Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 14th district
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 2019
Preceded by	Joe Crowley
Personal details
Born	(1989-10-13) October 13, 1989 New York City, New York, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Education	Boston University (BA)
Website	House website

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (/oʊˌkɑːsioʊ kɔːrˈtɛz/; Spanish: [oˈkasjo koɾˈtes]; born October 13, 1989), also known by her initials, AOC, is an American politician and activist. A member of the Democratic Party, she has been the U.S. Representative for New York's 14th congressional district since January 3, 2019. The district includes the eastern part of The Bronx and portions of north-central Queens in New York City.

On June 26, 2018, Ocasio-Cortez drew national recognition when she won the Democratic Party's primary election for New York's 14th congressional district, defeating the ten-term incumbent Congressman, Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley, in what was widely seen as the biggest upset victory in the 2018 midterm election primaries. She beat Republican opponent Anthony Pappas in the November 6, 2018 general election, and at age 29, became the youngest woman ever to serve in the United States Congress.

Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib are the first two members of the group in Congress. She advocates for a progressive platform that includes Medicare For All, a federal jobs guarantee, guaranteed family leave, establishing a Green New Deal, abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, free public college and trade school, infrastructure projects for renewable energy, and a 70% marginal tax rate for incomes above $10 million. Before running for Congress, she served as an educational director for the 2017 Northeast Collegiate World Series for the National Hispanic Institute. Ocasio-Cortez majored in international relations and economics at Boston University, graduating cum laude in 2011.

Early life

Ocasio-Cortez was born in The Bronx, New York City, on October 13, 1989, to Blanca Ocasio-Cortez (née Cortez) and Sergio Ocasio in a Catholic family. She has a younger brother, Gabriel Ocasio-Cortez. Her father was born in the Bronx to a Puerto Rican family, and became an architect; her mother was born in Puerto Rico. She has described her Puerto Rican community as an amalgamation: "We are black; we are indigenous; we are Spanish; we are European." Until age five, Ocasio-Cortez lived with her family in an apartment in the neighborhood of Parkchester. The family moved to a house in Yorktown Heights, a suburb in Westchester County.

Ocasio-Cortez attended Yorktown High School, graduating in 2007. She won second prize in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair with a microbiology research project on the effect of antioxidants on the lifespan of the nematode C. elegans. In a show of appreciation for her efforts, the International Astronomical Union named a small asteroid after her: 23238 Ocasio-Cortez. In high school, she took part in the National Hispanic Institute's Lorenzo de Zavala (LDZ) Youth Legislative Session. She later became the LDZ Secretary of State while she attended Boston University. Ocasio-Cortez had a John F. Lopez Fellowship. In 2008, while Ocasio-Cortez was a sophomore at Boston University, her father died of lung cancer. During college, she served as an intern in the immigration office during the final year of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy's tenure. "I was the only Spanish speaker, and as a result, as basically a kid—a 19-, 20-year-old kid—whenever a frantic call would come into the office because someone is looking for their husband because they have been snatched off the street by ICE, I was the one that had to pick up that phone," Ocasio-Cortez said. "I was the one that had to help that person navigate that system."

She graduated cum laude from Boston University's College of Arts and Sciences in 2011, majoring in international relations and economics.

When her father died intestate in 2008, she became involved in a long probate battle to settle his estate. She has said that the experience helped her learn "firsthand how attorneys appointed by the court to administer an estate can enrich themselves at the expense of the families struggling to make sense of the bureaucracy."

Early career

After college, Ocasio-Cortez moved back to the Bronx, while she worked as a bartender in Manhattan and as a waitress in a taqueria. Her mother, meanwhile, cleaned houses and drove school buses. After her father's death, Ocasio-Cortez and her mother struggled to fight foreclosure of their home. She launched Brook Avenue Press, a publishing firm for books that portray the Bronx in a positive light. She worked as lead educational strategist at GAGEis, Inc. Ocasio-Cortez also worked for the nonprofit National Hispanic Institute (NHI). She served as NHI's Educational Director of the 2017 Northeast Collegiate World Series, a five-day long program targeted at college-bound high school students from across the United States and other countries, where she participated in a panel on Latino leadership.

