- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had one minute to deliver a speech nominated sen. Bernie Sanders for president at the Democratic convention on Tuesday night.
- The Democratic Socialist called for “deep, systemic” solutions that would guarantee health care, higher education, living wages and labor rights for everyone in the US.
- This comes after the Democratic Socialist in New York signed and campaigned for Sanders during the 2020 presidential primary.
- Visit the Business Insider website for more stories.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promoted the ‘mass popular movement’ for ‘social, economic and human rights of the 21st century’ during her one-minute speech. Bernie Sanders nominated for president at the Democratic convention on Tuesday night.
The Democratic Socialist called for “deep, systemic” solutions that would guarantee health care, higher education, living wages and labor rights for everyone in the US. She described the movement that helped Sanders lead as someone who strives to “recognize and repair the wounds of racial injustice” and other forms of bigotry and colonization.
She added the move also “realizes the unsustainable brutality of an economy that rewards explosive inequality of wealth for the few, at the expense of long-term stability for many.”
Agreement rules require that any candidate deserving sufficient delegates to be formally nominated unless the candidate transfers their delegates to the nominee, so the nomination of Sanders’ Ocasio-Cortez was merely symbolic.
She ran Joe Biden’s candidacy in tweets shortly after her speech and tried to dispel online confusion about why she nominated Sanders, instead of Biden.
“Congratulations, @JoeBiden – I look forward to fighting together for our future and restoring our democracy in November,” she wrote.
—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 19, 2020
Her brief but highly anticipated appearance at the convention comes after she supported and campaigned for Sanders during the presidential primary 2020. The 30-year-old lawmaker made her opposition to Joe Biden’s moderate policies known at the campaign track and called its “middle ground” climate change policy solutions a “deal breaker” in May 2019.
But since Sanders dropped out of the race in April, Ocasio-Cortez has joined Democratic Socialist Vermont and the Biden Unity Task Force, co-chair of the climate policy group. Last month, the task force released more progressive climate policy recommendations, which included Biden’s speed for 100% clean energy by 15 years.
“As in any cooperation effort, there are areas of negotiation and compromise,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a series of messages initiating the initiative. “But I believe the Climate Task Force’s effort has significantly improved Biden’s positions.”
After Business Insider broke the news last week that Ocasio-Cortez would get just 60 seconds to make her remarks at the convention, the congresswoman tweeted a poem about it.
—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 12, 2020
Many progressives interpret the congresswoman’s limited airtime as a snub by the DNC. Ocasio-Cortez has a massive national following and the second-most Twitter followers of every member of Congress after Sanders.
Ocasio-Cortez is the sole member of the so-called “Squad” of newcomer progressive congresswomen, which also includes reps. Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, were scheduled to speak at the convention. All four women are armed by conservatives and are regularly called upon by the president in his attacks on the Democratic Party, which the GOP seeks to portray as controlled by extremists.
On Monday, the Bronx Democrat targeted former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican who gave a premeditated speech to the DNC on Monday night, after claiming that Ocasio-Cortez is not a representative of the Democrats.
“People on the extreme, whether left or right, are getting a lot of publicity defining their party,” Kasich told BuzzFeed News. “You know, I listen all the time to people who make these statements, and just because AOC gets a lot of publicity, it does not mean that it represents the Democratic Party.
Ocasio-Cortez argued that Kasich’s positions on reproductive rights and labor rights were much more in step with the Democratic Party.
“It’s great that Kasich is awake and has realized the importance of supporting a Biden-Harris ticket. I hope he passes on to GOP voters,” she said. tweeted, add, “It is important to remember that Kasich is an anti-choice extremist … He is not a friend to workers.”
