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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaign 2018<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI believe that in a modern, moral, and wealthy society, no person in America should be too poor to live.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n -Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez<\/p>\n We take a break from \u201cThe End Of Civilization As We Knew It\u201d\u2014to note an astonishing event that occurred last Tuesday, directly related to last week\u2019s reflection, those before and those to come.<\/p>\n The stunning primary election victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for US House of Representatives in New York, over a long-time high-ranking member of congress from her own Democratic party who was very possibly in-line to be the next Speaker of the House.<\/p>\n Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is virtually guaranteed in an overwhelmingly Democratic district to become the youngest member of the House.<\/p>\n And the youngest woman ever to be elected to the House in US history.<\/p>\n And a Latina.<\/p>\n The impact of issues of gender and race in her victory cannot be over-emphasized. Or the impact of her age.<\/p>\n But the number one impact is the issue of class.<\/p>\n She made that the issue. The working class needs a champion she said. She has now almost certainly gone from being a member of the working class directly to congress.<\/p>\n On the following platform:<\/p>\n Everyone should have a guaranteed job and sufficient income, health care, housing and education.<\/p>\n Everyone. Guaranteed.<\/p>\n The importance of this event is to understand that this is the future. It will not be able to be fully or sustainably implemented except globally, a theme we will return to of course. And the full reckoning of this global process is not something this candidate has addressed\u2014but that would hardly be expected at this point.<\/p>\n What Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is representing is the adoption in the US of what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls for\u2014the 70th<\/sup>anniversary of which approaches later this year.<\/p>\n Human rights were defined then, and since, as basic human needs as well as other human rights. As we have noted continuously, at some point, this will be reality under global governance or the human species will not survive.<\/p>\n This is not an endorsement politically or a partisan or ideological statement.<\/p>\n It is an observation of reality.<\/p>\n Whether she and others of like mind succeed or fail in the short term, whether this hinders or helps the forces of the status quo in the short term, whether this or any other movement is thwarted or coopted or corrupted in the short term\u2014all have no bearing on what we are noting. What she represents at this point, in the main, is the inevitable future.<\/p>\n We will complete our comments for now on this event by, in effect, turning the floor over to three voices from three leading media outlets, ranging in degrees of partisanship and attempted objectivity, none of which we unreservedly concur with, but all of which are educational and which contain elements of the same observations we have made here.<\/p>\n The Millennial Socialists Are Coming<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n By Michelle Goldberg, Opinion Columnist, Sunday Review, June 30, 2018, The New York Times:<\/p>\n In May, three young progressive women running for the state Legislature in Pennsylvania, each endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, won decisive primary victories over men heavily favored by the political establishment. Two of the women, Summer Lee, 30, and Sara Innamorato, 32, ousted incumbents, the distant cousins Dom Costa and Paul Costa, members of an iconic Pennsylvania political family<\/a>.<\/p>\n Elizabeth Fiedler, 37, announced her run three months after giving birth to her second child, and she had a nursery in her Philadelphia campaign office so other parents could drop off their kids before canvassing shifts. Talking to voters, she spoke of depending on Medicaid and CHIP for her kids\u2019 health insurance, and of the anxiety she felt during two weeks when their insurance lapsed.<\/p>\n Lee was open about the more than $200,000 in student loans that have weighed on her since graduating from law school, which gave her a visceral sense, she told me, of the \u201cneed for free, quality education for everybody.\u201d (An African-American woman running in a largely white district, she ended up with 68 percent of the vote.) Innamorato spoke about how her father\u2019s opioid addiction had pushed her and her mother from the middle class. \u201cI\u2019ve lived the struggles of my district,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n Their races were part of a grass-roots civic renewal that is happening across this country, something that is, for me, the sole source of optimism in this very dark time. Marinating in the news in New York City, I\u2019m often sick with despair. An authoritarian president of dubious legitimacy and depraved character is poised to remake America for generations with a second Supreme Court pick. The federal government is a festival of kleptocratic impunity. Kids the same age as my own are ripped from their migrant parents.