In the 2016 primary, Ocasio-Cortez worked as an organizer for Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign. After the general election, she traveled across America by car, visiting places such as Flint, Michigan, and Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota, and speaking to people affected by the Flint water crisis and the Dakota Access Pipeline. In an interview, she recalled her visit to Standing Rock as a tipping point, saying that before that, she had believed that the only way to effectively run for office was if you had access to wealth, social influence, and power. But her visit to North Dakota, where she saw others "putting their whole lives and everything that they had on the line for the protection of their community", inspired her to begin to work for her own community.

U.S. House of Representatives

2018 election

Main article: 2018 United States House of Representatives elections in New York § District 14

Ocasio-Cortez's congressional campaign logo was inspired by "revolutionary posters and visuals from the past."

Ocasio-Cortez began her congressional campaign while working a job waiting tables and tending bar at Flats Fix, a taqueria in New York City's Union Square. "For 80 percent of this campaign, I operated out of a paper grocery bag hidden behind that bar," she told Bon Appétit. Between shifts at the restaurant, Ocasio-Cortez retrieved her political literature and a change of clothes from the bag, then took off to canvass. One of her bar patrons at the restaurant helped design her fliers and campaign materials.

Ocasio-Cortez was among a slate of nationwide Justice Democrats/Brand New Congress candidacy announcements that were livestreamed on May 16, 2017. In August 2017, she attended the Netroots Nation conference in Atlanta, appearing on a panel with fellow candidates on "how to run a grassroots campaign that puts people above party".

Ocasio-Cortez was the first person since 2004 to challenge Joe Crowley, the Democratic Caucus Chair, in the Democratic primary. She faced a significant financial disadvantage, but said, "You can't really beat big money with more money. You have to beat them with a totally different game." Nearly 75% of her donations were small individual contributions, while less than one percent of Crowley's contributions were. The Ocasio-Cortez campaign spent $194,000 to the Crowley campaign's $3.4 million.

Ocasio-Cortez's campaign video began with her saying, "Women like me aren't supposed to run for office"; she had not previously held elected office. Her campaign posters' design took inspiration from "revolutionary posters and visuals from the past...particularly those of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, Latino labor activists and co-founders of the United Farm Workers in the 1960s—and union badges." "That was the closest representation to a populist, social-minded, justice-inclined, inspirational campaign that was about positivity and taking back the power," lead designer Maria Arenas said. The posters were distributed in the Bronx, and people posted them in bodegas and draped them on the hoods of cars. Posters were often taken down and hung up in supporters' homes. "They were begging people not to take their materials, saying: 'We'll try to get you one after the campaign,'" one of the designers said.

On June 15, the candidates' only face-to-face encounter during the campaign occurred on a local political talk show, Inside City Hall. The format was a joint interview conducted by Errol Louis, which NY1 characterized as a debate. On June 18, a debate in the Bronx was scheduled, but Crowley did not participate. He sent former New York City Council member Annabel Palma in his place.

Ocasio-Cortez was endorsed by progressive and civil rights organizations such as MoveOn, Justice Democrats, Brand New Congress, Black Lives Matter, and Democracy for America, and by gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon, who, like Ocasio-Cortez, also challenged a longtime incumbent. Nixon challenged incumbent Andrew Cuomo in the 2018 New York gubernatorial election but lost.

Governor Cuomo endorsed Crowley, as did both of New York's U.S. Senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, as well as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, 11 U.S. Representatives, 31 local elected officials, 31 trade unions, and progressive groups such as the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, the Working Families Party, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, among others. California representative Ro Khanna, a Justice Democrat like Ocasio-Cortez, initially endorsed Crowley, but later endorsed Ocasio-Cortez in an unusual dual endorsement.

Following her win, Ocasio-Cortez explained her campaign strategy:

I knew that if we were going to win, the way that progressives win on an unapologetic message is by expanding the electorate. That's the only way that we can win strategically. It's not by rushing to the center. It's not by trying to win spending all of our energy winning over those who have other opinions. It's by expanding the electorate, speaking to those that feel disenchanted, dejected, cynical about our politics, and letting them know that we're fighting for them.

