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October 26, 2024 1:49 AM

Bernie: The Podcast | Episode 6 - Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - "So you decided to take on a guy who was going to become the Speaker of the House and the leader of the Queens Democratic party." (via via) [spoiler alert?]

Bernie: Either we're going to have a Cooperative Society where we care and love each other or you're going to have a handful of people on top whose greed is their religion.

AOC: Which is what we are contending with now. The fact that people are choosing between medicine and rent is barbarism. The fact that people are worried about whether they will be on the street every four weeks is barbarism. The fact that every time a person has an ache or a pain in their body and they're scared that it could either be just a sore joint or cancer, but they can't find out because they can't afford the doctor, this is barbarism.

And if we do not demand, and not only demand, but win -- unions, health care, wages, ending endless war -- then we will condemn ourselves to barbarism, and I refuse to give up. I refuse to submit myself to that future. That's not a life. And so to live, we have to fight for each other, and we have to stand with each other, and we have to fight for this vision and this world. And you know, whether we live to see it or not -- I believe we will -- but at the end, what matters is what we dedicated ourselves to and that to me is what makes it both successful and valuable.

posted by kliuless (13 comments total)

Talk all you want, just don't forget to vote.
posted by chavenet at 3:18 AM on October 26 [6 favorites]

Mod note: Derailing comment and replies removed. If someone wants to argue about why Trump was elected in 2016, they're welcome to make their own thread, but don't do that here.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 9:32 AM on October 26 [28 favorites]

Otherwise, the first five minutes of Bernie interviewing AOC is pretty fascinating and good look at both of their roots, definitely worth a listen!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:33 AM on October 26 [6 favorites]

Ok, just finished listening to the whole thing and it was great to see how much Bernie inspired AOC. It's also hard to walk away from this and not feel fired up about the changes that need to be made in America!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:14 AM on October 26 [17 favorites]

There are so many things that need to be fixed, but there's an entire generation off blase voters standing in the way of. In no sane system would Trump get even 21% (the oft-cited, if mostly by me, "Crazification Factor") of the vote.
posted by JHarris at 11:19 AM on October 26 [3 favorites]

AOC and Bernie are just really good people
posted by WatTylerJr at 1:38 PM on October 26 [6 favorites]

Why can't the country be talking about what they're talking about? Not in this timeline.
posted by zardoz at 1:56 PM on October 26 [5 favorites]

Thank you for this, kliuless! AOC is one of my heroes. I am so inspired that she's chosen to dedicate so much of her life to making life tangibly better for so many people.

I don't think I would have come across this on my own. Thank you so much for posting it here.
posted by kristi at 4:33 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]

Apparently AOC and Tim Walz are going to be paying Madden on Twitch tonight.

Frankly, I'd rather see her give an impassioned primetime speech to progressives on why they need to step-up, and stand in solidarity with Palestinian activists who are asking people to vote strategically to stop Trump. But I'll take it. I really feel like AOC has been under-deployed this cycle, probably because she's been trying to extract some progressive concessions. This is the home stretch though, we need the progressive MVP on side and activated.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 5:30 AM on October 27 [4 favorites]

Didn't know this podcast existed. thanks!!
posted by kensington314 at 8:51 AM on October 27

How about how Walz is a gamer? In addition to Madden, I hear than he streamed World of Warcraft recently, and even had a Dreamcast and Crazy Taxi in the 2000s. Crazy Taxi! I don't think I've ever related to a candidate more.
posted by JHarris at 5:25 PM on October 27 [3 favorites]

He streamed some crazy taxi tonight! It was hilarious. Gotta lock down that dreamcast vote!
posted by mrjohnmuller at 7:38 PM on October 27 [1 favorite]

episode 7 is great, too...
Rep. Ilhan Omar: "The idea of going through such a traumatic civil war and life in a refugee camp and coming to a new country, you sort of start to understand public policy in a way that, you know, the average 12-year-old might not be thinking about, right? Because all of the decisions that displaced my family and eventually found us a new home were political. And for me today, I try to mitigate those sort of bad political decisions that created the war, that displaced me, and then try to have empathy for the policies that created that refugee camp for us, that saved us, and allowed us to come to the United States and have a stable a stable life. And so when when I talk about the impact of war, it's because I understand what that means."

So when we moved to Minnesota, my grandfather also moved to Minnesota so we could all be in the same place. He was the kind of person that just could never stop talking about the wonders of democracy and the opportunities it created and how powerful one's voice was. As a youth he was involved in decolonizing Somalia, getting rid of the Italians, and really desperately thought that it could be possible for Somalia to have a democracy. And they did. Somalia was regarded as the first democracy of Africa. But it was extremely short-lived. They ended up having a dictator for a really long time. So when he came to the US, the first thing he wanted to do was participate in our democracy. He'd heard about something called the caucuses at his English class and he was like, you have to take me.

So I took him, but he didn't speak English, so I had to interpret for him. We were in a room with like nine people, a very small community room. It was such a very sweet grassroots process. I felt so bad that my grandfather who had been my guide throughout my entire life, who knew about democracy more than anyone I knew, who eagerly awaited that day to arrive, now was in a process that he couldn't fully access. And so I stayed involved in that process to make it more accessible for people like my grandfather and working with the DFL to create translated flyers, translate the process and create videos. So I just kind of remained civically engaged through that process and continued to organize politically while I graduated high school, got married and had kids and went through college.

Then when I became a nutrition educator, I'd found myself teaching at the same classrooms that my grandfather was in for new American adults. I start talking to them about vitamins and nutrients and they'd be like, we don't know where to find housing or proper housing. We don't know how to get a drivers license. Like, can you help us with our citizenship test? I would teach at high schools for young moms or moms to be and they'd say the same thing. I don't know if I can find housing for my child and I, we lack transportation access. I don't really like taking the bus with my babies. Miss ilhan, can you help? So all of our conversations would become about policy and politics and who represented them and where to find resources.

And the same thing happened when I would teach at elementary schools. I did the after school program at elementary schools in one of the neighborhoods I now represent, North Minneapolis, and they would say like, I've never seen this fruit or vegetable that you brought as a sample. And we would talk about the food desert that they were living in.

So they got me thinking, something has to change about the people who are representing us. So I would invite them to meet your representative events that I would host. I'd bring the school board member and the city council member and the different people who represented them, even had Keith Ellison at one of those.

I eventually started connecting this idea of a representative democracy. My grandpa used to say that to him it meant that the people who represent you should have fluency in your day-to-day struggles. It was starting to become evident that the people who were representing us did not have that. And so I got involved with some other young people who were also starting to notice that, and we started running people for office.

posted by kliuless at 10:49 PM on October 28 [5 favorites]