If you read this site or my Twitter feed you may have noticed that both are slowly (not that slowly) morphing into full-time Alexandria Ocasio Cortez fan pages. The rise to prominence of Cortez, or AOC as she’s is acronymically referred to is hope inducing for me. She represents a validation of political ideas that I believed in but didn’t see expressed in American politics. She’s anti-corporate, raises small donor funds, has an aggressive plan for climate change and speaks and acts like a real human being, as opposed to a poll-tested robot. Importantly as well she has a serious leftist, democratic socialist agenda for American politics including medicare for all and a green new deal, both policies I whole heartedly support. Those of us out to the left of the Democratic party have believed that the problem with them is that they were not left enough, that their politics of civility, bipartisanship and centrism were the problem, not the solution. In AOC’s meteoric rise we see a validation of this thesis, that a smart and charismatic young politician with strong leftist policies can get attention and move the frame of the conversation. AOC of course builds on the momentum created by Bernie Sanders, who I see in the same terms.
You can watch a bit of AOC speaking about it here.
Over the weekend, Twitch streamer HBomberguy ran a marathon stream of himself playing the video game Donkey Kong 64, with the goal of raising funds for Mermaids, a charitable organization in the UK who work to raise awareness about gender nonconformity in children and young people amongst professionals and the general public. The stream became a viral phenomenon and included call-ins from Chelsea Manning, AOC and others who spoke about trans rights via phone while Hbomberguy played Donkey Kong. There’s a lot to talk about here. First, with regard to AOC, this is one in a series of instances of her intelligently using modern, participatory media to connect with people, particularly young people. Her Instagram streams of her cooking and talking politics are another wonderful example. Social media have an incredible participatory and democratic potential and to see someone like AOC using them in such a fluid and native way is something I love and I think will be incredibly powerful. Importantly, for my generation and those younger than me, we grew up to a large extent online and so for our politicians not to speak and connect with us here represents a major point of difference.
Additionally, I am very happy to see AOC speaking up vocally recently on behalf of trans rights, both on this stream and in her recent speeches over the weekend. I have had arguments with older leftist people I know about the fact that they see trans rights as a distraction, a small issue and representative of the problem with (gasp) “identity politics”. There are two ways to approach this question, the first is simple and direct, which is that trans people are people and they deserve human rights, period. Once we get into a discussion about who deserves to have their human rights protected, we’ve already failed massively. We could leave it there, but for people who are unconvinced by this, I think it’s worth framing in terms that they may understand. Trans people are at the very bottom of the hierarchy of social power. They are among the most marginalized, at the greatest risk of violence and murder, and terribly afflicted by economic insecurity as a result of prejudice and exclusion. If you cannot recognize their simple humanity, you can recognize that they are a potent representative of the most powerless people in society. The powerful will do to trans people what they would do to you, if you were not protected by your social position. More and more my analysis of politics comes down to siding with the powerless against the powerful. The way a society treats trans people is a very clear indicator of how just it is to any marginalized group within it.
