[They are often savaged from the Left these days. But left-wing
vitriol is unwarranted: it ignores the Squad’s many progressive
accomplishments and their legislation’s aid to activist campaigns.]
[[link removed]]

THE SQUAD’S MANY LEFT-WING ACCOMPLISHMENTS  
[[link removed]]


 

Branko Marcetic
August 16, 2023
Jacobin
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ They are often savaged from the Left these days. But left-wing
vitriol is unwarranted: it ignores the Squad’s many progressive
accomplishments and their legislation’s aid to activist campaigns. _


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @ SXSW 2019, by nrkbeta (CC BY-SA 2.0)

 

It’s tough being a member of the “Squad” these days. Once the
darlings of the American left, the group of progressive and socialist
House members that includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan
Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, and others
[[link removed]] are
as likely to be savaged these days from the Left as they are from the
Right. Popular YouTube commentators regularly denounce them as
“sellouts,” protesters interrupt their meetings calling them
warmongers, and even committed socialists question what the point of
the Squad has been.

The lion’s share of this ire has been trained on Representative
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who’s faced relentless criticism since winning
office from all sides, sometimes over substantive issues
(once failing
[[link removed]] to
show up for an Amazon union rally, casting a vote
[[link removed]] that
denied railworkers the ability to strike), sometimes over remarkably
petty ones (conciliatory rhetoric
[[link removed]],
the positioning of her hands
[[link removed]] while
being arrested).

Much of this was crystallized in a recent critical analysis
[[link removed]] of
Ocasio-Cortez’s record in_ New York_ magazine by Freddie deBoer,
who charged she has drifted “from radical outsider to Establishment
liberal,” making mere “token gestures of resistance to solidify
the illusion that she is a gadfly,” and argued that her and the rest
of the Squad’s entry into Congress has been entirely fruitless.

But this is hard to square with both a closer analysis of
Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad’s record, and with the picture painted
by progressive groups and unions that work with them. Have they
occasionally fallen short? Sure. But the reality of the Squad’s
accomplishments and movement importance is far more positive than the
one-dimensional, gloomy narrative that has become popular in some
corners of the Left.

“A Tremendous Win”

First, there’s lawmaking. Ocasio-Cortez’s legislative record is
not nearly as barren as her detractors have it. Much like Bernie
Sanders
[[link removed]],
the congressswoman has been able to sneak through the cumbersome
legislative process by putting forward amendments to larger bills.

For example, one successful 2019 amendment cut $5 million from the
Drug Enforcement Administration budget and redirected
[[link removed]] it
to treatment programs for the opioid crisis. A year later, she managed
to get her repeal of the 1998 Faircloth Amendment passed
[[link removed]] through
the House — a landmark vote
[[link removed]] and
a longtime priority for affordable housing advocates, given the Bill
Clinton–era measure’s effective ban on new public housing
construction. Another from 2022 mandated
[[link removed]] the
Pentagon study the therapeutic uses of MDMA and hallucinogens.

Sometimes, Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad have made contributions by
blocking legislation instead of passing it.

Sean Vitka, policy counsel for Demand Progress, told _Jacobin_ the
Squad, and particularly Representative Tlaib (D-MI), were instrumental
in a major 2019 victory against mass surveillance, when they forced
through the end of the Patriot Act’s Section 215. The controversial
[[link removed]] provision
had allowed the warrantless collection of a broad swath of “business
records” — everything from banking and library history to medical
records and, most controversially, phone metadata — and drew
particular outrage when the Edward Snowden leaks revealed
[[link removed]] just
how badly it was being abused to spy on Americans.

When time came to reauthorize the Patriot Act’s many sunset
provisions in 2019, according to Vitka, Tlaib served as “one of the
key organizers” of a congressional letter
[[link removed]] signed
by twenty House Democrats (including herself and fellow Squad members
Representative Omar [D-MN] and Ocasio-Cortez) vowing to oppose it
unless certain privacy protections were ensured.

“Tlaib helped lead one of, if not _the,_ earliest efforts staking
out what reform would be necessary to allow the Patriot Act to
continue,” he says.