<\/p>\n But all over the nation, people, particularly women, are working with near supernatural energy to rebuild democracy from the ground up, finding ways to exercise political power however they can. For the middle-aged suburbanites who are the backbone of the anti-Trump resistance, that often means shoring up the Democratic Party. For younger people who see Donald Trump\u2019s election as the apotheosis of a rotten political and economic system, it often means trying to remake that party as a vehicle for democratic socialism.<\/p>\n Today, the victories of Lee, Innamorato and Fielder look like a portent. On Tuesday, a similar pattern played out on a grander scale in New York City, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old democratic socialist, shook the Democratic Party by toppling Joseph Crowley, a 19-year incumbent, chairman of the Queens County Democratic Party and potential heir to House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Weeks before the election, Crowley\u2019s own polling showed him up by 36 percentage points<\/a>. Ocasio-Cortez ended up winning by 15.<\/p>\n She did it the same way as the women in Pennsylvania \u2014 by mobilizing scores of volunteers and connecting with voters one-on-one. \u201cThere were folks on the ground there for months without any national attention, talking to people at the subway stops,\u201d said Zephyr Teachout, a candidate for New York attorney general who endorsed Ocasio-Cortez in May.<\/p>\n Given the overwhelmingly Democratic makeup of her district, Ocasio-Cortez will almost certainly win the general election. Neither Lee, Fiedler nor Innamorato is facing a serious Republican challenger, so they are set to become legislators as well.<\/p>\n On Twitter, Trump has fantasized about a red wave that will sweep even more Republicans into power in November and reinforce his rule. But the real red wave may be democratic socialism\u2019s growing political influence, especially among young people. \u201cShe really showed that you can run on these issues and win,\u201d Maria Svart, national director of the Democratic Socialists of America, said about Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s platform, which includes Medicare for All, abolishing the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and a federal jobs guarantee.<\/p>\n The D.S.A., to which Ocasio-Cortez belongs, is the largest socialist organization in America. Its growth has exploded since the 2016 election \u2014 when, of course, avowed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders ran in the Democratic primary \u2014 from 7,000 members to more than 37,000. It\u2019s an activist group rather than a political party, working with Democrats in the electoral realm while also agitating against injustice from the outside.<\/p>\n Many of the D.S.A.\u2019s goals, reflected in Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s platform, are indistinguishable from those of progressive democrats. But if the D.S.A. is happy to work alongside liberals, its members are generally serious about the \u201csocialist\u201d part of democratic socialist. Its constitution envisions<\/a> \u201ca humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality and non-oppressive relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n Talk of popular control of the means of production is anathema to many older Democrats, even very liberal ones. It plays a lot better with the young; one recent survey shows that 61 percent of Democrats between 18 and 34 view socialism positively. The combination of the Great Recession, the rising cost of education, the unreliability of health insurance and the growing precariousness of the workplace has left young people with gnawing material insecurity. They have no memory of the widespread failure of Communism, but the failures of capitalism are all around them.<\/p>\n The D.S.A. alone neither claims nor deserves sole credit for the victories of candidates it endorses. Many groups came together behind Ocasio-Cortez, including the populist Brand New Congress and local chapters of the resistance group Indivisible. Nor was the D.S.A. the prime mover behind the Fiedler, Lee and Innamorato wins, though it helped in all of them.<\/p>\n Indeed, while there\u2019s a lot of talk about an ideological civil war among Democrats, on the ground, boundaries seem more fluid. In Pennsylvania recently, I met with moderate suburban resistance activists who\u2019d volunteered for Innamorato, thrilled to support a young woman who could help revitalize the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n Barry Rush is a 63-year-old retiree who used to vote for both Democrats and Republicans, but who, horrified by Trump, now devotes himself full time to a liberal group called Progress PA. His main concern is electing Democrats \u2014 \u201cI\u2019m gonna pull the Smurf lever till this gets fixed,\u201d he says of voting blue \u2014 and he knows that the Democratic Party needs young people. He was heartened by all the millennials at Innamorato\u2019s victory celebration: \u201cThere were 500 kids there!