This nation is never
beyond remedy, it is never beyond hope, it is never too broken to fix. We will
be here, and we are going to rock the world for the next two years.
The idea that we're going to austerity ourselves into
prosperity is so mistaken, and honestly, I feel like one of the big problems we
have is that, because Democrats don't have a deep understanding of or degrees
in economics, they allow Wall Street folks to roll in the door and think that
they're giving them an education.
I don't think most of Congress understands how economics works.
Capitalism has not always existed in the world and will not
always exist in the world.
Change
takes courage.
The biggest hurdle that our communities have is cynicism -
saying it's a done deal, who cares; there's no point to voting. If we can get somebody
to care, it's a huge victory for the movement and the causes we're trying to
advance.
I think there's a weapon of cynicism to say, 'Protest doesn't
work. Organizing doesn't work. Y'all are a bunch of hippies. You know, it
doesn't do anything,' because, frankly, it's said out of fear, because it is a
potent force for political change.
What I see is that the Democratic Party takes working class
communities for granted, they take people of color for granted, and they just
assume that we're going to turn out no matter how bland or half-stepping these
proposals are.
It's time we acknowledge that not all Democrats are the same.
That a Democrat who takes corporate money, profits off foreclosure, doesn't
live here, doesn't send his kids to our schools, doesn't drink our water or
breathe our air cannot possibly represent us.
The Republicans galvanize their base by inciting a lot of
fear; they operate on a lot of mythmaking. So we have to have something
compelling. We shouldn't be afraid to be bold.
We absolutely do need to make sure that our borders are
secure. But what we need to realize and remember is that ICE was established in
2003 right at the same time as the Patriot Act, the AUMF, the Iraq War - and we
look back at a lot of that time and legislation as a mistake now. And I think
that ICE is right there as a part of it.
I was nominated at first by a group called Justice Democrats.
They were trying to essentially field non-corporate candidates in the 2018
midterm election. They were looking for people with a history of community
service, and my name had come across their desk, and they called.
I'm not running from the left; I'm running from the bottom.
I'm running in fierce advocacy for working-class New Yorkers.
I see people like me, who thought someone like me couldn't be
in politics, now are saying, 'Oh, wait, I don't need to take money from
corporations to run. Maybe I'll run, too.'
It was really my experience at Standing Rock that was pretty
pivotal for me because I saw how corporations were literally militarizing
themselves against American citizens so that they could kind of maximize their
profit margins on fossil fuels.
We have to stick to the message: What are we proposing to the
American people? Not, 'What are we fighting against?'
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.
For me,
democratic socialism is about - really, the value for me is that I believe that
in a modern, moral, and wealthy society, no person in America should be too
poor to live.
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.
Healthcare
as a human right, it means that every child, no matter where you are born,
should have access to a college or trade-school education if they so choose it,
and I think no person should be homeless if we can have public structures and
public policy to allow for people to have homes and food and lead a dignified life
in the United States.
I was
born in a place where your ZIP code determines your destiny.
I wake up
every day, and I'm a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx. Every single day.
Mentors
of mine were under a big pressure to minimize their femininity to make it. I'm
not going to do that. That takes away my power. I'm not going to compromise who
I am.
I can't
name a single issue with roots in race that doesn't have economic implications,
and I cannot think of a single economic issue that doesn't have racial implications.
The idea that we have to separate them out and choose one is a con.
I don't
think any person in America should die because they are too poor to live.
The Green
New Deal we are proposing will be similar in scale to the mobilization efforts
seen in World War II or the Marshall Plan. We must again invest in the
development, manufacturing, deployment, and distribution of energy, but this
time green energy.
We are fighting for an unapologetic movement for economic, social, and racial justice in the United States.
We are fighting for an unapologetic movement for economic, social, and racial justice in the United States.
I just
hope that more people will ignore the fatalism of the argument that we are
beyond repair. We are not beyond repair. We are never beyond repair.
This is not an end, this is the beginning. This is the
beginning because the message that we sent the world tonight is that it's not
OK to put donors before your community.
No bans. No walls. No fences. No chains. No justice — no peace.
There is nothing radical about moral clarity.
You have given this
country hope, you have given this country proof that when you knock on your
neighbor's door, when you come to them with love, when you let them know that
no matter your stance, you are there for them — that we can make change.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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