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US POLITICS ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (AOC) Full Remarks: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ... Los Angeles, California \| April 13th 2025 PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msQ9_YDmrC4 Peter Burgess COMMENTARY AOC is impressive Her 'back story' is an interesting foundation for what she is doing today ... but it does not get in the way of some very clear thinking about what should be done to improve the politics of the United States. Her collaboration with Senator Sanders is fascinating ... and incredibly positive for both of them. This is a very good example of 'inter-generational' team work. Sanders gets the benefit of a lot of young dynamic and AOC gets the benefit of a certain amount of 'old' wisdom. Together, this is very powerful! Peter Burgess
Full Remarks: AOC in Los Angeles, California \| Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Apr 13, 2025 303K subscribers ... 142,279 views ... 13K likes I hope you see that this movement is not about partisan labels or purity tests, but about class solidarity - the over 36,000 people who came out to Los Angeles to stand here together and say: our lives deserve dignity and our work deserves respect. Transcript Transcript 0:00 my name is Alexandria and some of you may know me as AOC and from the bottom of my heart thank you for welcoming me to Los Angeles and also happy Passover to all of our friends celebrating this weekend thank you you know we're all here together because we share in the frustration and heartache that comes from watching those in power actively tear down or refuse to fight for everyday working Americans like us and we are here together because an extreme concentration of power greed and corruption is taking over this country like never 1:00 before oligarchy in America and and we must acknowledge the terrifying moment that we are in right now and that what we are hearing and seeing with our own eyes is in fact happening we are watching our neighbors students and friends being fired targeted and disappeared it is real people we love are being targeted and harassed for being trans or queer our co-workers US citizens and immigrants alike are being disappeared off the street by men in vans with no uniform educators are being fired for teaching American history accurately and activists are being detained with no 2:01 charge or evidence for using their First Amendment rights especially when they use them for Palestinians [Applause] in fact the Trump administration admits that it has jailed Mahmud Khalil a young husband and father from New York without any evidence or charge of a crime the Trump administration admits that they have thrown Mahmud in a cell thousands of miles away because he attended a protest and are detaining him for the content of his speech and nothing more in fact in fact Donald Trump's detention of someone like Mahmud Khalil for his speech is anti-American and we demand his release along with the release of Rumesa Ourk who he is also jailing for writing an 3:02 op-ed in her school paper and we demand their release because we Los Angeles we do have power in this moment all of us do and everyday people do in fact you all showed that this week LA a few days ago ICE officials attempted to enter two LA USD schools to target [Applause] kids they lied to school officials and claimed that they had parents permission to get to these children when they didn't but it wasn't just a lawyer or a judge that said no it started with everyday people school staff and employees who spoke up when they felt something was off and it was the teachers and principles that stood 4:00 strong and said no to protect their kids when it could have been easier to say yes out of fear you defended them LA because it will never be just institutions and officials alone that uphold our democracy it will always be the people the masses who refuse to comply with authoritarian regimes who are the last and strongest defense of our country and our freedoms because we know Los Angeles that a better world is possible and we are willing to do something about it but to get there we need to be honest about how we got to this place because this moment did not come out of nowhere it has been a long time 5:01 coming the destruction of our rights and democracy is directly tied to the growing and extreme wealth inequality that has been building for years in America it is not a coincidence that billionaires like Elon Musk dumped billions of dollars in this election to elect Trump and I'll tell you LA he sure as hell isn't doing that out of charity for years we have known that our political system has slowly but surely become dominated by big money and billionaires time and time time after time we have seen and experienced how our government and laws are more responsive to lobbyists than to the will of everyday people and we also know that the agenda of dark money to keep wages low and to 6:03 loot our public goods to give to the rich is deeply unpopular with people of all backgrounds all parties and all places just look at what Republicans have been quietly doing in Congress they have been voting just this week to advance cuts on hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid and veterans benefits and Social Security so that they can take that money and give it to the billionaires who elected them in the form of tax cuts and sweetheart government contracts to companies like SpaceX and you know who voted for that from California by the way david Valadeo of California's 22nd Young Kim of California's 40th and Ken Calbertt of California's 7:02 41st they know that that's not what you want they know that it is deeply unpopular they know that it hurts you but they are not here to serve us they are here to serve themselves and the billionaires who have paid them oligarchy and they know that the only chance they have to get away with such an unpopular agenda to get away with stealing in plain view is to stoke deep divisions among us along lines of race identity and culture to keep us fighting and distracted this has been the big money playbook not just now but for decades and that is why Donald Trump is not an aberration he is the logical inevitable conclusion of an American political 8:01 system dominated by corporate and dark money and if we are here to defeat him we must defeat the system that created him money in politics is the hand of oligarchy Los Angeles and we are at a crossroads we can either have extreme wealth inequality with a toxic division and corruption that that it requires to survive or we can have a fair economy that guarantees health care to all for working people along with a democracy and freedoms that uphold it oligarchy or democracy but we cannot have both los Angeles I've made my choice we 9:01 must fight the oligarchy that has created this nightmare and that is why I have never taken money from lobbyists or corporations and it's why I never will you know when I first got to Congress I was genuinely shocked by how this place worked even having run against dark money on a campaign against it in the first place the everyday influence of corruption and dark money was astonishing how normalized it is in fact Congress and members of Congress have somehow conditioned itself to actually believe that it is normal for elected representatives who swear an oath to the American people to day trade individual stocks that make 10:00 millions with the sensitive information that we are entrusted with for the purpose of governing how can anyone possibly make an objective vote on health care energy or war when their personal money is tied up in pharmaceutical oil and gas or defense company stocks they can't you can't and we saw this play out this week with Trump's corrupt and