\u201d he said. It gave him hope for his grandkids.<\/p>\n The young members of the D.S.A., meanwhile, are hopeful because their analysis helps them make sense of the Trump catastrophe. They often seem less panicked about what is happening in America right now than liberals are, because they believe they know why our society is coming undone, and how it can be rebuilt.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Trump disaster is that everyone feels threatened individually, and feels like they have to fight Trump and fight this administration,\u201d Arielle Cohen, the Pittsburgh D.S.A.\u2019s 29-year-old co-chair, told me as I sat with her and two other chapter leaders in a small coffee shop in the city\u2019s East End. \u201cAnd socialists are saying, this has actually been going on for a long time. It\u2019s not just Trump. It\u2019s not just who\u2019s in office.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a strange sort of comfort in this perspective; the socialists see themselves as building the world they want to live in decades in the future rather than just scrambling to avert catastrophe in the present.<\/p>\n Talking to Cohen and others from the D.S.A.\u2019s Pittsburgh chapter, which has more than 620 members, I was struck by the work they put into building community. On some days that public schools are closed, the D.S.A.\u2019s socialist-feminist committee puts on all-day events with child care and free lunches. Like several other chapters, the Pittsburgh D.S.A. holds clinics where members change people\u2019s burned-out car brake lights for free, helping them avoid unnecessary police run-ins while making inroads into the community. A local mechanic named Metal Mary helped train them.<\/p>\n Democratic socialist chapters have constant streams of meetings and social events, creating an antidote to the isolation that\u2019s epidemic in American life. \u201cEverything is highly individualized, and it is isolating,\u201d Svart said. \u201cPeople are very, very lonely. Suicide rates have gone up astronomically. And we do create a community for folks.\u201d This fusion of politics and communal life isn\u2019t so different from what the Christian right has offered its adherents. Such social capital is something no amount of campaign spending can buy.<\/p>\n After Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s win, Pelosi denied Republican claims that socialism is ascendant in the Democratic Party<\/a>. It\u2019s hard to blame her for being defensive, since for generations \u201csocialist\u201d was considered a slur, and it\u2019s one that\u2019s hurled at Democrats indiscriminately. But I think she\u2019s wrong. There are more candidates like Ocasio-Cortez out there, and the Democrats should welcome them. It needs their youth and zeal and willingness to do the work of rebuilding the party as a neighborhood institution. And they\u2019re coming, whether the party\u2019s leadership likes it or not.<\/p>\n In Pennsylvania, unlike many other states, being a state legislator is a full-time job. When I met Lee a month after her victory, she was thinking about all she needed to learn once she gets to Harrisburg, the capital. But she was also confident that she and others like her are ready to remake the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n \u201cIf what we did here in Pennsylvania shows anything, it\u2019s that we can do that,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can go up against the establishment. We can support our own candidacies. We can run positive campaigns. We can do all that, and we can actually win. And then we can do it again, and we can do it everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n What the Left\u2019s Next Socialist Superstar Learned from Trump<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n By T.A. Frank, Hive, June 27, 2018, Vanity Fair<\/p>\n Whenever American democracy looks rigged, an underdog comes along to remind you that it can be unrigged. Not since Republican Dave Brat\u00a0<\/strong>beat incumbent Eric Cantor<\/strong> in a Virginia primary in 2014 has there been an upset quite like that pulled off last night, when 28-year-old former Bernie Sanders<\/a><\/strong> organizer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez<\/strong> beat 56-year-old incumbent Joseph Crowley,<\/strong> the No. 4 Democrat in the House, in a New York primary. As The Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s Dave Weigel<\/strong>notes<\/a>, the Web site<\/a> for Flats Fix, a Flatiron-area taco and tequila bar, still carries a picture of Ocasio-Cortez shaking a drink behind the bar, because that is where she was working a year ago. Today, she\u2019s almost certain to become the youngest member of Congress.<\/p>\n A primary ouster of a House incumbent is rare (it happened in only 31<\/a> out of thousands of primaries between 1994 and 2012), but it can chill the blood of incumbents everywhere, especially if policy is at the heart of the matter. Crowley had already moved reasonably far to the left by pre-Trump and pre-Bernie standards, but Ocasio-Cortez outdid him and ran on a platform of Medicare for all, federally guaranteed jobs, and the abolition of ICE. (How the last of these three could work with the first two is unclear\u2014given that the world contains billions of people who would gladly move here for such benefits\u2014but rhetoric will probably cede to a little realism.) Many of Crowley\u2019s peers will consider themselves warned.