The end result: Section 215 and two other controversial provisions
[[link removed]] finally
expired, after then House speaker Nancy Pelosi in May 2020 pulled
[[link removed]] the
reauthorization bill, realizing that opposition from progressive
Democrats and Freedom Caucus Republicans meant the votes weren’t
there.

“This was a tremendous win,” says Vitka. “I’ll be damned if
that isn’t one of the biggest successes in terms of protecting the
privacy interests of the US public.”

Anti-Imperialist Assists

Critics have pointed to Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of the Squad’s
support for continual military aid to Ukraine to charge they’re
counterfeit anti-imperialists or even war hawks. But important as it
is, the Ukraine war is not the only pressing foreign policy issue.

Take Latin America, for instance. Ocasio-Cortez was, after Omar
[[link removed]], the second
member of Congress to declare the 2019 Bolivian coup what it was: a
coup — beating
[[link removed]] even Sanders by
a couple of hours
[[link removed]] and
staking out a position that’s somehow still a minority
[[link removed]] opinion
in US politics. In fact, she went further, introducing
[[link removed]] an
amendment banning the transfer of weapons and crowd control equipment
to the coup regime, language that made it into the bill
[[link removed]] that
passed the House.

She’s been similarly out front when it comes to Colombia, where
leftist president Gustavo Petro has been struggling to enact his
agenda amid entrenched opposition, a divided congress, and drug-fueled
violence. In 2022, two of Ocasio-Cortez’s amendments made it into
[[link removed]] the
2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that passed the House:
one directing the State Department to produce a report on US
involvement in human rights violations during the country’s
decades-long civil war, and another prohibiting any Pentagon
involvement in anti-narcotic aerial fumigation operations in the
country, which have contaminated water sources and caused serious
health problems for Colombians.

Since the latter policy had already been put in place by the embattled
Petro, Ocasio-Cortez’s amendment was effectively a signal of US
support for his move, one that got significant press coverage in the
country. Thirty-four Colombian senators wrote
[[link removed]] to
their US colleagues urging them to adopt the measures, and when they
were left out of the Senate version, a coalition of progressive groups
as well as Colombian human rights organizations
[[link removed]] wrote
Congress urging they be taken up, partly on the basis of
“support[ing] the Colombian government’s efforts.” It’s a
vivid illustration of the way the Squad’s presence in Congress
reinforces the work of both outside groups and left-wing movements
abroad.

“It might not matter to those sitting in wealthy countries and
posting online, but in the countries faced with harmful policies
enacted by the US or their allies, seeing prominent politicians
speaking out can give hope and momentum to these people’s
movements,” says Erik Sperling, executive director of Just Foreign
Policy. “Congressional action in the US virtually always gets widely
covered in the local press, raising awareness of the US role and
putting real pressure on problematic client regimes.”

As Peru’s security services cracked down on anti-government protests
that followed the December impeachment and arrest of leftist
ex-president Pedro Castillo, Ocasio-Cortez and four other Squad
members were among the twenty House progressives who signed a letter
[[link removed]] in
January this year calling on President Joe Biden to end security
assistance to the country. This past July, six weeks after further US
troops and weapons landed in the country, Ocasio-Cortez introduced
another NDAA amendment
[[link removed]],
this one suspending Pentagon funding for Peru until certain conditions
were met.

Meanwhile, a few months after the January letter, the Peruvian
government hired
[[link removed]] a
$40,000-a-month US public relations firm to shore up its image in the
United States, suggesting the impact that even just letters, public
statements, and bills introduced by the Squad members can have on
foreign governments. This is just a small sample of the total
legislative action
[[link removed]] they’ve
taken on foreign policy.

“With the entire Squad and their allies, you have a core of about a
dozen members that will sign many of the most principled foreign
policy letters on a wide range of issues, which is a big change from
the past when the more centrist voices on the foreign affairs
subcommittees would speak out on these topics,” says Sperling.

