Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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.”)"

"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...”"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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!)"

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I can’t understate how disturbing it was that CBP officers were openly disrespectful of the Congressional tour. If officers felt comfortable violating agreements in front of their *own* management & superiors, that tells us the agency has lost all control of their own officers. Congresswoman Madeleine Dean: We were met with hostility from the guards, but this is nothing compared to their treatment of the people being held. The detainees are constantly abused and verbally harassed with no cause. Deprived physically and dehumanized mentally - everyday."

"Even if they let you in, these women told us CBP did a lot of “cleaning up” before we arrived. They were moved into that room from outside tents before our arrival. They said they’d gone 15 days w/o a shower, & were allowed to start bathing 4 days ago (when visit was announced)."

"Members of Congress had to surrender their phones before today’s CBP trip. But @JoaquinCastrotx was able to get a device in. This photo is of the women we spoke to. We asked their permission to photograph - they said yes, please share what’s happening."

"Meanwhile, one refrain we‘ve heard is that people are overcrowded in CBP concentration camps because the shelters (which are humane places where families can stay together) are full. So we went to a shelter. They said that wasn’t true at all. Only 150/500 spots were filled."

"What’s haunting is that the women I met with today told me in no uncertain terms that they would experience retribution for telling us what they shared. They all began sobbing - out of fear of being punished, out of sickness, out of desperation, lack of sleep, trauma, despair."

"I actually think I have a lot of common ground with many libertarian viewpoints… True libertarians, which many happen to be in the Republican Party, true libertarian viewpoints are pro-immigration."

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

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

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

"Good evening, ​bienvenidos​, and thank you to everyone here today endeavoring towards a better, more just future for our country and our world."

"In a time when millions of people in the United States are looking for deep systemic solutions to our crises of mass evictions, unemployment and lack of health care, and ​espíritu del pueblo​ and out of a love for all people, I hereby second the nomination of Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont for president of the United States of America. (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks via video feed during the second day of the Democratic National Convention on August 18, 2020)"

"Aggressive, overreaching wealth redistribution *does* happen in the United States, it just happens in the opposite direction conservatives scream about: our system takes money away from everyday people and siphons it towards the profanely wealthy."

"If we are only organizing for elections, we are not going to win the world that we need...No one politician is the answer. No one president is the answer. You are the answer, mass movements are the answer."

"I hope people realize that the same Republicans who are refusing to acknowledge the results of our elections also champion disastrous foreign policy claiming they're "bringing democracy" to other nations."

"There are already communities actively experimenting and developing solutions… What I work on is not how we find solutions but how we scale to transform our society...there’s the writing by Arundhati Roy, which is that another world is not only possible, but it is already here. And finding the pockets where this world has arrived, is what gives me hope. The Bronx has one of the highest per capita rates of worker cooperatives in the world. That is a new economy in our borough of millions of people. And so whether it’s that, whether it is discussions around mass incarceration, abolitionists organizing, not just, you know, what does it mean to dismantle the jail, but what does it mean to reorganize the society so that we do not have people engaged in antisocial behavior on such a scale that we have today, or that we don’t have antisocial systems... These are not just theoretical conversations that people are having, but there are communities that are actively experimenting and developing solutions.... What I work on is not how do we find solutions, but how do we scale the solutions that we’ve already developed to transform our society. And that is work that breaks our cycles of cynicism. Cynicism, I think is a far greater enemy to the left than many others, because it is the tool that is given to us to hurt ourselves. And hope creates action and action creates hope. And that’s how we scale forward."

"I do think that there is a dam breaking, both in electoral politics, but also in organizing beyond our electoral system. Like what we’re seeing with the precipitation of strikes on a scale that really has not been seen in many years.. It’s a bit of an emperor with no clothes type of situation for our political establishment and our capitalist systems where people are beginning to realize that once we name these systems and describe them, that this water that they are, that people have been swimming in, actually has a name. And there is alternative that people can come up for air if we try to explore alternative ways of doing things... After I won, there was such a large concerted attempt, and continues to be a large-concerted attempt by media to marginalize, not just my victory, but what happened in our community... you have the former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, within days saying this was a complete accident. You had every, every major of elected official and Democratic Party member trying to dismiss what happened. And the thing is that it didn’t stop. There would be a case for that if I was the only victory that occurred. But the fact of the matter is that simply wasn’t the case that had the election ’cause people also naming systems and talking about what was previously extraordinarily politically taboo."

