• Dec 14, 2020 The U.S. Is not the country Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., thinks it is, according to Goya Foods CEO Bob Unanue on Newsmax TV. After Unanue participated in a White House Rose Garden event in July, Ocasio-Cortez was among the Democrats who called for a boycott of the Hispanic-owned food company.
• He owned Brand New Congress LLC, sat on the board of the Justice Democrats PAC and co-founded the Brand New Congress PAC—all while serving as Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign manager.
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez / oʊ ˌ k ɑː s i oʊ k ɔːr ˈ t ɛ z / (Spanish: oˈkasjo koɾˈtes; born October 13, 1989), also known by her initials AOC, is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for New York's 14th congressional district since 2019.
• Goya, which claims to be the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the U.S., is privately-owned and doesn’t disclose earnings. On Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez responded to a Fox News clip of Unanue’s comments and ripped the news organization for not calling out the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is condoning violent rioting in order to reach political goals. During an interview with New York's Hot 97 earlier this week, Ocasio-Cortez argued.

Source: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is condoning violent rioting in order to reach political goals.

During an interview with New York's Hot 97 earlier this week, Ocasio-Cortez argued 'marginalized' communities have no choice but to riot against their so-called oppressors.

'I believe injustice is a threat to the safety of all people. Because once you have a group that is marginalized and marginalize and marginalized...once someone doesn't have access to clean water, they have no choice but to riot. And it doesn't have to be that way. I'm not even taking about Palestinians. I'm talking about communities in poverty in the United States; I'm talking about Latin America; I'm talking about all over the world,' she said.

Two weeks ago Ocasio-Cortez was asked if she condemns the violent domestic terror attack carried out by an Antifa member at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Center in Tacoma, Washington. She refused to give an answer.

The 69-year-old armed man killed by Washington state police as he attacked a local Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center Saturday sent a manifesto to friends the day before the assault in which he wrote 'I am Antifa,' and was being lionized by members of the leftwing group as a 'martyr.'
The group Seattle Antifascist Action described assailant Willem Van Spronsen a 'good friend and comrade' who 'took a stand against the fascist detention center in Tacoma' and 'became a martyr who gave his life to the struggle against fascism.'

.@AOC refuses to condemn the Antifa attack on the Tacoma ICE center; refuses to tell @TheRealKeean if her inflammatory comments about “concentration camps” radicalized the attacker. pic.twitter.com/YOjn0yL032

— The Rebel (@RebelNewsOnline) July 15, 2019

Ask a woman if she’s been called the B-word by a man — perhaps modified by the F-adjective — and chances are she’ll say, “You mean ever, or how many times?”

Because most women will tell you it’s a pretty universal experience, especially if they’ve held a position of power in the workplace. “I’d say, maybe 25 times?” estimates Ellen Gerstein, who spent years in technology publishing, a fairly male-dominated field, before becoming a pharmaceutical executive. “And that’s just to my face.”

In fact, Gerstein says, use of the word as a slur against women has come to feel so unfortunately routine that her own memories of it tend to blur together — unlike, say, the time 20 years ago when a male colleague asked her who she’d “lap danced” to push a project ahead. But she says she was filled with admiration when she heard Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez take to the floor of the House and call out a male colleague for vulgar words.

“I thought, listening to her, ‘Wow, you’re 100% right,’” says Gerstein, now 52. “Why didn’t I apply those same standards to myself?”

Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks on Thursday, widely shared online, amounted to a stunning indictment not only of the words of Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Florida, who she said called her a “f—————g bitch” in front of reporters, but a culture of abusive language against women that can lead to violence. Her speech resonated with many women — in politics and out, supportive of her politics or not — who said the language had been tacitly accepted for far too long.

The moment was extraordinary, says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, not because the language was new — as Ocasio-Cortez herself said, it was nothing she hadn’t heard waiting tables or riding the subway — but because of where it took place, and especially because the freshman congresswoman had the confidence and the support of her colleagues to call it out in such a public way.

“This is all part of a shift,” Walsh says, attributing the change to the #MeToo movement, in large part. “Women are feeling empowered to speak up and believe they will be heard.” More than a dozen Democratic colleagues — but no Republicans — joined Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, in speaking out against sexist behavior, including from President Donald Trump.

The moment led Gloria Steinem, the nation’s most visible feminist advocate, to reflect on her own struggles with the word Barbara Bush once famously said “rhymes with rich.”

“It took me years to learn what to do when someone calls you a bitch,” Steinem told The Associated Press in an email. “Just smile in a calm triumphant way, and say, ‘Thank you!’”

Steinem, 86, said she hadn’t realized the strategy could be helpful to other women until it made it into the script of a recent off-Broadway play about her life, “and every night, women in the audience burst out in big relieved laughter.”

Still, Steinem noted, “Refusing to be hurt may not really change the people who are trying to hurt you.” She called for both “cultural and workplace penalties for such behavior,” and, more profoundly, “raising our children to empathize and treat others as we want to be treated.”

Gerstein, too, says she found it helpful to repurpose what was intended as a slur into a compliment. “I didn’t want to feel like a victim, so my theory was to own it,” she says. “As if to say, ‘What you’re really saying is I’m tough, I’m bossy, I’m determined and I’m damned good at what I’m doing.’”

Ocasio-Cortez “owned” the word as well when she tweeted, in response to Yoho’s alleged remarks: “Bitches get stuff done.”

That itself was a throwback to a 2008 sketch on “Saturday Night Live,” in which Tina Fey and Amy Poehler discussed the slur as often applied to Hillary Clinton. “Yeah, she is. And so am I,” notes Fey on the “Weekend Update” segment. “You know what? Bitches get stuff done.”

Feminist author Andi Zeisler, co-founder of the nonprofit Bitch Media, notes that the sketch marked the beginning of a long and evolving process of women “reclaiming” the word, much like the word “queer.”

“We don’t get to control who uses it and how,” explains Zeisler. “We can only control the way we conceive of it.”

Of course, context is everything. When used as Yoho allegedly did, the word is intentionally gender-specific and heavy with implied power dynamics, says Walsh, of Rutgers.

It “otherizes women, it dehumanizes them and tells women they don’t belong in these institutions and positions,” Walsh says. “It is about silencing women and keeping them out.”

Jen Singer, a freelance writer in New Jersey, says that “when men call you a bitch, it’s a warning shot across your bow — a reminder that they have power and you had better not overstep your bounds.”

Riley Roberts Ocasio Cortez

It’s the feeling that Jennifer Bogar-Richardson, an educator also in New Jersey, felt when she learned that a superior had referred to her as a “ho” in a meeting with colleagues years ago, using words from a Chris Brown song to indicate she’d been disloyal.

Ocasio Cortez Owned Properties

“I felt naked,” says Bogar-Richardson, 44, “because it obviously didn’t matter how smart I was, how intelligent or how well I did my job. I’m nothing more than that name.”

Mila Stieglitz, a 22-year-old New Yorker who graduated college in May, found herself feeling conflicting emotions as she watched Ocasio-Cortez’s speech.

On the one hand, she was disheartened to learn of the sexist language experienced by the congresswoman — at 30, only eight years her senior — something she’d hoped was more an issue for an earlier generation. On the other, she said she was inspired by her outspokenness, and the support she received from colleagues.

Ocasio Cortez Worth

“As I enter the workforce, I recognize there’s been so much progress since my mother’s generation, for which I’m grateful,” Stieglitz said. “But these instances also highlight to me how much more needs to be done.”