Activists From New York City

"Susan Collins is not a moderate. She just plays one on TV."

"I see why CBP officers were being so physically and sexually threatening towards me... Officers were keeping women in cells w/ no water & had told them to drink out of the toilets. This was them on their GOOD behavior in front of members of Congress."

"Are we headed to fascism? Yes. I don’t think there’s a question... If you actually take the time to study, and to look at the steps, and to see how government transforms under authoritarian regimes, and look at the political decisions and patterns of this president, the answer is yes."

"We withdrew U.S. aid to those areas that was intended to stabilize those areas... It deepened and exacerbated all of the crises that are already happening, causing a flood of people to try to escape these horrifying conditions. So we are contributing to the surge in the first place. We’re engineering it, so that’s coming to our border."

"Seems like Trump’s DOT Secretary, Elaine Chao,has been caught trying to use her position to enrich her family’s shipping company. Her husband has lots of sway in US laws, too: Mitch McConnell. At this point it might be easier to ask where in this admin there *isn’t* corruption."

"The GOP is working overtime to dismantle labor unions, which are exceedingly popular with the American public. Unions secure higher wages and better work conditions. We should support them, even if we’re not in one. (Or look into unionization in your industry!)"

"I think he should apologize for the deliberate conflation and attack on these terms"

"No child should ever be separated from their parent. No child should ever taken from their family. No woman should ever be locked up in a pen when they have done no harm to another human being."

"People really need to ask themselves why their communities chose to erect statues to slaveholders instead of abolitionists."

"Members of Congress have a duty to respond to the President’s explicit attack today. @IlhanMN’s life is in danger. For our colleagues to be silent is to be complicit in the outright, dangerous targeting of a member of Congress. We must speak out. “First they came...”"

"Sandy Hook happened 6 years ago and we can’t even get the Senate to hold a vote on universal background checks w/ #HR8. Christchurch happened, and within days New Zealand acted to get weapons of war out of the consumer market. This is what leadership looks like. (Her tweet pointed to a tweet with quote from New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Arden “Today I am announcing that New Zealand will ban all military-style semi-automatic weapons.”)"

"This is a technique of the GOP, to take dry humor + sarcasm literally and ‘fact check’ it. Like the ‘world ending in 12 years’ thing, you’d have to have the social intelligence of a sea sponge to think it’s literal. But the GOP is basically Dwight from The Office so who knows."

"MomsDemand & #MarchForOurLives activists, who flew in from across the country, were watching from the gallery, crying + confused. I ran up to them *during the vote* and explained that the gotcha amendment pinned gun safety against immigration advocacy. Its intent was to divide."

"Mind you, the same small splinter group of Dems that tried to deny Pelosi the speakership, fund the wall during the shutdown when the public didn’t want it, & are now voting in surprise ICE amendments... are being called the “moderate wing” of the party."

"I was upset that 26 Dems forced the other 200+ to vote for a pro-ICE provision at the last min without warning... We can have ideological differences and that’s fine. But these tactics allow a small group to force the other 200+ members into actions that the majority disagree with. I don’t think that’s right, and said as much in a closed door meeting."

"AOC to: @tedcruz if you’re serious about a clean bill, then I’m down.Let’s make a deal. If we can agree on a bill with no partisan snuck-in clauses, no poison pills, etc - just a straight, clean ban on members of Congress becoming paid lobbyists - then I’ll co-lead the bill with you."

"GOP defensively say, “we’re not scared of dancing women!” yet proceed to use footage of me dancing “with the color drained to make it look more ominous.” 🤣 Spoiler: The GOP *is* scared of dancing women, because they fear the liberation of all identities taught to feel shame."

"It’s pretty sad that people think low Congressional staff pay is a good thing. Low pay a big reason why money in politics is a problem - you can make a lot more money becoming a lobbyist & setting up a relationship w/ one, since the actual job doesn’t pay enough."

"I guess WSJ Editorial Page takes pride in their ignorance of our nation’s history of slavery, Jim Crow, & mass incarceration; willful doubt on the decades of science on climate change; targeting of indigenous peoples, and the classist, punitive agenda targeting working families."

"For too long, we’ve been told “no” to a substantially better future - that the America that went to the moon, pursued the Great Society & electrified the nation is no longer possible. I disagree. Instead, let’s break past our self-defined limits and redefine what’s possible."

"If you’re mad that I think people SHOULD KNOW when Dems vote to expand ICE powers, then be mad. ICE is a dangerous agency with 0 accountability, widespread reporting of rape, abuse of power, + children dying in DHS custody. Having a D next to your name doesn’t make that right."

