Posted by • The changing dynamics of the American political space.
Known affectionately by her initials, AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was born October 13, 1989 of a poor Puerto Rican woman. When her father died, the mother was left to struggle for the upkeep of the two children. The last straw was when the single mother was threatened with a foreclosure, which the family had to fight off to avoid the loss of their home.
The youngest woman ever in U.S. Congress
The newcomer majored in international relations and economics at Boston University, graduating cum laude in 2011. After college, she moved back to the Bronx, where she worked a job waiting tables and tending a bar in New York City’s Union Square, where she began her congressional campaign. In the meanwhile, her mother cleaned houses and drove school buses.
Since January 3, 2019, Ocasio-Cortez has been the United States Representative for New York’s 14th congressional district which includes parts of The Bronx and Queens. She first earned the nation’s respect by defeating the ten-term incumbent Congressman and Democratic Caucus Chair, Joe Crowley, and scoring one of the biggest upset victories in the 2018 midterm election primaries – June 26, 2018.
In the general election – November 6, 2018 – she next trounced the Republican opponent, Anthony Pappas, making her – at age 29 – the youngest woman ever to serve in the United States Congress. [How about that! as we used to exclaim in a game of cricket in secondary school – and even as one recalled how the boyish David floored the giant Goliath. In her case she knocked out two political giants in a few months’ swoop.]
A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Ocasio-Cortez has advocated for a progressive platform that includes establishing a Green New Deal, infrastructure projects for renewable energy, free public college and trade school education, and a 70% marginal tax rate for incomes above $10 million.
Of grit and character
In recounting a victory, Ocasio-Cortez said, “For 80 percent of this campaign, I operated out of a paper grocery bag hidden behind [the] bar”. A patron at the bar helped design her fliers and campaign literature; and in-between shifts at the restaurant, she assembled her campaign materials, changed her clothes from the bag, and stormed out canvassing.
Her example of grit and character showcased the hefty differences between an unknown starter handicapped to scoop life with bare knuckles and the privileged others fed off silver spoons. As the allied military commander of World War II fame (and later 34th U.S. President) Dwight Eisenhower (1890 – 1969) once quoted the American writer, Mark Twain (1835 – 1910): What matters in a fight is not the size of the dog, but the size of the fight in the dog.
Of white privilege and the winds of change
Resonance may be defined as “a catalyzing agent that provokes change within a system, causing amplification”. In the last mid-term elections in the U.S., the number of women and winning candidates of colour demonstrates how a critical mass movement matters, and how the status quo politics – veering dangerously close to authoritarianism and racism – has been shifted off its dooming course, for a progressive new beginning.
A noted columnist, George F. Will, commented on a new book, “How the right lost its mind,” as follows: “When gale-force winds blew through politics in 2016, leaving moral and institutional wreckage in their wake, many conservatives went into a crouch.” The author of the book in question, Charles J. Sykes, described “how the American conservative movement came to lose its way.” He asked how a party defined by Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865) for its belief “in individual liberty, free markets, traditional values, and civility find itself embracing bigotry, political intransigence, demagoguery, and outright falsehood?”
Until the election of the African-American Barack Obama as the 44th president of the U.S., his predecessors were all men, white, privileged, and mostly old and rich. The same picture represented the U.S. Congress – the Senate and House of Representatives – for both the Republican and Democratic parties. And now here comes an avalanche of congressmen representing the true demographics of real America: women, coloured, poor, Muslim, etc. all challenging the status quo of rich, white, male privilege. Imagine the discomfort of the historically privileged!
In the novel “The Great Gatsby”, the American author, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940) must have cautioned people of privilege when he wrote: “just remember that all people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” The changes were coming but not as fast as was ever thought.
The green new deal
Asked about her mission, Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview: “We have chosen not to see people in this country until the majority of us have become unseen economically. Working people are not seen in congress. Working people are not seen in policy making. Until we realize that the majority of Americans are working and working poor, and we are not seen, it’s time for us to be seen.”
Motivated by the 32nd U.S. President, Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 – 1945) for a green new deal, she continued, “And that is what this moment demands right now. This is going to be the great society, the moon shot, and the civil rights movement of our generation. That is the scale of the ambition that this movement is going to require.”
May the good God continue to give this bright conscientious young woman wisdom, health and stamina! What she’s dedicated her youthful energies for is precisely what America needs now. Amen!
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