All or some of the Squad have signed onto letters: condemning Donald
Trump’s sanctions on and threats of military intervention
[[link removed]] in
Venezuela; calling for the lifting of sanctions on the country, as
well as on Cuba
[[link removed]] and Iran
[[link removed]]; denouncing
[[link removed]] repression
by Ecuador’s right-wing, Trump-supported government; warning
[[link removed]] the
Organization of American States (OAS) away from further
[[link removed]] coup
shenanigans in Bolivia’s 2020 election; and threatening
[[link removed]] to
condition military aid to Israel. Ocasio-Cortez’s name was the
common denominator on all those letters.

Likewise, she was one of only four members of both the House and
Senate to sign a letter in 2021 calling on Biden to pressure Saudi
Arabia to lift its deadly blockade of Yemen, and one of only five to
sign on to a Tlaib-led letter
[[link removed]] calling
on Biden’s attorney general to drop the charges against WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange. No GOP equivalent exists, even though it’s
far more perilous
[[link removed]] for
Democrats to take this stance.

Critics justifiably criticize Ocasio-Cortez’s “present” vote
[[link removed]] on
Iron Dome funding in 2021. But this assessment should be balanced out
by acknowledging her other, similarly symbolic actions that cut the
other way. That includes her refusal
[[link removed]] to
vote to condemn the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign
while cosponsoring
[[link removed]] a
pro-BDS resolution, her labeling
[[link removed]] Israel
an “apartheid state” as early as 2021, as well as her and the
Squad’s recent decisions to boycott
[[link removed]] the Israeli
president’s speech to Congress and be one of only nine to vote
against
[[link removed]] a
resolution declaring Israel is neither an apartheid nor racist state.
All of these are politically risky actions, especially when pro-Israel
money has emerged as a real threat
[[link removed]] to
reelection.

Even when Ocasio-Cortez has fallen short on the issue, she’s shown
that she’s responsive to criticism from the Left, as when
she backed out
[[link removed]] of
a Yitzhak Rabin memorial event after an outcry from BDS activists.
That’s not to mention the contributions
[[link removed]] other Squad
members
[[link removed]] have made
to shifting the Israel-Palestine discourse in the United States, which
is slowly but surely turning toward the Left
[[link removed]].

Squad members have been principled in these efforts, willing to work
with the other side. Ocasio-Cortez and Omar praised
[[link removed]] Trump
for his 2019 withdrawal from Syria (which, true to form, he
ultimately didn’t follow through on
[[link removed]]),
and the latter spoke
[[link removed]] in favor of and voted
for
[[link removed]] Rep.
Matt Gaetz’s (R-FL) push to withdraw US troops from Somalia. Most
significantly, Representative Bowman has twice
[[link removed]] forced
a vote to withdraw troops from Syria, and this year backed
[[link removed]] Gaetz’s
resolution to the same effect. These were landmark votes on the
undeclared US war in Syria, and each won incrementally more support.

And for all the grief the Squad has taken over their votes for
Ukrainian military aid, they’ve staked out positions counter to new
Cold War thinking at a time of rising McCarthyism.

Ocasio-Cortez was one of the few signers to publicly stand by
[[link removed]] progressives’ withdrawn
[[link removed]] pro-diplomacy
letter last year, just as the entire Squad held the line on voting
against sending cluster munitions to the country, despite a cynical
last-minute maneuver
[[link removed]] to
make it more difficult for them to do so. Most recently, as anti-China
fervor has taken over even progressive Democrats
[[link removed]],
the Squad were the only seven members of Congress to vote against a
bill escalating
[[link removed]] Trump’s
erosion of the One China policy, and all but one voted
[[link removed]] against creating the
GOP’s anti-China select committee
[[link removed]].

“Obviously it’s not going to end the military-industrial complex
or US interventionism overnight, but suddenly having a more boldly
progressive lane in Congressional foreign policy has greatly impacted
the debate and created the possibility of change in the near
future,” says Sperling. “Anyone who is serious about helping the
victims of US policies abroad should be encouraging this development,
not belittling it.”