"The entire PREMISE of a wall is not based in fact. It’s based in a racist + non-evidence based trope that immigrants are dangerous. Yet some Dems are willing to “compromise” & spend BILLIONS on a trope because we’ve accepted some kinds of racism as realpolitik in America."

"Any job that pays $2.13 an hour is not a job. It's indentured servitude. All labor has dignity and the way that we give labor dignity is by paying people the respect and the value that they are worth... We have to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour."

"Billionaires need the working class. The working class does not need billionaires."

"Charity can’t replace policy, but solidarity is how we’ll face climate change and build a better world."

"We see...Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and AOC ... they’re all out there saying, look, we need to do something about corporate greed... the way that they were involved with loans... Over the most of the 20th century... you had caps... And then all of a sudden there was deregulation. And when deregulation took place, all of this bad stuff started occurring. You know, Wall Street stole from mom and pop. The economy crashed."

"Many people ask what a Green New Deal entails. We are calling for a wartime-level, just economic mobilization plan to get to 100% renewable energy ASAP. To read more, check out..."

"Any job that pays $2.13 an hour is not a job, it is indentured servitude... All labor has dignity, and the way that we give labor dignity is by paying people the respect and value that they are worth at minimum... When we talk about tipped wages, people think of this industry, people think of bartenders and they think of waitresses.. But they don't think about nail salon workers, they don't think about car wash attendants. They don't think about these people that, so many of us don't even know, are depending on our tips, too."

"Congresswomen dance too!"

"I grew up with a real romanticism about America. I grew up in a first-generation household where your parents give up everything, and for me America was the greatest thing ever to exist. To be there on the floor of the House was beyond anything my parents would have ever dreamed of."

"So the way I have conversations with people of opposing beliefs is I don't try to convince them of anything. So that's the first step trying to win people over. Stop trying to enter a conversation thinking that you're gonna like aah-ha them into changing their mind. I think that you know, we've kind of lost the art of conversation. So when I enter a conversation with someone I actually try to learn more about where they're coming from. Like I try I actually use it as an experience... let's say I'm talking to someone who's saying something really racist and they don't even realize that they're saying something really racist. I ask some questions because I'm interested. I'm fascinated by that. How does that work, you know? I don't do it in a way that's like mocking but I ask questions. We have to learn to really disarm ourselves in these conversations. First of all because we approach them with so much hostility and they get mad and we get mad and all of these things and so part of it is like emotional work and The second part of it is intention. Like what are you trying to get out of this conversation? And if you're just trying to argue with someone, it's not gonna work You know, you believe what you believe they believe what they believe. So I think the thing that we have to do is try to have a good faith interaction of trying to learn more about where the other person comes from because often what I find, is that when I do win people over It's almost never in the conversation itself that I've won someone over. Its that I have a conversation with someone, I asked them some critical questions and I calmly explained to them: well, this is where I'm coming from and this is why I believe what I believe why do you believe what you believe? And you kind of like leave the conversation but very often that person will sit on what you said and they will sit on the fact that you respected them and gave them space and then very often I've had interactions like that and I'll run into that person again a week later a month later and they said you know what? You said something that I really thought about and I changed my mind...But if you rush in, you know fully-armored up, attacking them and making them feel defensive they will never listen to anything that you have to say. So it's really about learning how how we can have a conversation again."

"The last time I was pissed was the president’s bullshit border address, watching this guy just be racist from the Oval Office. I saw it as a defilement. In terms of how we channel it, we just take that anger and that energy and use it to say, “This is why we need the moonshot.”"

"I do think that we’ve been taking it too much. I think we’ve been tolerating the intolerable."

"I think it’s wrong to say that what I’m proposing is polarizing the country. What we are seeing now is a ruling class of corporations and a very small elite that have captured government. The Koch brothers own every Republican in the Senate. They own ’em. They don’t cast a vote unless their sugar daddies tell ’em what to do. But 70 percent of Americans believe in Medicare for all. Ninety percent of Americans believe we need to get money out of politics. Eighty-something [percent] believe that climate change is a real, systemic and urgent problem. Sixty-seven percent of Americans believe that immigrants are a positive force in the United States of America. I believe that I’m fighting for the American consensus."