Primary election

Ocasio-Cortez was recognized for running an effective grassroots campaign.

On June 26, 2018, Ocasio-Cortez received 57.13% of the vote (15,897) to Joe Crowley's 42.5% (11,761), defeating the 10-term incumbent by almost 15 percentage points. Time called her victory "the biggest upset of the 2018 elections so far"; CNN made a similar statement. The New York Times described Crowley's loss as "a shocking primary defeat on Tuesday, the most significant loss for a Democratic incumbent in more than a decade, and one that will reverberate across the party and the country". The Guardian called it "one of the biggest upsets in recent American political history". Her victory was especially surprising as she was outspent by a margin of 18 to 1. Merriam-Webster reported that searches for the word "socialism" spiked 1,500% after her victory. In a sign of her outsider status, as of 11 p.m. on election day Crowley had not phoned Ocasio-Cortez; she believed he did not have her phone number and stated that she did not have his. Earlier in the evening, however, Crowley, an amateur guitarist, had played a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" at his election night watch party by way of conceding defeat, having dedicated it to Ocasio-Cortez.

Bernie Sanders congratulated her: "She took on the entire local Democratic establishment in her district and won a very strong victory. She demonstrated once again what progressive grassroots politics can do." Noam Chomsky saw her victory as "a quite spectacular and significant event". He believes her win shows a split in the Democratic Party and he thinks that "she was right in saying that the policies she's outlined should have broad appeal to a very large segment of the population."

Several commentators noted the similarities between Ocasio-Cortez's victory over Crowley and Dave Brat's Tea Party movement-supported 2014 victory over Eric Cantor in the Republican primary for Virginia's 7th congressional district. Like Crowley, Cantor was a high-ranking member in his party's caucus. After her primary win, Ocasio-Cortez endorsed several progressive primary challengers to Democratic incumbents nationwide, capitalizing on her fame and spending her political capital in a manner not usually seen even in unexpected primary winners.

Without campaigning for it, Ocasio-Cortez won the Reform Party primary as a write-in candidate in a neighboring congressional district, New York's 15th, with a total vote count of nine, highest among all 22 write-in candidates. She said she appreciated the show of support, but would decline the nomination.

General election

Ocasio-Cortez faced Republican nominee Anthony Pappas in the November 6 general election. Pappas, who lives in Astoria, is an economics professor at St. John's University. According to the New York Post, Pappas did not actively campaign. The Post wrote that "Pappas' bid was a long shot," since the 14th has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of D+29, making it the sixth most Democratic district in New York City. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost six to one. Ocasio-Cortez was endorsed by various politically progressive organizations and figures, including former President Barack Obama and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.

Crowley also remained on the ballot, as the nominee of the Working Families Party (WFP). Neither Crowley nor the party actively campaigned, with both having endorsed Ocasio-Cortez after her Democratic primary victory. Former Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, who won reelection in 2006 on a third-party line after losing the Democratic Primary in 2006, penned a July 17 column in the Wall Street Journal expressing his hope that Crowley would actively campaign on the WFP ballot line. Dan Cantor, Executive Director of the WFP, wrote an endorsement of, and apology to, Ocasio-Cortez for the New York Daily News; he asked voters not to vote for Crowley if his name remained on the general election ballot.

In August 2018, Ocasio-Cortez spoke at the Netroots Nation conference in New Orleans.

Ocasio-Cortez won the election with 78% of the vote (110,318) to Pappas's 14% (17,762). Her election was part of a broader Democratic victory in the 2018 midterm elections, as the party gained control of the House by picking up at least 40 seats.

Media coverage

Ocasio-Cortez during an interview with Julia Cumming in December 2017

Prior to defeating incumbent Joe Crowley in the 2018 Democratic primary, Ocasio-Cortez was given little airtime by most traditional news media outlets. Jimmy Dore interviewed her when she first announced her candidacy in June 2017. After her primary win, Brian Stelter wrote that progressive media outlets, such as The Young Turks and The Intercept, "saw the Ocasio-Cortez upset coming" in advance. Margaret Sullivan said that traditional metrics of measuring a campaign's viability, like total fundraising, were contributing to a "media failure". Ocasio-Cortez was barely mentioned in print-media coverage until her primary election win.

