Truth to Power

Hello and thanks for stopping by. Today is International Day of the Woman. I am proud to be a woman and proud of so many of my sisters. Sisters who are intelligent, brave, principled, and use their voice for the common good often risking their own safety. They are heroes. 

It has been a week that has felt like a year and six weeks plus five days that seem like ten years! We are in seriously troubled times. Issues have errupted that are way past being partisan. Our democracy is being effaced to the point of extinction. We need community; we need heroes. We need reason and we need to resist. Today I am focusing on women that dedicate their lives to serving, speaking out for truth and justice. I am proud of them and grateful. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) was born in the Bronx, in New York City, on October 13, 1989, into a Puerto Rican family. She has a younger brother, Gabriel. Her father, Sergio,  was born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents and her mother was born in Puerto Rico. Yes, they were immigrants, and this country is richer because they are here. AOC’s father is an architect. The little family lived in the Parkchester neighborhood or the Bronx in a modest apartment until AOC was five years old. Her mother, Blanca, cleaned houses and the family saved until they had enough money to purchase a small home in suburban Yorktown Heights. 

AOC attended Yorktown High School coming in second in the microbiology category of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in 2007, the year she graduated. Her research project centered on the effect of antioxidants on the lifespan of nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, (nematodes, roundworms or eel worms). Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) acknowledged her research and named a small asteroid after her, the 23238 Ocasio-Cortez. 

While in high school, AOC was a member of the National Hispanic Institute’s Lorenzo de Zavala (LDZ) Youth Legislative Session. (Zavala a Mexican physician, political, diplomat ad author. Born in Yucatan under panic rule, he was involved in drafting the constitution for the First Federal Republic of Mexico in 1824 after Mexico won independence from Spain).

After graduating from high school, AOC attended Boston University with a Jon F. Lopez Fellowship. She was LDZ Secretary of State and double majored in international relations and economics.Her father died of lung cancer in 2008 while she was in her sophomore year of college. She became involved in a lengthy probate dispute. She said that the experience helped her to understand “first-hand how attorneys appointed by the court to administer an estate can enrich themselves at the expense of the families struggling to make sense of the bureaucracy.”

AOC was also in intern for U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, working in the foreign affairs department on immigration issues. As the only Spanish speaker in the department, she was solely responsible for assisting Spanish speaking constituents. AOC graduated cum laude in 2011. She moved back to the Bronx where she was an activist and worked as a waitress and bartender to help her mother, a house cleaner and school bus driver, to avoid foreclosure of their home. She has always been a woman of the people and based in the real world. 

In 2016, AOC worked as an organizer for Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. She traveled across the country visiting places like Flint, Michigan, and Standing Rock Indian Reservation, speaking to people affected by the Flint water crisis and the Dakota Access Pipeline. In an interview in December that year, she said that Standing Rock was a tipping point for her. Before visiting there, she believed that the only way to run for office was it you had access to wealth, social influence, and power. What she saw in North Dakota was “putting their whole lives and everything that they had on the line for the protection of their community.” This was her inspiration for launching a career working for the people in her own community. 

AOC’s campaign began in April, 2017 while she was waiting tables and bartending at Flats Fix, a taqueria in Union Square. She was the first person since 2004 to challenge the Democratic Caucus Chair, Joe Crowley, in a primary. In an interview with Bon Appetite, she confessed that “For 80 percent of this campaign, I operated out of a paper grocery bag hidden behind that bar.” Her campaign formed with grassroots mobilization and she did not take any donations from corporations. Obviously facing a real financial challenge, she said, “You can’t really beat big money with more money. You have to beat them with a totally different game.” AOC received 57.3% of the vote (15,897) to Crowley’s 42.5% (11,761), defeating this 10 term incumbent by fifteen percentage points. She was outspent by a margin of 18-1 ($1.5 million to $83million).

In the midterm elections, in 2018, the Democratic Party gained control of the House by picking up 41 seats. AOC filled one of them by receiving 78% of the vote. Taking office at the age of twenty-nine, she is the youngest woman ever to serve in the U.S. Congress and the youngest member of the 116th Congress. AOC gave her first major speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and had a Primetime spot. She supported Harris-Walz and heavily criticized Trump, calling him a union buster who would “sell this country for a dollar if it meant lining his own pockets and greasing the palms of his Wall Street friends.”

In June 2024, when the reports that Clarence Thomas had accepted undisclosed gifts from conservatives, AOC spoke truth to power when she said the Court was “corrupted by money and extremism.” She and Representative Jamie Raskin led a congressional meeting about the Court, and explored options for holding justices accountable. On June 25, they introduced the “High Court Gift Ban Act”, which would impose restrictions on the gifts given to justices.On July 1, after the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. United States that presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions, AOC announced she would file articles of impeachment against justices. She said the court was corrupt and that Congress must defend the nation against an “authoritarian capture.”

AOC is a woman of intelligence, integrity, and fortitude who speaks truth to power. She continues to be a woman of the people. She is ever an inspiration. Thank you AOC and please, keep up the good work. 

Tracy Chapman is political and social activist. In a 2009 interview with National Public Radio she said, "I'm approached by lots of organizations and lots of people who want me to support their various charitable efforts in some way. And I look at those requests and I basically try to do what I can. And I have certain interests of my own, generally an interest in human rights."