Upside, Inside Out

Meanwhile, Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad are uniquely responsive to
unions and outside groups, according to those who have worked with
them.

“Alexandria herself, in her first few weeks in office, reached out
to me and came to my office for a meeting. She’s the only member of
Congress who’s ever done that,” says Association of Flight
Attendants-CWA president Sara Nelson.

“She was here for two hours, talking through issues, trying to learn
what was important to us,” Nelson adds. Ocasio-Cortez has solicited
information from and worked with the union to try to ensure its
priorities were represented through the Federal Aviation Authority’s
reauthorization process.

“I have her chief of staff on my cell phone,” says deputy director
of Food and Water Action Mitch Jones. “We’ve found her office to
be responsive when we need them to be.”

Food and Water Watch criticized Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal
resolution at the time for failing to eliminate fossil fuels directly,
criticism that was met with a policy response. “After hearing
feedback from us, she introduced the Fracking Ban Act,” Jones says.
“Not everyone who supported the Green New Deal was willing to take
on fossil fuels in the way that she did.”

Ocasio-Cortez has worked with progressive organizations on other
legislation and campaigns. In 2019, the congresswoman introduced a
six-bill legislative package
[[link removed]] named
A Just Society, focusing on everything from anti-poverty initiatives
to improving working conditions, with her Place to Prosper Act
[[link removed]] including
national rent control and beefed up tenant protections.

“The Center for Popular Democracy [CPD] worked closely with the
congresswoman on the housing portion of the package,” the
organization’s codirector Analilia Mejia told _Jacobin_. That
included joining CPD affiliates for several mobilizations over
housing, including an August 2019 “Welcome Back Congress
[[link removed]]”
action that saw hundreds
[[link removed]] of
protesters turn up at House members’ offices.

Mejia says that Ocasio-Cortez and other Squad members contributed to
the organization’s Medicare for All campaign, including by helping
CPD staff prepare activist Ady Barkan to testify at a hearing on the
policy. Last year, Squad members also took part in a civil
disobedience action over the overturning of _Roe v. Wade_ that saw
her and sixteen other members of Congress arrested, and where
Ocasio-Cortez was criticized
[[link removed]] for
faking being handcuffed by holding her hands behind her back — even
though that was exactly what the organization had trained them to do,
to show they weren’t resisting arrest.

“It was ridiculous. You can’t win no matter what,” says Mejia of
the criticism.

Ocasio-Cortez has likewise worked
[[link removed]] closely
with Housing Justice for All, taking part in town halls
[[link removed]], workshops
[[link removed]] on
eviction defense, and other events. One of the campaigns that she
was prominent in
[[link removed]] was
for a package of state-level housing bills
[[link removed]] in 2019,
one of which was sponsored by socialist state senator Julia Salazar,
that presented sweeping reforms
[[link removed]] to
New York’s housing regulatory landscape, including an expansion of
New York City’s rent control. The legislation was passed and signed
into law
[[link removed]] later
that year.

Alexandria herself, in her first few weeks in office, reached out to
me and came to my office for a meeting. She’s the only member of
Congress who’s ever done that.

“She held a number of town halls that were well-attended and carried
the message that we need stronger rent control laws,” says Housing
Justice for All campaign coordinator Cea Weaver. “She played the
same role in our eviction moratorium and ‘cancel rent’ campaign
during 2020 and 2021.”

This isn’t the only state-level campaign Ocasio-Cortez has lent a
hand to. Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) organizer Charlie
Heller recently detailed
[[link removed]] her
involvement in two winning New York campaigns, one a two-year-long
fight to block a new fracked gas plant in Astoria, and the other a
four-year-long effort to pass the Build Public Renewables Act,
a major step
[[link removed].] to
shifting the state to renewable energy.

According to Heller, these victories wouldn’t have happened without
Ocasio-Cortez’s vocal support and campaigning giving them needed
publicity and legitimacy. National Nurses United has likewise praised
[[link removed]] the
congresswoman for joining
[[link removed]] their fight
[[link removed]] against
efforts to defund and privatize a Bronx veterans administration
hospital.