disastrous tariff scheme i hope that we all see now that this that the White House house's tariff shuffle here didn't have anything to do with manufacturing like they claimed it was about manipulating the markets it was about hurting retirees and everyday people in the selloff so Trump could quietly enrich his friends who he nudged to buy the dip before 11:00 reversing it all in the morning donald Trump is a criminal a criminal found guilty of 34 felony counts of fraud of course he is lying and manipulating the stock market too he is the He is at his best making himself the billionaires who back him and the members of Congress who trade with him rich not you not me not the people and to be clear I don't care what party you are Democrat or Republican i don't care what position one holds members of Congress and elected officials holding and trading individual stock is wrong it must end and we must ban it but I'll give you another example of how shocking and casual this all was when I was first elected just this year I was 12:03 elected or I was named and appointed to the Powerful Energy and Commerce Committee this is one of the most powerful committees in all of Congress and for years lobbyists worked to keep me off this committee it oversees twothirds of the American economy health care energy technology trade as they say in Congress if it moves it's energy if it doesn't it's commerce and that's the jurisdiction of this committee and an interesting thing that happened was that the day I was named to this committee the same day my office's phones rang off the hook and our inboxes were flooded by every corporate lobbyist under the sun they all wanted to be my best friend but you know what Los Angeles because of your support because of you 13:00 all showing up because I don't have to take a dime in corporate money you allow me to say no but not everyone is so lucky i have seen firsthand how these groups bully and pressure members of Congress threatening to either take money away or spend it against them if they don't do what they want and what they want is for our lives to be as expensive as possible on the lowest possible wage it all trickles down to how life feels for working people today these facts of life the feeling of the water rising up to our throats the impossibility to afford anything easily the fear of speaking up the deeply bitter and toxic division driven more by algorithms on social media than individual thought the crumbling of our 14:01 rights and protections understand that all of this is what it means and what it feels like to be governed by billionaires this is what oligarchy feels like and it only will get worse until we act it is this system that relies on division to legislate greed that has brought us the most corrupt administration in American history and the Republican majorities to support it big money is how we got Donald Trump and his whole presidency began with launching tools for bribery meme coins to fleece working people and move around money in the dark extortion settlements from media companies and law firms who gladly pay them the removal of dulyeleed off on on inauguration day 15:01 Donald Trump removed dulyeleed officials from the chamber in order to make space for who's really in charge behind the really in charge who were the billionaires who sat sat behind him they have one central economic mission to make billionaires richer at the expense of the United States of America and it does not surprise us that their first economic mission has been to target Medicaid Medicare and Social Security to fire our federal workers and fleece and abandon our veterans so that they can hand that money off to the billionaires who are backing them but this isn't just about the Republican attacks on working people LA we need a Democratic party that fights harder for us too and that means our communities all of us coming 16:03 together choosing and voting for Democrats and elected officials who know how to stand for the working class and LA I want to thank you for working very hard and doing your best to try to make that happen in fact last month when other Democrats caved your senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff stood strong against the DC pressure and voted against the Republican spending bill to cut billions for working people in fact all of your Democratic members of Congress and all of your members here today voted against that bill too defend them LA and don't stop there i want you to look at every level of office around and support Democrats who actually fight because those are the ones who can actually defeat Republicans 17:03 so folks you know what that means we have to start working now to give David Valadeo young Kim and Ken Calbert the boot and replace them with a brawling Democrat who will stand for the working people of California but beyond elections LA our task is to build community block associations volunteer groups church organizations PTAs activist organizations because community is the most powerful building block we have to defeat authoritarianism and root out corruption this is the path to guaranteeing health care to every American to establish a living minimum wage to take on skyrocketing rents and mortgages to 18:01 tackle the climate crisis and establish a country where the American dream is actually possible for all of us i come from a workingclass family my mom cleaned houses my dad worked to start a small business and they worked so hard just to make life possible a little bit better for my brother and I and when I was a teenager my dad was diagnosed with cancer he passed away before I was even 20 years old and the rug was pulled out from us all in the middle of the 2008 recession so many of us live like this one accident one bad day one piece of bad news away from our lives falling apart we don't have to live like this anymore los 19:01 Angeles we can stand with one another and stand for ourselves and we might come from different places but we share the same experiences so to all who came here today unsure of whether this is where you belong I want to say that you do no matter if you have all the right words to say no matter your race religion gender identity or status no matter if you disagree with me on some things but if you are willing to fight for someone that you don't know you are welcome here if you are willing to fight for working people regardless of who they are how they identify you are welcome here because here everyone is valued but we have to stand together 20:00 we cannot be tempted to turn in our neighbors or be fooled into thinking that we are really that much different from a trans kid who wants to get accepted by their friends that we're that different from a dreamer who worked to go to college and try to provide for their family that we're that different from anyone who's not like us hate is a trap that sinks us all and it is standing together without exception to reject division that is the only way we can win it's the only way we can win so I hope you see that this movement is not about partisan labels or purity tests but it's about class solidarity it is about the thousands of 21:01 you who came out here today to stand together and say our lives deserve dignity and our work deserves respect no matter who we are we are here to make a sacred promise to each other and our goal today is to commit to building the kind of country we all deserve and we will make that promise to take care of each other on our worst days and to share in the successes of our best thank you so much Los Angeles and it is my honor here today to introduce someone who has dedicated his life to bringing us together so let's get loud and let's be grateful because Senator Bernie Sanders is in the building come on down Bernie

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