vogue | But Ocasio-Cortez’s challenge goes far beyond surface level;
Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, a
leftist organization that has helped buoy the campaigns of dozens of
outsider candidates running on very progressive platforms in places
where Democrats like Crowley are used to winning—handily. Some of
Ocasio-Cortez’s positions include fighting for Medicare for All and a federal jobs guarantee,
abolishing ICE, and insisting on much more severe policing of luxury
real estate development (part of the reason she has refused corporate
donations). Her push on economic justice has exposed ways that Crowley,
as a powerful Democrat who sits on the House Committee on Ways and
Means, pays lip service to the post–Donald Trump resistance while
maintaining largely centrist politics. Newcomers like Ocasio-Cortez and Cynthia Nixon,
who is hoping to unseat Governor Andrew Cuomo (Nixon and Ocasio-Cortez
have endorsed each other), have already helped spur a leftward shift in
some of the stances of their opponents.
Ocasio-Cortez spoke to Vogue on the phone last week before heading to a child detention center in Tornillo, Texas. Trump’s family separation policy
has been a flash point not just along partisan lines, but also between
Democrats: those who denounce ICE’s action but refuse to call for its
dismantling, like Crowley, and those who believe it should not exist.
It’s an issue that has also created a debate around “civility,” as pundits squabble over whether or not Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, for example, should have been heckled out of a Mexican restaurant last week.
As the people’s millennial challenger, Ocasio-Cortez weighed in on what
needs to change in New York, in elections, and in how we talk about
holding those in power accountable.