After her primary win, Ocasio-Cortez quickly garnered nationwide media attention, including numerous articles and TV talk-show appearances. She appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The View in the first few days after the primary, and later on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Ocasio-Cortez also drew a great deal of media attention when she and Sanders campaigned for James Thompson in Kansas, in July 2018. A rally in Wichita had to be moved from a theater with a capacity of 1,500 when far more people said they would attend. The event drew 4,000 people, with some seated on the floor. In The New Yorker Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote that while Sanders remains "the de-facto leader of an increasingly popular left, [he is unable to] do things that do not come naturally to him, like supply hope." Wallace-Wells suggested that Ocasio-Cortez has made Sanders's task easier, as he can point to her success to show that ideas "once considered to be radical are now part of the mainstream".

Ocasio-Cortez criticized news outlets, such as Fox News and the Washington Examiner, for mocking her financial situation.

Ocasio-Cortez received backlash after barring members of the media from attending her "listening tour" on August 8 in the Bronx and August 12 in Corona, Queens.

In December 2018, Ocasio-Cortez said the media's treatment of her reveals a sexist double standard. She cited the example of Paul Ryan, who was also elected to Congress at age 28 but who was treated as a "genius" despite what she referred to as his "ill-considered policies", while she has been treated with suspicion and derision.

Since December 2018, she has been portrayed on Saturday Night Live by Melissa Villaseñor.

Tenure

116th Congress

Ocasio-Cortez's first speech as a Representative, addressing the 2018–19 United States federal government shutdown

On the first day of congressional orientation, Ocasio-Cortez participated in a climate change protest outside the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Ocasio-Cortez backed Pelosi's bid to be Speaker of the House once the Democratic Party reclaimed the majority on the condition that Pelosi "remains the most progressive candidate for speaker."

A Twitter user named AnonymousQ shared an unearthed video of Ocasio-Cortez dancing in college in an attempt to embarrass her. Many social media users came to her defense, inspiring memes and a Twitter account cheekily syncing the footage to songs like "Mambo No. 5" and "Gangnam Style." Ocasio-Cortez lightheartedly responded by posting a video of herself dancing to Edwin Starr's "War."

Supporters of Ocasio-Cortez left dozens of Post-It Notes of support by her office door.

During her first month in office, admirers of Ocasio-Cortez left dozens of messages of encouragement on orange, pink, yellow and blue bits of Post-it Notes. "Some mothers came by & left 2-3 encouraging notes on my plaque," she explained. "We left them up, bc it was great to read those little encouraging words every morning...Soon, more Post-its came. It became a little ritual for the public, so we left stacks out for people." The sticky notes were removed after the Superintendent of House Office Buildings said the notes obscured the braille on her nameplate, according to staff assistant Claudia Pagon Marchena. A spokeswoman for the Architect of the Capitol, which oversees the superintendent’s office, said the Post-it Notes violated "hallway policy."

Ocasio-Cortez entered Congress with no seniority but with a large social media presence that could increase her influence in the House. Axios has credited her with "as much social media clout as her fellow freshman Democrats combined." As of February 2019 she has 3.1 million Twitter followers, up from 1.38 million in November 2018 and surpassing Nancy Pelosi. She has 2.2 million Instagram followers and 500,000 followers on Facebook. Her colleagues were so impressed that she was appointed to teach them social media lessons upon her arrival in Congress.

During the orientation for new members hosted by the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter about the influence of corporate interests by sponsors such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies: "Lobbyists are here. Goldman Sachs is here. Where's labor? Activists? Frontline community leaders?"

When Ocasio-Cortez made her first speech on the floor of Congress, C-SPAN tweeted out the video. Within 12 hours, the video of her four-minute speech set the record as C-SPAN's most-watched Twitter video.

