Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
“My Choice isn’t what I breathe in, it’s what I exhale ... And right now, in this moment, I feel a need for all of us to breathe fire.”
For this Matriarch Monday we give a shout out to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)! AOC is New York’s 14th Congressional District House representative, famous for her strong voice and badb*tch mentality to advocate for the people. With her strong voice Alexandria calls out nonsense political figures and big businesses spew. She is a woman for the community. For the next two years she will continue to serve in the House of Representatives after her victory in the 2020 election. In the past two years she has already accomplished so much! Some of those things include:
Providing $10 million in funds to clean up toxic bombardment sites in Vieques, Puerto Rico that were getting people sick
Authored the Just Society suite of bills, which would modernize the federal poverty standard, make immigrants eligible for social safety net programs, require federal contractors to pay $15/hour, strengthen tenant protections, and ease reentry for formerly incarcerated citizens.
Helped introduce the Loan Shark Prevention Act with Senator Sanders to cap credit card interest rates at 15%
AND Co-sponsored 78 pieces of legislation that passed through the house, 14 of which were signed into law
This does not even include the number of committee hearings where her question lining helped pressure Big Pharma into bringing down the price of PrEP to prevent HIV transmission and exposed TransDigm, a defense contractor, into returning $16.1 million in price-gouged profits to the public. She also pressured Facebook on fact-checking political advertising and was part of those who voted to overturn unjust citizenship questions on the Census. AOC even traveled to the borders to expose the abuse immigrant families in detention centers experienced and the inhumanity of child separation.
Throughout the pandemic AOC has remained focused on communities and frontline workers. Over the past few months the work of AOC, her team, and especially the donations and help of the people, managed to get over 100,000 masks donated to teachers, small businesses, and essential workers, deliver over 80,000 meals to families in need, and raise $1.5 million for local organizations doing COVID relief. AOC is an absolute matriarch for the people and we can’t wait to see her career soar as she continues to push for change!