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Donald Trump<\/a><\/strong> had a pretty good night, too. His favored candidates won their primaries, and even those who were defeated seem to have gone down praising Trump all the way. If the G.O.P. has taken over Trump, Trump has also taken over the G.O.P., and its change over two short years, becoming the party of tariffs and North Korean peace, has been nothing short of remarkable. Democrats have no choice but to change in response, and the rise of Ocasio-Cortez is one indication of that. We\u2019re seeing a left populism that is prepared to go up against a Trumpist right populism. If such are the rumblings of 2018, where on Earth does this leave us in 2020, on which many politically minded Americans are already focused?<\/p>\n The Republican side, at present, seems settled. Barring something huge, it\u2019ll be increasingly Trumpist. But the nature of the party that will challenge it, the Democratic one, is still wide open, and defining it will involve a good deal more agony. Political analysis still tends to classify parties and candidates on a left\/right axis, but that has become less and less useful since 2015, when populism entered into the picture and laid down some axes of its own. Donald Trump moved his party to the left on trade, and to the right on immigration, and all over the place on other issues\u2014and Democrats have moved every which way in response. Candidates like Ocasio-Cortez have staked out a spot quite far to the social and economic left, while candidates like West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin,<\/strong> a Democrat in a red state, have stayed put or moved to the right. Independent voters might be more attracted to a democratic socialist than to a centrist. We just don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n With everything in flux, Democrats have very tough choices to make in their national campaigns. Should they push as far to the left on economics as many Republicans seem determined to push to the right? Should they take a Joe Manchin approach of granting Trump ground on the issue of immigration? Or an Ocasio-Cortez approach of calling for the abolition of ICE, and, with it, implicitly, border enforcement? Should they follow academic trends in their rhetoric on race and sex and get super-intersectional, or dial it way back the other way? Should they privilege economics or social issues? Should they rely on a hyper-energized base or persuadable independents? Should they abide by common courtesies in daily life, or should they take the advice<\/a> of Maxine Waters<\/strong> and single out Trump White House employees for harassment? Each contender is likely to have a different combination of answers to these questions, but the party has to settle on one.<\/p>\n Over the weekend, Politico\u2019s David Siders<\/strong> suggested<\/a> that 2020 could take the form of Trump vs. Warren, as in Donald Trump versus Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren,<\/strong> both of whom recently attended party conventions in Nevada and used their time on state to lay into one another, with Trump trotting out his well-worn \u201cPocahontas\u201d insult (a reference to Warren having claimed American Indian ancestry) and Warren vowing to \u201chose out the Washington cesspool that Donald Trump has created.\u201d But such a lineup would depend heavily on energy rather than voter conversion. Her steady attacks on Trump enchant much of the Democratic base, but there\u2019s little evidence that it broadens her appeal. The same applies to several other names being floated, such as California\u2019s Kamala Harris<\/strong> and New Jersey\u2019s Cory Booker.<\/strong><\/p>\n The oddest effect of the victory of Ocasio-Cortez\u2014which may in fairness be a fluke, for all we know\u2014is that it made most other Democrats look old. This isn\u2019t because she\u2019s 28, although that doesn\u2019t hurt, or because she\u2019s Latina, although that doesn\u2019t hurt either. It\u2019s because she offered a clarity of purpose and end goals that have eluded so many of the major names on the left. Even Warren, who was among the few who seemed to understand and explain the implications of the crash of 2008\u2014when the government passed on hundreds of billions of dollars in debt to our grandchildren in order to sustain the lifestyle of Wall Street, which had already cleaned out the common man\u2014has struggled to offer much in the way of vision. She has developed a reputation for grandstanding more than gravitas.