Speaking at a Congressional hearing with a panel of representatives from campaign finance watchdog groups, Ocasio-Cortez questioned the panel about ethics regulations as they apply to both the president and members of Congress. Her questioning revealed that no regulations prevent lawmakers "from being bought off by wealthy corporations." With more than 37.5 million views, the clip became the most-watched political video ever posted on Twitter.

Committee assignments

• Committee on Financial Services
• Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Political positions

Ocasio-Cortez is a self-described democratic socialist. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She has said that the type of socialism she advocates is not that of Venezuela or Cuba but would "most closely resemble what we see in the U.K., in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden."

Ocasio-Cortez supports progressive policies such as single-payer Medicare for All, tuition-free public college and trade school, a federal job guarantee, guaranteed family leave, abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ending the privatization of prisons, enacting gun-control policies, and energy policy relying on 100% renewables. She is open to using Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) as an economic pathway that could provide funding and enable implementation of these goals.

Education

Ocasio-Cortez campaigned in favor of establishing tuition-free public colleges and trade schools. She has said she is still paying off student loans herself and wants to cancel all student debt.

Environment

Ocasio-Cortez (center) speaks on a Green New Deal with Senator Ed Markey (right) in front of the Capitol Building in February 2019

Ocasio-Cortez has called for "more environmental hardliners in Congress", describing climate change as "the single biggest national security threat for the United States and the single biggest threat to worldwide industrialized civilization". She advocates for the United States to transition by 2031 to an electrical grid running on 100% renewable energy and to end the use of fossil fuels. She leads the effort for a Green New Deal, in which the federal government would invest in the construction of large-scale green infrastructure projects. The Green New Deal has gained support from Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker.

Ocasio-Cortez has proposed "a select committee in the House to draft a plan that fits the proposal's standards". Outlined in a draft resolution on her website, the proposal would mean "using nothing but renewable energy for electricity generation" and transitioning to renewable sources of energy "within 10 years of passing Green New Deal legislation". It would also roll out a nationwide "smart" electrical grid and "mass energy-efficient building upgrades". Forty-three Democrats in the new Congress have supported this resolution, according to the Sunrise Movement. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, opposes it.

On February 7, Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey released a joint resolution laying out the main elements of a 10-year "economic mobilization" that would phase out fossil fuel use and overhaul the nation's infrastructure. Their plan calls for implementing the "social cost of carbon" that was part of the Obama administration's plans to address climate change and transitioning the United States to 100% renewable, zero-emission energy sources, including electric cars and high-speed rail systems.

Tax policy

Ocasio-Cortez proposed introducing a marginal tax as high as 70% on income above $10 million to pay for the Green New Deal. According to tax experts contacted by The Washington Post, this tax would bring in extra revenue of $720 billion per decade. Ocasio-Cortez has opposed and voted against the pay-as-you-go rule supported by Democratic leaders, which requires deficit-neutral fiscal policy, with all new expenditures balanced by tax increases or spending cuts. She joins Ro Khanna in condemning the rule as hamstringing new or expanded progressive policies. She cites Modern Monetary Theory as a justification for higher deficits to finance her agenda. Drawing a parallel with the Great Depression, she explains that the Green New Deal needs deficit spending like the original New Deal.

Immigration

In February 2018, Ocasio-Cortez stated that she supports defunding the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), calling it "a product of the Bush-era Patriot Act suite of legislation" and "an enforcement agency that takes on more of a paramilitary tone every single day". That June, she stated that she would "stop short of fully disbanding the agency", and would rather "create a pathway to citizenship for more immigrants through decriminalization". She later clarified that this does not mean ceasing all deportations. She has called immigration detention centers operated by the Department of Homeland Security "black sites", citing limited public access to those locations. Two days before the primary election, Ocasio-Cortez attended a protest at an ICE child-detention center in Tornillo, Texas. She was the only Democrat to vote against H.R. 648, a bill to fund and reopen the government, because it funded ICE, which she supports abolishing.

Healthcare

Ocasio-Cortez supports transitioning to a Medicare for All single-payer healthcare system, recognizing medical care as a human right. She says that a single government health insurer should cover every American, reducing overall costs. On her campaign website, Ocasio-Cortez says "Almost every other developed nation in the world has universal healthcare. It's time the United States catch up to the rest of the world in ensuring all people have real healthcare coverage that doesn't break the bank." The Medicare for All proposal has been adopted by many likely Democratic 2020 presidential contenders.