Ocasio-Cortez has lent her considerable platform to other union
fights. She skipped the inauguration to attend
[[link removed]] a
Teamsters strike and urged
[[link removed]] others
to show up, again rallied
[[link removed]] with UPS workers
as they prepared to strike this year, publicly backed
[[link removed]] and spotlit
[[link removed]] Starbucks
workers’ unionization struggles, joined
[[link removed]] the
picket line at a Buffalo hospital, worked a bar
[[link removed]] in
solidarity with tipped workers, and recently showed up
[[link removed]] at
an actors and writers picket line in Manhattan.

Critics would dismiss these as meaningless symbolic actions. But this
is belied by the fierce and well-justified criticism she received
[[link removed]] when
she _failed_ to attend an Amazon workers rally in 2021 prior to a
union vote. Ocasio-Cortez and the Amazon Labor Union (ALU)
ultimately patched things up
[[link removed]],
and she and Sanders appeared
[[link removed]] at
a key ALU rally in Staten Island the following year, where the
congresswoman threatened to cut subsidies and tax breaks to the
company if they didn’t stop union-busting.

Similar to her Iron Dome vote, criticism of Ocasio-Cortez has focused
almost exclusively on her justifiably maligned missed ALU appearance,
but then wholesale ignores the ways she’s assisted unionization
efforts and other worker struggles. The result is a distorted picture
of not just her record, but the value she and other left-wing elected
officials have for these movements — which, similar to the striking
teachers inspired
[[link removed]] by
the 2016 Sanders campaign, has included spurring on others’ own
political work.

“Her campaign for office in 2018 was very inspirational to a lot of
the people who ended up running on the No IDC slate,” says Weaver,
referring to the movement that shattered
[[link removed]] the
conservative stranglehold on New York politics in 2018, which has
helped blow open
[[link removed]] the
doors to progressive policy and socialism’s advance in the state.

“She’s utilized different mediums to get people engaged in
politics who have never been and spurred on union organizing,” says
Nelson. “We have activists in our organizing tribe because of her
and the Squad.”

Seeds of Radicalism

Finally, there’s the somewhat more nebulous role Ocasio-Cortez and
the Squad have played in the political shifts of the past few years.

The process of political transformation is messy and chaotic.
Disparate actions add up little by little and then suddenly, building
up pressure on those in power, expanding the bounds of what’s
possible and creating momentum for change. It’s undeniable that the
Squad, by virtue of their work in Congress and acting as a conduit for
outside groups, has been integral to this.

Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal resolution might be one of the most
impactful pieces of legislation that never became law. Simply by
generating the level of publicity and debate it did — something hard
to imagine without her involvement — the measure has
directly inspired
[[link removed]] similar
versions at the state and city levels
[[link removed]] and
even in other countries
[[link removed]].
Similarly, shortly after she introduced her national fracking ban, the
New York state legislature permanently banned fracking
[[link removed]] via
legislation, preventing a future governor’s reversal by executive
order.

“She’s introduced big things that don’t pass but set the
tone,” says Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president at Public
Citizen. “What comes of that is people moving individual components
of it, things at the state level that are connected.”

It’s hard to imagine the few but important
[[link removed]] climate victories
[[link removed]] that
wound up in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) happening without the
Green New Deal, Ocasio-Cortez labeling
[[link removed]] climate
change an “existential” threat, and actions like her joining the
Sunrise Movement’s sit-in
[[link removed]] at
Pelosi’s office, which together helped shoot the perennially ignored
climate crisis up the list of media and political priorities while
legitimizing progressive policies to meet it.

Mejia, who served as national political director for the 2020 Sanders
campaign then Biden Labor Department appointee, argues there’s a
direct line from the congresswoman to the White House’s climate
policies, thanks to the Sanders-Biden policy task forces.

“AOC and John Kerry cochaired the climate table,” she says. “I
had a front row seat and saw these policy positions get hardwired into
Build Back Better, the IRA, the American Rescue Plan Act [ARPA].”

