By Ann Varner
A few months ago, the name Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was not a name I knew, especially being in the midwest. A week ago, that name became my hero’s. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a 29-year-old woman who won the primary elections for congress against current Rep. Joe Crowley, who has spent 10 terms in congress – unchallenged for every primary election. Last week, Cortez won the midterm elections, making her the youngest woman to serve in Congress. Why is she my hero? She’s a young, Puerto Rican woman from the Bronx who was making her living bartending a few months ago. She’s everything you don’t imagine when it comes to politics, and it’s a breath of fresh air.
Ocasio-Cortez grew up about 40 minutes from the Bronx in New York. She said that much of her life was “defined by the 40 minute commute between her school in (Yorktown) and her family in the Bronx.” After graduating high school in 2007, she went on to Boston University. After graduating from Boston University, she worked as a community organizer, but due to financial stress she had to also start working as a bartender at restaurants. Her political experience is limited to working as an organizer for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Primary election in 2016, and in 2017 she began her campaign for her seat in congress.
According to Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign website, she ran for Congress “to create an America that works for all of us, not just a wealthy few.” Some of her platforms include:
- Medicare for All
- Federal Jobs Guarantee
- Abolish ICE
- Gun Control
- Criminal Justice Reform
- Women’s Rights
- Support LGBTQIA+
- Solidarity with Puerto Rico
- Housing as a Human Right
…And many more. You can find her total platform on https://ocasio2018.com/issues. Ocasio-Cortez wants to see a better America and after the stunning elections, many others do too. As someone who is in process of applying to law school and is seriously considering politics, she is a true inspiration to me. I always despised the thought of being a politician because of the stigma surrounding politics, but to see a young woman who didn’t go to school for politics and has almost no political background become so successful, it shows me that it might be ‘okay’ to be a politician.
The future is #female.