LGBTQ equality

Ocasio-Cortez is a staunch proponent of LGBTQ rights and LGBTQ equality. She has said she supports the LGBTQ community and thanked its members for its role in her campaign. She publicized and later appeared on a charity speedrun of Donkey Kong 64 by British YouTuber Hbomberguy, who was raising money for the trans children's charity, Mermaids. At the January 2019 New York City Women's March in Manhattan, Ocasio-Cortez gave a detailed speech in support of measures needed to ensure LGBTQ equality in the workplace and elsewhere. She has also made a point of recognizing transgender rights specifically, saying, "It's a no-brainer...trans rights are civil rights are human rights."

Israeli-Palestinian conflict

In May 2018, Ocasio-Cortez criticized the Israel Defense Forces' use of deadly force against Palestinians participating in the 2018 Gaza border protests, calling it a "massacre" in a tweet. In a July 2018 interview with the PBS series Firing Line, Ocasio-Cortez said that she is "a proponent of a two-state solution" and called Israel's presence in the West Bank an "occupation of Palestine". Her use of the term "occupation" drew backlash from a number of pro-Israel groups and commentators. Others defended her remarks, citing the United Nations' designation of the territory in the West Bank as occupied.

Puerto Rico

Ocasio-Cortez has called for "solidarity with Puerto Rico". She has advocated for granting Puerto Ricans further civil rights, regardless of Puerto Rico's legal classification. She advocates for voting rights and disaster relief. Ocasio-Cortez was critical of FEMA's response to Hurricane Maria and the federal government's unwillingness to address Puerto Rico's political status. She believes the federal government should increase investment in Puerto Rico.

Other issues

• Impeachment of President Trump: On June 28, 2018, Ocasio-Cortez told CNN she would support the impeachment of President Trump, citing Trump's alleged violations of the Emoluments Clause and stating that "we have to hold everyone accountable and that no person is above that law."
• Amazon HQ2: Ocasio-Cortez opposed a planned deal by New York City to give Amazon.com $3 billion in state and city subsidies and tax breaks to build secondary headquarters in an area near her congressional district.

Awards and honors

The International Astronomical Union named the asteroid 23238 Ocasio-Cortez after her when she was a senior in high school in recognition of her second-place finish in the 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Ocasio-Cortez was named the 2017 National Hispanic Institute Person of the Year by Ernesto Nieto.

Personal life

Ocasio-Cortez has family in Puerto Rico, where her grandfather lived in a nursing home before dying in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. After Ocasio-Cortez's father's death in 2008, her mother and grandmother relocated to Florida due to financial hardship. She identifies as Catholic and described her faith and its impact on her life and campaign for criminal justice reform in an article in America, the magazine of the Jesuit order in the United States. At a 2018 Hanukkah party held by activist group Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, Ocasio-Cortez said that she has Sephardic Jewish ancestry, although she does not practice the faith. Of her Sephardic Jewish ancestry, she has said that DNA isn't culture, but that "to be Puerto Rican is to be the descendant of: African Moors + slaves, Taino Indians, Spanish colonizers, Jewish refugees, and likely others. We are all of these things and something else all at once — we are Boricua."

During the 2018 election campaign, Ocasio-Cortez resided in Parkchester, Bronx with her boyfriend, Riley Roberts, whom she has described as an "easygoing redhead". Despite her stated views that luxury apartment owners hike up rent and push low income people out of neighborhoods, Ocasia-Cortez recently moved into a luxury Washington Navy Yard apartment building whose owner does not provide any lower income housing. <ref> url=https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/poor-people-not-allowed-in-aocs-luxury-apartment-complex

See also

• List of Puerto Ricans
• History of women in Puerto Rico
• Nuyorican

External links

• Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez official House website
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Congress
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at IMDb 
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's file at Politifact
• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
• Legislation sponsored at the Library of Congress
• Profile at Vote Smart