"When we talk about the concern of the environment as an elitist concern, one year ago I was waitressing in a taco shop in Downtown Manhattan. I just got health insurance for the first time a month ago. This is not an elitist issue; this is a quality-of-life issue. You want to tell people that their concern and their desire for clean air and clean water is elitist? Tell that to the kids in the South Bronx, which are suffering from the highest rates of childhood asthma in the country. Tell that to the families in Flint, whose kids have—their blood is ascending in lead levels. Their brains are damaged for the rest of their lives. Call them elitist... People are dying. This should not be a partisan issue. This is about our constituents and all of our lives. Iowa, Nebraska, broad swaths of the Midwest are drowning right now, underwater. Farms, towns that will never be recovered and never come back. And we’re here, and people are more concerned about helping oil companies than helping their own families? I don’t think so...This is about American lives. And it should not be partisan. Science should not be partisan. We are facing a national crisis. And if... if we tell the American public that we are more willing to invest and bail out big banks than we are willing to invest in our farmers and our urban families, then I don’t know what we’re here doing..."

"I’ve got a full-time job in Congress and then I moonlight as America’s greatest villain, or as the new hope. And it’s pretty tiring. I’m just a normal person. I knew that I was not going to be liked. I’m a Democrat. I’m a woman. I’m a young woman. A Latina. And I’m a liberal, a D.S.A. member,” she said, referring to the Democratic Socialists of America. “I believe health care is a right and people should be paid enough to live. Those are offensive values to them. But this ravenous hysteria—it’s really getting to a level that is kind of out of control. It’s dangerous and even scary. I have days when it seems some people want to stoke just enough of it to have just enough plausible deniability if something happens to me."

"The DCCC's new rule to blacklist + boycott anyone who does business with primary challengers is extremely divisive and harmful to the party... My recommendation, if you're a small-dollar donor: pause your donations to DCCC and give directly to swing candidates instead.""

"No lawmaker should be cashing in on their public service and selling their contacts and expertise to the highest bidder... don't think it should be legal at ALL to become a corporate lobbyist if you've served in Congress. Keeping it real, the elephant in the room with passing a lobbying ban on members requires a nearly-impossible discussion about congressional pay."

"A few social media ideas for public servants looking to build an audience: - Endorse Single-Payer Medicare for All, - Hold Wall Street Accountable, - Make Min Wage = Living Wage, - Cancel Puerto Rican Debt, - End For-Profit Prisons & ICE Detention, - Fight for a #GreenNewDeal"

"A few more ways to gain traction: - Support a Federal Jobs Guarantee, - Bailout Student Debt, - Legalize Marijuana & Explore Reparations, Baby Bonds. Here’s our Student Loan Cancellation Digital Town Hall..."

"At [DHS immigrant detention] facility, children recounted being held down for forcible injections, which medical records show are powerful antipsychotics and sedatives. I think an agency that pins children down + forcibly injects them w/ antipsychotic drugs shouldn’t be given more power."

"There are multiple doctored GND resolutions and FAQs floating around. There was also a draft version that got uploaded + taken down. There’s also draft versions floating out there. Point is, the real one is our submitted resolution, H.Res. 109: (link redirect to) https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/109/text"

"Me: “I don’t think billionaires should concentrate wealth while employing people who are sleeping in cars working a zillion hours to survive.” Next day: “That will be TEN PINOCCHIOS to Ocasio, ‘zillion’ is not a number and I found someone who sleeps in a tent, not a car.”"

"You shouldn’t need a Bible to tell you to protect our planet, but it does anyway."

"Our future is imperiled, our economy is fragile, and frontline communities are vulnerable to major threats from rising sea levels to lead in our water. A #GreenNewDeal is a common sense, moral solution to fix these issues with the urgency they demand."

"Leadership starts with our choices. That’s why I decided that no one on my staff will make less than $52k/year. It’s likely one of the highest entry-level salaries on the Hill. We pinch pennies elsewhere, but it’s worth every dime to pay a living wage."

"A lot of people commenting don’t know how Congressional salaries work. Each member is given a set amount that they disburse. GOP has refused to increase budgets in years to give hard-working staff a raise, which means people helping to run the country are getting paid $30k/year."

"The GOP is so disconnected from the basic idea that people should be paid enough to live that Fox actually thinks me paying a living wage in my office is “communism.” So the next time GOP screams “socialist,” know that’s their go-to attack for any common-sense, humane policy."

"What I DID say was that I had to go back to my district & share the MTR vote to explain why a pro-ICE amendment was slipped into a gun safety law. Maybe they’re mad bc I don’t believe pro-ICE expansion votes should be cast in the dark, and people deserve to know what happened."

"When you look at how he reacted to the Charlottesville incident, where neo-Nazis murdered a woman, versus how he manufactures crises like immigrants seeking legal refuge on our borders, it’s—it’s night and day."