On the future – David Remnick interviewing Ocasio-Cortez in The New Yorker:

Going forward, what do you think is the optimal role for you to play? ‘With the Climate Justice Alliance, some communities here at home say that they don’t talk about leadership, they talk about being leaderful. And I think that people’s movements, especially in the United States, are leaderful. And we’re getting more people every day. The untold story is actually the momentum of what is happening on the ground. You have Starbucks that just unionized its first shops in Buffalo. I went up there to visit them. Sure, I went over there to support a mayoral election which didn’t ultimately pan out, but also to support a lot of what was going on. I would argue that if it wasn’t for that mayoral election and the amount of intensity and organizing and hope and attention, a lot of these workers who were organizing may have given up.
There is no movement, there is no effort, there is no unionizing, there is no fight for the vote, there is no resistance to draconian abortion laws, if people think that the future is baked in and nothing is possible and that we’re doomed. Even on climate—or especially on climate. And so the day-to-day of my day job is frustrating. So is everyone else’s. I ate shit when I was a waitress and a bartender, and I eat shit as a member of Congress. It’s called a job, you know? So, yes, I deal with the wheeling and dealing and whatever it is, that insider stuff, and I advance amendments that some people would criticize as too little, etc. I also advance big things that people say are unrealistic and naïve. Work is like that. It is always the great fear when it comes to work or pursuing anything. You want to write something, and, in your head, it’s this big, beautiful Nobel Prize-winning concept. And then you are humbled by the words that you actually put on paper.
And that is the work of movement. That is the work of organizing. That is the work of elections. That is the work of legislation. That is the work of theory, of concepts, you know? And that is what it means to be in the arena.’

Read the interview here.

If you want to achieve something within the system you will have to make concessions, some of your followers will interpret this as weakness, betrayal.

AOC demands more executive power, but the moment the ‘enemy’ is president he or she will use executive power for an agenda that is not exactly your agenda.

The punishment for changing the system from within is much more than boredom nowadays, apparently it’s (and that’s the best quote from the interview) eating shit.

(‘I ate shit when I was a waitress and a bartender, and I eat shit as a member of Congress. It’s called a job, you know?’)

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