Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: We Need to Confront Trump’s Creeping Authoritar

Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: We Need to Confront Trump’s Creeping Authoritarianism

29-year-old Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. She was elected to represent New York’s 14th Congressional District by a landslide Tuesday, defeating Republican candidate Anthony Pappas with 78 percent of the vote. She spoke with us at her victory party:

I do believe that our president has abdicated his responsibility as a leader of all people in the United States. He has very clearly drawn lines into which Americans he champions and which Americans he doesn’t. And that is why I feel we have a very important duty to not only fight against the spread of anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia, but that we need to affirmatively champion the causes of these communities and our neighbors, because this is a—this is a very dangerous time in our democracy, and this is a very dangerous administration that we cannot take for granted. And we need to make sure that we are shoring up support of these communities in very tangible ways.