[ After three years in the halls of power, she’s seen the
“shit show” up close—and hasn’t given up on her vision for how
to change it.] [[link removed]]

AOC HASN'T GIVEN UP ON HER VISION FOR SOCIAL CHANGE  
[[link removed]]


 

David Remnick
February 14, 2022
The New Yorker
[[link removed]]


*
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_ After three years in the halls of power, she’s seen the “shit
show” up close—and hasn’t given up on her vision for how to
change it. _

Illustration by Lauren Tamaki / The New Yorker,

 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat representing parts of Queens and
the Bronx (including Rikers Island), quickly became the most prominent
progressive voice in the House of Representatives after she defeated a
twenty-year incumbent, Joe Crowley, and went to Capitol Hill in
January, 2019. In Congress, she is hardly alone in her advocacy for
issues ranging from Medicare for All to the Green New Deal; she
belongs to the Bernie Sanders wing of the Party. But few in the
history of the institution have so quickly become a focus of
attention, admiration, and derision.

Elected when she was twenty-nine, the youngest woman ever to serve in
the House, Ocasio-Cortez
[[link removed]] has proved
herself an effective examiner in committee hearings and a master of
social media. In other words, she offers both substance and flair, and
this combination seems to drive her critics to the point of frenzied
distraction. Fox News, the _Post_, and the _Daily Mail_, along with
a collection of right-wing Republican foes in Congress, obsess over
her left-wing politics and her celebrity. In November, Paul Gosar, a
Republican representative from Arizona who has spoken up for
white-nationalist leaders and voted against awarding the Congressional
Gold Medal to police officers who defended the Capitol on January 6,
2021, posted an anime sequence that depicted him killing Ocasio-Cortez
with a sword. More recently, a former Trump campaign adviser, Steve
Cortes, went online to mock Ocasio-Cortez’s boyfriend, Riley
Roberts, for his sandalled feet, prompting her to fire back, “If
Republicans are mad they can’t date me they can just say that
instead of projecting their frustrations onto my boyfriend’s feet.
Ya creepy weirdos.”

When we spoke earlier this month, by Zoom, Ocasio-Cortez talked at
length not only about the impasse the Democrats now face but also the
general atmosphere of working in Congress. “Honestly, it is a shit
show,” she said. “It’s scandalizing, every single day. What is
surprising to me is how it never stops being scandalizing.”

The interview, which was prepared with assistance from Mengfei Chen
and Steven Valentino, took place on February 1st, and has been edited
for length and clarity.

MUCH OF THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S AGENDA IN CONGRESS HAS PRETTY
MUCH STALLED. A TERM THAT BEGAN WITH LOFTY F.D.R.-LIKE AMBITIONS
[[link removed]] IS
NOW AT A STANDSTILL. HOW WOULD YOU RATE THE PRESIDENT’S PERFORMANCE
AFTER A YEAR?

There are some things that are outside of the President’s control,
and there’s very little one can say about that, with Joe Manchin and
[Kyrsten] Sinema. But I think there are some things within the
President’s control, and his hesitancy around them has contributed
to a situation that isn’t as optimal.

My concern is that we’re getting into analysis paralysis, and we
don’t have much time. We should really not take this present
political moment for granted, and do everything that we can. At the
beginning of last year, many of us in the progressive wing—but not
just the progressive wing—were saying we don’t want to repeat a
lot of the hand-wringing that happened in 2010, when there was this
very precious opportunity in the Senate for things to happen.

PEOPLE IN THE BIDEN WHITE HOUSE WOULD ARGUE THAT THE MARGINS ARE THE
MARGINS AND MANCHIN’S POLITICS ARE WHAT THEY ARE. HE COMES FROM A
STATE THAT IS DOMINATED BY A MUCH MORE CONSERVATIVE VOTE. AND SINEMA
IS . . . UNPREDICTABLE. THEY WOULD ARGUE THAT THEY MADE CONCESSION
AFTER CONCESSION AND STILL GOT NOWHERE.

The Presidency is so much larger than just the votes in the
legislature. This is something that we saw with President Obama. I
think we’re seeing this dynamic perhaps extend a little bit into the
Biden Administration, with a reluctance to use executive power. The
President has not been using his executive power to the extent that
some would say is necessary.

WHERE WOULD YOU MOVE FIRST?

One of the single most impactful things President Biden can do is
pursue student-loan cancellation. It’s entirely within his power.
This really isn’t a conversation about providing relief to a small,
niche group of people. It’s very much a keystone action politically.
I think it’s a keystone action economically as well. And I can’t
underscore how much the hesitancy of the Biden Administration to
pursue student-loan cancellation has demoralized a very critical
voting block that the President, the House, and the Senate need in
order to have any chance at preserving any of our majority.

WHAT IS IN THE REALM OF THE ACHIEVABLE, THE REALM OF THE POSSIBLE,
BETWEEN NOW AND THE ELECTION?

That’s why I kind of started off by talking about the executive
powers of the President, because I don’t think that there’s any
guarantee of getting something through that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten
Sinema will approve of that will significantly and materially improve
the lives of working people. It’s a bit of a dismal assessment, but
I think that, given an analysis of their past behavior, it is a fair
one. The President has a responsibility to look at the tools that he
has.

