Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Our democracy is designed to speak truth to power.Collection: Power
The only time we create any kind of substantive change is when we reach out to a disaffected electorate and inspire and motivate them to vote.Collection: Change
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.Collection: Health
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.Collection: Fear
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.Collection: Education
The way the Queens Democratic party machine has worked, they operate on a politics of exclusion.Collection: Politics
We have a political culture of intimidation, of favoring, of patronage, and of fear, and that is no way for a community to be governed.Collection: Fear
Change takes courage.Collection: Courage
Nobody ever wins the first time they run for office. Nobody's ever supposed to win their first bid for office. Nobody's ever supposed to win without taking lobbyists' money. No one's ever supposed to defeat an incumbent. No one's ever supposed to run a grassroots campaign without running any ads on television. We did all of those things.Collection: Money
We have to have a diversity of age represented in Congress, too.Collection: Age
I was born to a dad who was born in the South Bronx while the Bronx was burning, while landlords were committing arson to their own buildings.Collection: Dad
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.Collection: Hope
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.Collection: Power
Women like me aren't supposed to run for office.Collection: Women
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.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Society
It's disingenuous to... pretend the sources of our money don't impact the policy we write - you just can't serve two masters.Collection: Money
I started my campaign out of a Trader Joe's bag with a bunch of printed palm cards and an idea.
I'm very hands-on about social media. That's my voice.
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.
I don't think any person in America should die because they are too poor to live.
I was born in a place where your ZIP code determines your destiny.
I wasn't born to a wealthy or powerful family - mother from Puerto Rico, dad from the South Bronx.
I'm an educator. I'm an organizer.
Working-class Americans want a clear champion, and there is nothing radical about moral clarity in 2018.
Not all Democrats are the same.
Congress is too old. They don't have a stake in the game.
Capitalism has not always existed in the world and will not always exist in the world.
We are fighting for an unapologetic movement for economic, social, and racial justice in the United States.
I understand the pain of working-class Americans because I have experienced the pain.
Before ICE, we had Immigration and Naturalization Services, but it wasn't until about 1999 that we chose to criminalize immigration at all. And then, once ICE was established, we really kind of militarized that enforcement to a degree that was previously unseen in the United States.
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. It is about direct representation and people actually having power and stake over their economic and social wellness, at the end of the day.
In Puerto Rico, we continue to see the perpetuation of second-class citizenship in the United States.
I wake up every day, and I'm a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx. Every single day.
If you're differently-abled, if you're a person of color, if you express your identity in a way that's different from the norm, for whatever reason, there's an implicit bias where people, frankly, sometimes take you less seriously.
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.
I'm not running from the left; I'm running from the bottom. I'm running in fierce advocacy for working-class New Yorkers.
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 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 know enough to reject the stereotype that people in the Midwest do not care about their brothers and sisters.
I do think that sometimes, especially coming into this going straight from activism to being a candidate or to being a person who potentially, you know, looks like will be holding political office soon, I think we expect our politicians to be perfect and fully formed and on point on every single issue.
I don't like having people do little things for me.
I don't think most of Congress understands how economics works.
It's not just that I'm a woman of color running for office. It's the way that I ran. It's the way that my identity formed my methods.
I felt like the only way to effectively run for office is if you had access to a lot of wealth, high social influence, a lot of dynastic power, and I knew that I didn't have any of those things.
I knew that our community needed a very clear voice. and I think we deserved representation that rejected lobbyist funds and put our voters and our community first.
It is unacceptable to be disrespectful of Congressman Crowley. He's done some phenomenal, phenomenal work for the Bronx and Queens.
I want to speak to people directly as much as possible.
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.