<\/p>\n Ocasio-Cortez said something simple: working people like my neighbors and me deserve a square deal\u2014a tuition-free college education if we\u2019re ready to learn, a job at a living wage if we\u2019re willing to work, and a hospital bed paid for by Medicare if we\u2019re sick. Government should guarantee all of these. And it worked. What she seems to have learned from the old-yet-somehow-not-so-old Donald Trump is that vision works. Did Trump really believe we\u2019d fix all our roads and airports, build a big wall, reverse our trade deficit, eliminate government waste, restore safety to our streets, and get so tired of winning that we\u2019d beg to win less? No need to answer that. But he knew that thinking big would inspire his followers, and Ocasio-Cortez knows the same thing. It\u2019s the sort of approach that drove Hillary Clinton<\/a><\/strong> crazy about Bernie Sanders, about whom she complained<\/a> in her latest book that he \u201cdidn\u2019t seem to mind if his math didn\u2019t add up or if his plans had no prayer of passing Congress.\u201d But perhaps he didn\u2019t mind because it didn\u2019t matter. You campaign on the vision, not the compromise.<\/p>\n This suggests, oddly enough, that Sanders, older than just about any other major player on the presidential scene, continues to look like one of Trump\u2019s most plausible challengers. Even in a wildly polarized country, he continues to enjoy favorability ratings<\/a> that regularly top 50 percent. He speaks willingly to political adversaries and, while fiercely critical of Trump, stops short of demonizing him or his supporters. He says what he must to defer to interest groups and identity politics, but his pitch remains similar to what it has always been, much of which has been adopted by Ocasio-Cortez: economic security for all Americans. It could be a winning one.<\/p>\n As it did in 2016, though, it seems immigration will continue to bedevil Democrats more than any other problem. Perhaps Ocasio-Cortez will retreat on her call for the abolition of ICE, or explain it away as a demand for bureaucratic reorganization rather than elimination of its enforcement functions. But the party keeps moving left on the issue, and Sanders is now weathering criticisms for refusing to join the eliminate-ICE faction himself. Even with a policy as noxious as the separation of mother and child at the border, Democrats risk overplaying their hand at the national level. A recent CBS News poll<\/a> found while only 4 percent of Americans favor separation, 48 percent support deporting families together, and 11 percent support arresting the parents and allowing them to keep their children in the same detention facility. Only 21 percent support the heretofore prevailing policy of releasing them into the country to report back later. (The rest have no opinion.) Sanders seems to perceive the disconnect, but he remains caught between his base and the realities of American opinion. This will be the headache for any eventual nominee, just as it will be a gift to Trump.<\/p>\n The working-class struggles that propelled Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to victory<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n By Jonelle Marte, Business, June 30, 2018, The Washington Post:<\/p>\n NEW YORK \u2014 When Ali Ahmed is not running the convenience store he owns in Queens, he is crisscrossing the city as an Uber driver.<\/p>\n The side job helps him to afford the mortgage and other bills on the house he bought two years ago in the Parkchester neighborhood of the Bronx. Ahmed happens to work and live in New York\u2019s 14th Congressional District, which could soon elect the youngest woman ever to Congress: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.<\/p>\n Ahmed says he works hard to get his bills paid and try to create a better financial foundation for his children. It\u2019s a struggle that resonates strongly among voters here who propelled Ocasio-Cortez, 28, to victory last week in the Democratic primary over incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley.<\/p>\n Their constituents are a mass of working-class families who hustle to make a good life in the shadow of the extreme prosperity in Manhattan. In Parkchester, New York natives with Italian or Puerto Rican roots live alongside people who have immigrated in past decades from Ecuador, Mexico, Bangladesh and other parts of the globe. Neighborhoods in Queens, including Jackson Heights, Astoria and Sunnyside, are equally diverse.<\/p>\n [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: The Democrat who challenged her party\u2019s establishment \u2014 and won<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n The district offers a window into the modern economy. The financial recovery of the past decade has buoyed some Americans who feel flush from rising home values and a steady march up in the stock market. Yet despite record-low unemployment across the nation, those who live on the fringes of a strong economy find they are working double time just to keep up.<\/p>\n Ahmed, 41, moved his family to the Bronx after more than 20 years in Queens because the rent on his apartment in Astoria, an increasingly trendy neighborhood, was becoming too expensive.<\/p>\n The move made some things better and other things more complicated. He used to be a few minutes from his store. Now it takes up to an hour to drive there. His bills are larger as a homeowner. But his family has more space. There is a yard. And his kids, a 4-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son, are happier.