It’s likewise hard to imagine the extremely pricy ARPA,
Biden’s much larger
[[link removed]] stimulus
bill correctly credited for pulling the US economy out of crisis,
being passed at all under the lifelong penny-pinching Democratic
president without the likes of Ocasio-Cortez consistently dismissing
[[link removed]] deficit
concerns at the same time that she elevated
[[link removed]] voices
critical of fiscal hawkery.

Left-wing scrutiny of the Squad and particularly Representative
Ocasio-Cortez has steadily veered from constructive criticism and
needed pressure to a kind of caricaturish vitriol.

More than that, a number of popular pandemic-era policies had
antecedents in or received crucial public support from the Squad. A
third round of stimulus checks wouldn’t have happened under Biden
without their leadership forcing the issue
[[link removed]].
Squad members were consistently pushing for student debt cancellation
as far back as 2019
[[link removed].] and
were among the most prominent voices urging
[[link removed]] Biden
to enact it as soon as he won in 2020, which he of course eventually
did.

In fact, from the very start of the pandemic, Ocasio-Cortez called
for
[[link removed]] direct
cash payments, a pause on student loan repayments, mortgage relief,
and a moratorium on evictions, all of which soon became core, popular
parts of Trump and then Biden’s pandemic responses. She did this on
the very day Congress’s second pandemic relief bill was signed into
law, a relatively modest effort
[[link removed]] that
simply mandated some employers to give their workers expanded paid
sick and family leave.

It was only nine days later
[[link removed]] that
the much larger CARES Act, with its stimulus checks and universal
basic income–like unemployment insurance payments, became law. Then,
between its passage and Trump ordering an eviction ban, the
Squad introduced
[[link removed]] a
bill canceling rent and mortgage payments, creating political space
for Trump’s flawed
[[link removed]] but fairly
radical
[[link removed]] tenant
protection measure.

In one case, there’s actually a very direct and unambiguous link
between the Squad’s agitation and a pandemic-era policy victory:
Biden wasn’t planning
[[link removed]] to
lift a finger about the expiration of the eviction moratorium in 2021
until Rep. Cori Bush’s August sit-in on the steps of the US
Capitol forced his hand
[[link removed]],
keeping the vital pandemic protection alive for two more months.

Resisting Despair

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of the Squad are elected
officials. There’s any number of criticisms of their time in
Congress that are fair, reasonable, and necessary, including over key
votes they’ve been on the wrong side on, times they’ve failed to
stand with unions, and their failure to, as promised
[[link removed]], fully take
advantage of the leverage they had under the Democrats’ formerly
slim House majority.

Left-wing scrutiny of the Squad and particularly Representative
Ocasio-Cortez has steadily veered from constructive criticism and
needed pressure to a kind of caricaturish vitriol — one that
magnifies the ways they’ve fallen short, while saying nothing about
their accomplishments nor their usefulness to activist and workers’
movements. Sometimes, you suspect the most unfair critics have taken
their anger and frustration at the conservative, corporate-controlled
political system in which they have to operate, and simply redirected
it at the congresswoman herself.

What’s at stake isn’t the feelings of one member of Congress or
even the Squad’s career, but the health of the socialist and broader
progressive movements. The left pessimism embodied by _New
York_ magazine’s profile — which argues explicitly that
socialists have nothing to show for five years of electoral victories
and that the whole experiment should be abandoned — is a recipe for
despair, apathy, and in the end, demobilization, which may already be
having a trickle-down effect
[[link removed]].
It’s a self-defeating, possibly self-fulfilling prophecy that
threatens to undermine socialist gains — ironically at the exact
same time the movement is racking up victories
[[link removed]] it
hasn’t seen in many decades.

_Branko Marcetic is a Jacobin staff writer and the author
of Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden. He lives in
Chicago, Illinois._

Catalyst, a journal of theory and practice published by Jacobin: new
issue on the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War is out now. Subscribe
today for just $20 to get it in print!
[[link removed]]

* AOC
[[link removed]]
* Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
[[link removed]]
* Jamaal Bowman
[[link removed]]
* The Squad
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

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