously on the edge of poverty. This includes the millions of people who are in jobs that do not pay family-sustaining wages, the millions of people who spend more than a third of their income on housing costs, and the millions of people struggling to come up with the money to weather an emergency. In fact, 40 percent of Americans wouldn’t be able to cover the cost of a $400 emergency. Our current poverty measure doesn’t capture this.”
“Four out of five Americans will experience at least a year of significant economic insecurity and 70 percent of us will turn to public benefits at some point in our lives.
But as history shows — from Southern states limiting the access of Black families to New Deal programs, to the “welfare reform” policies of the 1990s that punished women for having children — U.S. poverty policy often discriminates against groups deemed undeserving of support. Ocasio-Cortez’s “A Just Society” legislation addresses this inequality head-on for two particularly vulnerable, yet maligned, groups: the formerly incarcerated and undocumented immigrants.
The Mercy in Re-Entry Act would allow people who were convicted of a crime and paid their debt to society to be eligible for public benefits. Currently, 30 states subject people with drug-related felony convictions to restrictions or complete bans on food or cash assistance. Women are more likely to have drug convictions than men, with women of color at greater risk due to racial disparities in the enforcement of drug laws. As a result, these women may face a lifetime ban on basic resources for themselves and their families. But when cash and food assistance are immediately available to people returning home, the likelihood of recidivism a year after release declines.
Similarly, the Embrace Act would end discrimination of federal public benefits based on one’s immigration status.”
“One of the most comprehensive parts of A Just Society is the housing justice agenda called “The Place to Prosper Act.” This bill would advance tenant protections, such as just-cause evictions and right to counsel for tenants facing eviction, crack down on predatory landlords, and pass a national rent control policy — policies grassroots leaders and tenant organizers have been championing for years. Advocates and local elected officials advancing these policies are particularly excited about this piece of the package as federal policy would accelerate their efforts and provide the resources to implement these strategies. In a recent report, PolicyLink, the Center for Popular Democracy, and the Right to the City Alliance found that if rent control was adopted across the country, 42 million households could be stabilized. Studies also show that providing legal representation to tenants facing eviction significantly decreases the likelihood of eviction.”
“Only one in four households eligible for rental assistance actually receives it due to overwhelming demand, forcing many families onto lengthy waiting lists. As a result, millions of families face housing insecurity, displacement, eviction, or homelessness. Further, in many cities and states, landlords can legally evict tenants in favor of wealthier renters willing to pay higher prices, or even out of retaliation for requesting repairs.”
“The final bill in the package uses the purchasing power of the federal government as leverage for improving workers’ quality of life. The Uplift Our Workers Act would create a “worker-friendly score” for federal contracts. The rating would take into account factors such as worker cooperatives, union memberships, and various pro-worker policies such as paid leave and a living wage, which are proven to increase morale, worker retention, and family incomes, among other benefits.”
“Today, roughly 1 in 4 Black people and 1 in 6 Latinos live in high-poverty neighborhoods, compared to just 1 in 13 white people. And it’s not just about income. The average African American family making $100,000 a year lives in a more disadvantaged neighborhood than the average white family making $30,000 a year, revealing how past social policies — such as redlining and the construction of the highway system through Black neighborhoods — continue to hinder neighborhood choice. This also contributes to why Black children in middle-class families actually have downward social mobility compared to white middle-class children. While more Black people are living in distressed neighborhoods, the share of Latinos living in distressed areas rose more than other groups in the years following the recession.”
“On the night of November 21, 2016, I was handed a blue backpack filled with milk of magnesia, packets of hand warmers, and hypothermia wraps to help aid the water protectors who were engaged in a confrontation with law enforcement at a bridge that connected the camp to the pipeline project. I made my way to the front of the group, close to the barricade, my official Standing Rock press pass displayed outside my jacket. It was -20°F.
What I witnessed and experienced that night changed the course of my life. I saw people being hosed with water cannons — an international human rights violation given the frigid conditions. I saw people’s clothes instantly freeze on their bodies. I saw other people rush to their aid, help them strip off their wet clothes, and provide them with warm clothing.
Then, suddenly, canisters were flying over my head.
The police were using tear gas. Everything slowed down. Something exploded next to me. A flash grenade. I saw the smoke rise.
I saw a young man drop to the ground and pick up a red glowing flare that had been thrown to our side by law enforcement.”
“I made it back to my tent that night and woke up the following morning feeling like a different person. I had lost all fear. I had made it through the night relatively unharmed. Some weren’t as lucky and had to be taken to nearby hospitals. A young woman nearly lost her arm due to an explosion, another nearly lost her eye after being hit in the face by a rubber bullet.”
“In the early 1900s, socialists captured 1,000 state and local offices around the country, including dozens of positions in state legislatures. Socialists even became mayors in a number of cities. Daniel Hoan, the socialist mayor of Milwaukee, was so successful that he served in office for 24 years. (1916–1940) and the city was known as one of the best-governed municipalities in the country. What did city-level “sewer socialism” look like? Here’s how political science professor Peter Dreier describes it:
Under the Socialists, Milwaukee gained a reputation as a well-managed municipality. They believed that government had a responsibility to promote the common good, but particularly to serve the needs of the city’s working class. They built community parks, including beautiful green spaces and recreation areas along the lakefront that are still widely-used. They increased the citywide minimum wage (28 years before the federal government adopted the idea) and established an eight-hour day standard for municipal workers. They championed public education for the city’s children, built excellent libraries and sponsored vibrant recreation programs. The city municipalized street lighting, the stone quarry, garbage disposal and water purification.”
“I had no idea then that we were living in the midst of brownfields, contaminated lots with lead, asbestos, PCBs, arsenic, and other toxics and toxicants that seeped through our walls as fugitive dust and landed in our developing lungs. Families like mine all over New York City were the targets of government- and developer- driven-planned shrinkage public policies created to deny our communities basic services in order to encourage our departure. The New York City environmental justice movement was born and raised in the midst of this rubble.”
