🔰Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at LA rally

I want to thank each and every one of you for making the effort to be here today. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I'd love to also thank some of our excellent members of Congress for joining us here today. We've got Junie Chu, Menefa Agagat, Gilda Cisneros, Janie Gomez, Ginny Kaufer, Doug, Luz Rivas. Of course, your future husband, Pramila Jayapal, who wrote the letter here today. Thank you all so much. 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. Happy Passover to all of our friends this weekend. You know, we're all here together because we share the frustration and heartache that comes from watching those in power actively tear down or refuse to fight for everyday working Americans like us. We are here together because an extreme concentration of power, greed, and corruption is taking over this country like never before. Oligarchy in America. We must acknowledge the terrifying moment that we are in right now and that what we are hearing and seeing 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, U.S. citizens, and immigrants alike are being disappeared off the street by men in vans with no uniform. Educators are being fired for teaching their own history accurately and activists are being tamed with no charge or evidence for using First Amendment rights, especially when they use them for powerless individuals. In fact, the Trump administration admits that it has jailed Mahmoud 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 Mahmoud 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, the Trump administration's detention of someone like Mahmoud Khalil for his speech is anti-American. There is a release, along with the release of Rebecca Oscar, who is also being provided an op-ed in her book. Because we, Los Angeles, we do have power in this moment. All of us do, and everyday people do. In fact, you all know that it is we, LA. A few days ago, ICE officials attempted to enter two LA USD schools to target kids. They lied to school officials and claimed that they had parent permission to get to these children when they didn't. This isn't just a lawyer or a judge that said no. It started with everyday people, school staff and employees, who stood up when they felt something was off. And it's the teachers and principals that have given Trump gold to protect their kids when it couldn't be them. 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. It's 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 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 into this election to elect Trump. He shares hands with a new kind of charity. For years, we have known that our political system has slowly but surely become dominated by big money and billionaires. 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 loot our public goods and to give to the rich is deeply unpopular with people of all backgrounds, all parties, and all places. But what the Republicans have been quietly doing in Congress, they have been voting just this week to raise hundreds of billions of dollars for Medicaid and veterans benefits and Social Security so 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. David Belladio of California's 22nd, Young Kim of California's 3rd, and Kip Oliver of California's 31st. 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 we know 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 and inevitable conclusion of an American political system dominated by corporate and dark money. Money in politics is the hand of oligarchy in Los Angeles. And we are at a crossroads. We can either have extreme wealth inequality with the toxic division and corruption that it requires to survive. Or we can have a fair economy that guarantees health care to all, for working people, along with the democracy and freedoms that uphold it. Oligarchy or democracy, but we cannot have both. Los Angeles, I made my choice. We must fight the oligarchy that has created this nightmare. And that is why I have never taken money from lobbyists or corporations, and that is why I am never genuinely shocked by how this place worked. Even having money against dark money on a campaign against this place. The everyday influence of corruption and dark money was astonishing how normalized it is. In fact, Congress has 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 millions. Even that we are entrusted with it 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 companies' stocks? They can't. You can't, because we put the funds to corrupt and disastrous terrorism. I hope that the White House's terrorist struggle here didn't have anything to do with manufacturing like they claimed. It was about manipulating the markets. It was about hurting time release and everyday people in the South so Trump could quietly enrich his friends who he nudged to buy the dip before rehearsing it all in the morning. Trump is a criminal. 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 you want to hold. Members of Congress and elected officials holding and trading individual stock is wrong. It must end and we must end it. Here's another example of how shocking and how it was when I was first elected. Just this year, 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 two-thirds of the American economy. Healthcare, 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 all showing up, because I don't have to take a dime in corporate money, you allowed me to say no. I'm lucky, 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 the 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 sticking up, the deeply bitter and toxic division driven more by algorithms on social media than any individual thought, but the crumbling of our 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 majority support it. Big money is how we got Donald Trump. And his whole presidency began with launching tools for bribery, mean coins to please working people and move around money in the dark, extortion settlements from media companies and law firms who gladly paid them. The removal of duly elected officials on Inauguration Day saw Trump remove duly elected officials from the chamber in order to make space for the really in charge, who were the billionaires who 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 police 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, L.A. We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us, too. We, communities, all of us, coming together, choosing and voting for Democrats and elected officials who know how to stand for the working class. We're working very hard and doing our best to try to make that happen. In fact, last month, when other Democrats caved, your Senators Alex Padilla and Asher stood strong against the duly elected officials and voted against the Republican funding bill to cut bills for working people. In fact, all of your Democratic members of Congress and all of your members here today voted against that bill, too. 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. You know what that means. We have to start working now to give David Valadao, Youngin, and Kenny Calvert the boot and replace them with an adoring Democrat who will stand for the working people of California. Elections, L.A., 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 guarantee health care to every American, to establish a living minimum wage, to take on skyrocketing rents and mortgages, to tackle the climate crisis, and establish a country where the American dream is actually possible for all of us. My mom cleaned houses, my dad worked to start a small business, and they worked so hard to just 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 Angeles. We need to 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 a right word 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. You are welcome here. To go to college and try to provide for their family. That word's not 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 is the only way we can win. So I hope you see labels or purity tests. But it's about class solidarity. Of you who came here today to stand together and say our lives deserve dignity and our work deserves respect. You're 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.