NYC’s socialist representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez fights for policies that would hugely benefit working-class people, like a 70% tax on the billionaire class to fund a Green New Deal and Medicare for All. These demands are overwhelmingly popular (even among many rank-and-file Republicans), but AOC’s advocacy for them has already earned her the ire of the Democratic establishment.
Just yesterday, The Hill reported that corporate Democrats are already making plans to oust AOC. One Democratic lawmaker said that he is urging New York Democrats to “find her a primary opponent and make her a one-term congressperson.”
With Trump in the White House and Republican leaders eager to carry out his bigoted, billionaire-backed agenda, it’s even more outrageous that the Democratic Party establishment is setting its sights on defeating working-class fighters like AOC.
We need to stand with AOC against the attacks of the corporate Democrats.
But I’m not surprised by this reaction by Democratic Party leaders. Seattle is a city run from top to bottom by the Democratic Party, which is tied by a thousand threads to corporate interests and big developers to the back rooms of City Hall. Rarely have the links between big business and the Democratic Party establishment been more clear than last summer, when 7 of the 8 Democratic Party councilmembers caved to the pressure of massive corporations like Amazon, whose billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos opposed even the modest-sized Amazon Tax to help address the affordable housing crisis.
There are very important differences between the Democratic and Republican Parties, but they also have one key thing in common: loyalty to Wall Street, and opposition to elected officials like AOC, Bernie, and myself.
Fighting unapologetically for working people means making powerful enemies, and the political establishment sees our re-election campaign this year in Seattle as a key priority to get the socialists out of City Hall. Big business will spend huge amounts of corporate cash to try to bring back business-as-usual in Seattle politics.Can you pitch in $15, $50, or $100 to help us defend against the attacks of political establishment in Seattle?Like millions of people, I want to see a party independent of corporate money that fights unambiguously for working people, but I don’t think we can do that within the confines of the Democratic Party. We should build a new party for working people, rooted in social justice movements and completely free from corporate cash.
How can we fight for Medicare for All in a party whose leadership takes money from Big Pharma to oppose it? How can we fight for a Green New Deal within a party whose leadership courts fossil fuel corporations who oppose even the most basic proposals to curb carbon emissions and are determined to drill every last drop of oil from the ground?
Millions of Americans are looking for a different kind of politics, based on the needs of working people and the environment, not the interests of the billionaire class and big business. That’s why I run as an independent socialist candidate, and don’t take a dime from corporations, CEOs, business lobbyists, or big developers.
My campaign is entirely fueled by grassroots donations by working people like you.
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