<\/p>\n \u201cMy family is comfortable here,\u201d he said, adding later that he thinks it will be better for his children in the long run. \u201cI want to make my kids educated, I try to do my best,\u201d he said in a phone interview from the park as his children played. \u201cMy hope is that I make something better for them. So they can have a good career.\u201d<\/p>\n The business owner said that he has noticed a pattern among his friends and neighbors \u2014 many people are moving to more affordable places in New York City. Professionals who work in Manhattan are moving to Queens as they look for lower rent. That shift is pricing out families and immigrants like him.<\/p>\n \u201cFor any one-bedroom apartment, there are 15 people who want to move in, so they put pressure on you,\u201d he said. He watched as many of his friends moved from Queens to the Bronx or out of state.<\/p>\n Living costs are also creeping up around him in the Bronx. A cousin searching for apartments in the area was recently quoted about $1,500 for a one-bedroom, Ahmed said. The same place would have cost $1,000 just two years ago.<\/p>\n The congressional district that Ocasio-Cortez would represent if elected in November has gone from being predominantly white in 1980 to being nearly 50 percent Hispanic, 17 percent Asian and 23 percent white in 2016, according to census figures.<\/p>\n Some of the residents there have achieved the milestones considered staples of economic success in America, such as owning a home, sending a child to college and running a business. Others struggle more to make ends meet, toiling away as servers, drivers and cashiers.<\/p>\n For many, life is characterized by long commutes and even longer workdays. The district has the fifth-highest percentage of workers with service-sector jobs out of all congressional districts, including Washington, according to census data. It ranks seventh for having the longest average commute time.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no surprise, then, that voters here were pulled over by Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s platform of Medicare for all, free education and a livable minimum wage.<\/p>\n In Parkchester, which is a roughly 35-minute train ride north of Grand Central Terminal, people converse and do business in a mix of languages, including English, Spanish and Bengali. On Starling Avenue, which was renamed Bangla Bazaar, a long-standing pizza place shares the street with a Bangladeshi restaurant and a halal meat shop.<\/p>\n Within a few blocks of the busy Parkchester train station, residents can find a Starbucks, a hair-braiding salon, a barbershop and Latino restaurants. A pharmacy\u2019s \u201chelp wanted\u201d sign on the window says applicants must speak and write Spanish. A note on the awning, which labels the pharmacy in both English and Spanish, lets people know that workers also speak \u201cBangla.\u201d<\/p>\n George Penn, who owns the Phase One barbershop on Westchester Avenue, said the neighborhood has changed a lot since he moved there from Harlem as a kid. It used to be much whiter. \u201cThere was a lot of racism,\u201d he said. But that faded as more black and Hispanic people moved into the neighborhood \u2014 creating a more welcoming environment for his wife and children, who are black and Puerto Rican.<\/p>\n Penn, 44, said higher rents and luxury developments around the city are contributing to an influx of people from other boroughs who need an affordable place to live. \u201cPeople come from Brooklyn, Harlem \u2014 they\u2019re coming to the Bronx,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n [Perspective | Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the intersectional remix of Latino roots and socialist politics<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n But many people who live in the area feel squeezed. \u201cThe only thing that\u2019s affordable around here are the clothes,\u201d said Elsa Luna, 60, who moved to Parkchester from Ecuador two years ago so she could be close to her daughter and two granddaughters.<\/p>\n Their apartment is blocks away from a busy street with a Macy\u2019s, Marshall\u2019s and other retailers. \u201cEverything else is expensive,\u201d Luna said in Spanish.<\/p>\n The family\u2019s budget is tight because she is unable to work due to a back injury. But they pass the time taking trips to the park and going to church. There are so many languages spoken in the neighborhood that it can be hard to communicate.<\/p>\n \u201cMy neighbor is Indian. She likes me and she knows that I like her, but we can\u2019t really say more to each other beyond \u2018hello,\u2019 \u201d Luna said.<\/p>\n Affordability has been a major theme of Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s platform. In an interview with Vogue<\/a> this month, Ocasio-Cortez noted that the median price of a two-bedroom in New York has increased by 80 percent in the past three years.<\/p>\n \u201cOur incomes certainly aren\u2019t going up 80 percent to compensate for that, and what that is doing is a wave of aggressive economic displacement of the communities that have always been here,\u201d she told the magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n