page_title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
section_title: Political views
hierarchical_section_title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez / Political views
caption_attribution_description: 9H1A8449
context_page_description: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also known by her initials as AOC, is an American politician and activist. She became the U.S. Representative for New York's 14th congressional district in 2019. This includes the eastern part of the Bronx and parts of north-central Queens in New York City. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
  Ocasio-Cortez won the Democratic Party's primary election on June 26, 2018 when she Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley. Her victory was a surprise and many saw it as an upset victory. In November 2018, she would go on to win the general election. She beat Republican nominee Anthony Pappas.
  At age 29, she became the youngest woman to become a member of the United States Congress. She is well known for her use of social media. She studied international relations and economics at Boston University. An activist, she worked for Bernie Sanders's first presidential campaign. She also worked part-time as a waitress and bartender before running for Congress in 2018.
  Ocasio-Cortez is one of the first female members of the Democratic Socialists of America elected to Congress.
context_section_description: Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and supports the democratic socialist name of the group as part of her political beliefs. In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, she said that democratic socialism is a "part of what I am. It's not all of what I am. And I think that that's a very important [difference]." During an interview on PBS, she was asked if democratic socialism would to end capitalism, and she answered: "we are marching towards progress on this issue. I do think that we are going to see a [change] in our economic system of an [unknown level], and it's hard to say what direction that that takes."
  Ocasio-Cortez supports progressive policies such as single-payer Medicare for All, tuition-free public college and trade school, a federal job guarantee which would make sure states would hire unemployed workers, the cancellation of all $1.6 trillion student debt, guaranteed family leave, ending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and private prisons, creating safer gun-control policies, and energy policy that would use 100% renewable energy. She told Anderson Cooper that she supports policies like those in United Kingdom, Norway, Finland, and Sweden.
  Ocasio-Cortez supported Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election and appeared with him at campaign rallies. In January 2020, she and director Michael Moore replaced Sanders at a rally at the University of Iowa while he was at the Senate's impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.
  Ocasio-Cortez wants more environmental politicians in Congress, calling climate change as "the single biggest national security threat" for the United States and the world. With the United Nations saying that the effects of climate change cannot be fixed until carbon emissions are slowed down in the next 12 years. She said, "Millennials and people—you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us are looking up and we’re like: ‘The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?'"
  Ocasio-Cortez supports ending the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. She compared the agency to the Patriot Act and to a paramilitary-like agency. In June 2018, she said she would support ending the agency and she would rather "create a pathway to citizenship for more immigrants through decriminalization." She later said that this does not mean ending all deportations. Two days before the primary election, she went to 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 would give more federal money to ICE.
  Ocasio-Cortez supports moving to a single-payer health care system, saying that medical care is a human right. In September 2019, she created an anti-poverty policy proposal that would make the cost of childcare, health care, and "new necessities" like Internet access when measuring poverty. The proposal would stop rent prices going higher and create better ways for people with convictions and immigrants to have social welfare programs. 
  Ocasio-Cortez is a supporter of LGBTQ rights and equality. She has said she supports the LGBTQ community and thanked its members for their role in her campaign. In January 2019, she gave a speech in support of laws needed to keep LGBTQ rights in jobs and everywhere in the country. She has also made a point of raising awareness for transgender rights, saying, "It's a no-brainer ... trans rights are civil rights are human rights."
  Ocasio-Cortez has been supportive of Puerto Rico. Ocasio-Cortez did not approve of Federal Emergency Management Agency's response to Hurricane Maria and that the federal government did not talk about Puerto Rico's political status. She believes the federal government should pay more attention to Puerto Rico.
caption: Ocasio-Cortez with Senator Bernie Sanders, December 2018
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