Ocasio-Cortez: Democratic Socialists Should ‘Layer’ Americans with Ideas as if They Were in ‘School’

Democratic socialists should persuade Americans with ideas as if they were in “school” to prepare them for big changes in societal structure, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said Tuesday.

The representative explained that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) need to help citizens “develop the lenses of analysis necessary” to understand how power and capital work in the United States, according to Fox News.

“It’s kind of like when you go to class, or when you go to school, there are folks that are going to yell and say, you know, ‘Why don’t you, you know, go from zero to 100 on The View,’ or what have you,” she commented during the Facebook live video titled “Beyond Bernie: DSA Electeds on Building Power.”

Ocasio-Cortez continued:

And it’s because every time you go to school, you don’t go to class once and then graduate with a degree. You go for many days at a time, slowly adding layers and layers upon layers. And we use public events, we use current events like what is just happening in developments of police brutality, in what is happening with our immigration system, where people are being corralled and kept in our immigrant detention systems and our prisons, which are creating some of the largest COVID outbreaks in the country.

We use all of these events to help contribute evidence to the analysis of power, which will help people realize how power is concentrated in the United States, which gives us a better foundation to challenge it and then paint and to begin to establish alternative structures for a better world, whether it’s encouraging people to unionize their workplaces, whether it’s — you know, there’s a lot of people saying, you know, “Call for a general strike, call for a general strike.” The majority of Americans don’t know what a general strike is.

Following the end of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) presidential campaign on April 8, the DSA called it “the most successful socialist electoral campaign in U.S. history” and claimed socialism was the country’s best path forward.

“Our fight for socialism has never been more important. In the midst of a pandemic and the worst social and economic crisis in decades, the entire multiracial working class must be organized to fight back against the current crisis and the racist reaction of Trump and the GOP,” the April 9 statement read.

The organization also said it would take all of its “organizing power” to procure a rent freeze, emergency Medicare for all, and a steady income for the working class during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Now more than ever, it’s up to us to carry forward the hope Bernie gave to millions as we continue building the political revolution,” the organization concluded.