YOU HAD SOME POLITICAL EXPERIENCE BEFORE YOU WERE ELECTED, BUT IT WAS
FROM SOME DISTANCE. YOU WEREN’T A MEMBER OF CONGRESS. YOU WEREN’T
“IN THE ROOM.” WHAT DO YOU SEE IN THE ROOM? WHAT IS IT LIKE, DAY
TO DAY, BEING A MEMBER OF THIS INSTITUTION, WHICH, I HAVE TO SAY, FROM
OUTSIDE, LOOKS LIKE A SHIT SHOW?

Honestly, it _is_ a shit show. It’s scandalizing, every single
day. What is surprising to me is how it never stops being
scandalizing. Some folks perhaps get used to it, or desensitized to
the many different things that may be broken, but there is so much
reliance on this idea that there are adults in the room, and, in some
respect, there are. But sometimes to be in a room with some of the
most powerful people in the country and see the ways that they make
decisions—sometimes they’re just susceptible to groupthink,
susceptible to self-delusion.

SKETCH IT OUT FOR US. WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?

The infrastructure plan, if it does what it’s intended to do,
politicians will take credit for it ten years from now, if we even
have a democracy ten years from now. But the Build Back Better Act is
the vast majority of Biden’s agenda. The infrastructure plan, as
important as it is, is much smaller. So we were talking about pairing
these two things together. The Progressive Caucus puts up a fight, and
then somewhere around October there comes a critical juncture. The
President is then under enormous pressure from the media. There’s
this idea that the President can’t “get things done,” and that
his Presidency is at risk. It’s what I find to be just a lot of
sensationalism. However, the ramifications of that were being very
deeply felt. And you have people running tough races, and it’s “he
needs a win.” And so I’m sitting there in a group with some of the
most powerful people in the country talking about how, if we pass the
infrastructure bill right now, then this will be what the President
can campaign on. The American people will give him credit for it. He
can win his Presidency on it. If we don’t pass it now, then we’ve
risked democracy itself.

WHO’S IN THE ROOM? YOU SAY THE MOST POWERFUL PEOPLE.

You’re talking about everybody from leadership to folks who are in
tough seats, but all elected officials in the Democratic Party on the
federal level. And people really just talk themselves into thinking
that passing the infrastructure plan on that day, in that week, is the
most singular important decision of the Presidency, more than voting
rights, more than the Build Back Better Act itself, which contains the
vast majority of the President’s actual plan. You’re kind of
sitting there in the room and watching people work themselves up into
a decision. It’s a fascinating psychological moment that you’re
watching unfold.

It’s not to say that all these things that they’re saying are a
hundred-per-cent false. But I come from a community that is often
discounted in many different ways, because, you know, these are
“reliable Democrats.” Like, what she has to say doesn’t matter,
etc. What does she know about this political moment? The thing
that’s unfortunate, and what a lot of people have yet to recognize,
is that the motivations and the sense of investment and faith in our
democracy and governance from people in communities like mine also
determine majorities. They also determine the outcomes of statewide
races and Presidential races. And, when you have a gerrymandered
House, when you have the Senate constructed the way that it is, when
you have a Presidency that relies on the Electoral College in the
fashion that it does, you’re in this room and you see that all of
these people who are elected are truly representative of our current
political system. And our current political system is designed to
revolve around a very narrow band of people who are, over all,
materially O.K. It does not revolve around the majority.

YOU’VE USED A PHRASE “_IF_ WE HAVE A DEMOCRACY TEN YEARS FROM
NOW.” DO YOU THINK WE WON’T?

I think there’s a very real risk that we will not. What we risk is
having a government that perhaps postures as a democracy, and may try
to pretend that it is, but isn’t.

WHAT’S GOING TO BRING US TO THAT POINT? YOU HEAR TALK NOW ABOUT OUR
BEING ON THE BRINK OF CIVIL WAR
[[link removed]]—THAT’S
THE LATEST PHRASE IN A SERIES OF BOOKS THAT HAVE COME OUT. WHAT WILL
HAPPEN TO BRING US TO THAT DEGRADED POINT?

Well, I think it has started, but it’s not beyond hope. We’re
never beyond hope. But we’ve already seen the opening salvos of
this, where you have a very targeted, specific attack on the right to
vote across the United States, particularly in areas where Republican
power is threatened by changing electorates and demographics. You have
white-nationalist, reactionary politics starting to grow into a
critical mass. What we have is the continued sophisticated takeover of
our democratic systems in order to turn them into undemocratic
systems, all in order to overturn results that a party in power may
not like.

THE CONCERN IS THAT WE WILL LOOK LIKE WHAT OTHER NATION?

I think we will look like ourselves. I think we will return to Jim
Crow. I think that’s what we risk.

WHAT’S THE SCENARIO FOR THAT?