"What is so intertwined in this discussion is that this is not just also about open critiques of capitalism, but also open critiques of white supremacy. And it’s in greater understanding of white supremacy, not as just, you know, these social, these racist, social clubs of people dawning hoods, but actually as a system and a systems understanding of how white supremacy has interacted with the development of the United States. And so the way that that ties back in is that so many of these essential labor forces are dominated by women and women of color, whether it’s fast food workers or whether it’s nurses or whether it’s childcare and teaching professions, this, what I would say this capitalist class calls a labor shortage, in what is actually a dignified work shortage, is concentrated overwhelmingly in working class people, a multi-racial working class, but also in professions that are dominated by women and women of color."

"1. Policy- Passing BIF without BBB is a huge gamble. People will point to pro-climate investments in BIF, but the oil & gas giveaways wipe out its progress to 0 or risk worse emissions. Passing BBB unlocks BIF climate perks"

"2. Political - there were many, many promises made to get to Friday’s passage. Promises from mod Dems, House leadership, and the President himself."

"If those promises do not get fulfilled, it will make future passage of anything much more difficult. BIF will look like a cakewalk"

"In Washington, I usually know my questions of power are getting somewhere when the powerful stop referring to me as “Congresswoman” and start referring to me as “young lady” instead"

"“Imagine if every time someone referred to someone as ‘young lady’ they were responded to by being addressed with their age and gender? They’d be pretty upset if one responded with ‘the old man’, right? Why this kind of weird, patronizing behavior is so accepted is beyond me!”"

"Six weeks pregnant means two weeks late for your period... And two weeks late on your period for any person -- any person with a menstrual cycle -- can happen if you're stressed, if your diet changes or for really no reason at all. So you don't have six weeks."

"The majority of people who are raped, and who are sexually assaulted, are assaulted by someone they know. These aren’t just predators who are walking around the streets at night. They are people's uncles, they are teachers, they are family friends, and when something like that happens, it takes a very long time, first of all, for any victim to come forward. And second of all, when a victim comes forward, they don't necessarily want to bring their case into the carceral system. They don't want to re-traumatize themselves by going to court. They don't necessarily all want to report a family friend to a police precinct, let alone in the immediate aftermath of the trauma of a sexual assault."

"I'm sorry we have to break down Biology 101 on national television, but in case no one has informed him before in his life, six weeks pregnant means two weeks late for your period. And two weeks late on your period for any person -- any person with a menstrual cycle -- can happen if you're stressed, if your diet changes or for really no reason at all. So you don't have six weeks."

"The value of human rights is really the path to peace here...That’s a central thing that we need to make sure that we value the safety and the human rights of Israelis and we value the safety and human rights of Palestinians in that process that is similar on equal footing... Just like here in the United States, I don’t believe that children should be detained. I think that starting on those basic principles of human rights, we can build a path to peace together... We really need to make sure that we are valuing a process where all parties are respected, and have a lot of equal opportunity to really make sure that we are negotiating in good faith."

"Apartheid states aren’t democracies."

"It is utterly embarrassing that “pay people enough to live” is a stance that’s even up for debate."

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

"Republicans could trip over their own shoelaces and they’d still find a way to blame me, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, the Green New Deal, BLM, anything but accept responsibility for their own actions and dealings. Ineptitude, bigotry, and corruption. Disasters in their own right."

"Billionaires be like “the extreme far left is taking over” when the “extreme far left” in the US is “medicine shouldn’t bankrupt you,” “wages should cover rent,” & “maybe it’s bad that Wall St companies profit off mass surveillance, manufactured housing crises, and caging people”"

"We could protect Roe tomorrow, but Sinema refuses to act on the filibuster. Until that changes she can take a seat talking about 'women’s access to health care.' Hold everyone contributing to this disaster accountable, GOP & Dem obstructionists included. She should be primaried."