AOC on the Squad: ‘We Are Picking Up Where the Civil Rights Movement Left Off’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) spoke at a rally in suburban Maryland on Thursday where she said she and three other freshmen members of Congress who have expressed socialist and leftwing ideology are now taking on the mantle of the civil rights movement.

She also claimed it took 240 years for women like herself and Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) to bring their brand of politics, which include charges of anti-semitic rhetoric, to Congress.

“I think a lot about this overall moment,” Ocasio-Cortez said at the rally hosted by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD). “Not just today, not just this week, but really just this larger moment that we’re in politically.”

“And I really do believe that we’re in a moment where we are picking up where the civil rights movement left off,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I think that’s where we’re at.”

Ocasio-Cortez repeated her oft-spoken narrative on the bad things about America, including its founding fathers, and claimed many view the country’s history through “rose-colored glasses.”

“America has always been the story of those fighting to advance the rights of others and some clinging to the past to preserve the rights of a few,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

“And right now there is a lot of chaos in our nation,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It is part of the great duality baked into the DNA of America.”

“Our nation was founded on founding fathers with utopian principles of freedom and liberty yet who owned slaves,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But over time we were able to chip away at injustices … continue to expand the rights of all people.”

Ocasio-Cortez said that she and the others in the so-called “Squad” are finally representing what’s good in America as elected officials.

“It took over 240 years for us to get Ayanna Pressley into Congress,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It’ s taken us 240 years for us to get Ilhan Omar in Congress.”

 “It has taken us 240 years to get Rashida Tlaib,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It’s taken us 240 years to have this unique composite in Congress and we will not go back.” 

The Washington Post reported Raskin had high praise for Ocasio-Cortez.

“Raskin — who works with Ocasio-Cortez as the chair and vice-chair, respectively, of the House Oversight subcommittee on civil rights and civil liberties — predicted when he introduced her Thursday night that she would be ‘one of the greatest members of the Congress of the 21st century.’”

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