You have it already happening in Texas, where Jim Crow-style
disenfranchisement laws have already been proposed. You had members of
the state legislature, just a few months ago, flee the state in order
to prevent such voting laws from being passed. In Florida, where you
had the entire state vote to allow people who were released from
prison to be reënfranchised after they have served their debt to
society, that’s essentially being replaced with poll taxes and
intimidation at the polls. You have the complete erasure and attack on
our own understanding of history, to replace teaching history with
institutionalized propaganda from white-nationalist perspectives in
our schools. This is what the scaffolding of Jim Crow was.

So there are many impulses to compare this to somewhere else. There
are certainly plenty of comparisons to make—with the rise of fascism
in post-World War One Germany. But you really don’t have to look
much further than our own history, because what we have, I think, is a
uniquely complex path that we have walked. And the question that
we’re really facing is: Was the last fifty to sixty years after the
Civil Rights Act just a mere flirtation that the United States had
with a multiracial democracy that we will then decide was inconvenient
for those in power? And we will revert to what we had before, which,
by the way, wasn’t just Jim Crow but also the extraordinary economic
oppression as well?

DO YOU THINK MANY REPUBLICANS SHARE YOUR CONCERN ABOUT THE FATE OF
DEMOCRACY? DO YOU HAVE THOSE KINDS OF CONVERSATIONS?

It’s a complex question because there’s so many different kinds of
Republicans. But I’m reluctant to get into the navel-gazing of it,
because, at the end of the day, they all make the same decisions. You
might be able to appeal to the good natures or even a sense of charity
of a handful, but ultimately we have what we have. At the end of the
day, you know, who cares if they’re true believers or if they’re
just complicit? They’re still voting to overturn the results of our
election.

WE’RE CONSTANTLY TOLD, IF YOU COULD ONLY HEAR WHAT’S BEING SAID IN
THE CLOAKROOMS, A LOT OF REPUBLICANS FIND DONALD TRUMP REPULSIVE BUT
KNOW THAT THEY’RE GOING TO LOSE THEIR SEATS IF THEY SAY SO. IS BEING
IN CONGRESS SUCH A GREAT JOB THAT YOU WILL TRADE YOUR PRINCIPLES AND
SOUL FOR THAT JOB?

What I think some Republicans struggle with, the very few that are in
that position, is a concern that they will be replaced by someone even
worse. You know, O.K., externally I might look like a good soldier, I
might look like I’m falling in line, but, if I lose my primary and I
get replaced with ten more Marjorie Taylor Greenes, we’ll be in an
even worse situation.

That’s perhaps where they may be coming from. And, to a certain
extent, you do have these critical moments. You have January 6th, and,
if Mike Pence had made a different split-second decision that day and
done what President Trump was asking of him, we would be in a very
different place right now.

WHEN YOU ARE ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT NANCY PELOSI
[[link removed]] SHOULD STAY AS SPEAKER,
WHEN YOU’RE ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RATHER ADVANCED AGES OF STENY
HOYER, JIM CLYBURN, AND CHUCK SCHUMER, DOES IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
YOU’RE SAYING IT’S STRUCTURAL. IT’S NOT GENERATIONAL.

It’s both. The reason we have this generational situation that we do
is also, in part, due to our structures. The generational aspect of
things is absolutely pertinent to the kind of decision-making. There
is this world view, this appeal, of a time passed that I think
sometimes guides decision-making. President Biden thought that he
could talk with Manchin like an old pal and bring him along. And,
frankly, that was what the White House’s strategy was, in terms of
what they communicated to us. That’s how they tried to sell passage
of not even half a loaf but a tenth of the loaf. It was “We promise
we’ll be able to bring them along.” There is this idea that this
is just a temporary thing and we’ll get back to that. But I grew up
my entire life in this mess. There’s no nostalgia for a time when
Washington worked in my life.

IS IT HEALTHY OR NOT FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY FOR NANCY PELOSI TO
REMAIN IN PLACE AS THE SPEAKER, AS LEADER OF THE DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS IN
THE HOUSE?

It’s really all about a specific moment that we’re in. We are in
such a delicate moment of the day-to-day, particularly with the
threats to our democracy. I believe that, at the end of the day,
there’s going to be a generational change in our leadership. That is
just a simple fact. Now, when that particular moment happens? I think
it’s a larger question of conditions and circumstance.

YOU DON’T WANT TO GO NEAR THIS ONE.

It’s a tough question. It’s not even just a question of the
Speaker. It’s a question of our caucus. I wish the Democratic Party
had more stones. I wish our party was capable of truly supporting bold
leadership that can address root causes.

IS IT THAT THE REPRESENTATIVES DON’T HAVE THE STONES, OR DO YOU WANT
A DIFFERENT PUBLIC OPINION, AS IT WERE? IN OTHER WORDS, FOR EXAMPLE,
TAKE “DEFUND THE POLICE” AS A POLICY DEMAND. CERTAINLY, IN NEW
YORK CITY, NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THAT NOW. AS A MATTER OF PROTEST?
YES. AS ACTIVISM? YES. BUT WE HAVE A NEW MAYOR, ERIC ADAMS
[[link removed]], WHO IS ANYTHING BUT
“DEFUND THE POLICE.” WHO ARE YOU DISAPPOINTED IN?

I still am disappointed in leadership and in my colleagues, because,
ultimately, these conversations about “defund,” or this, that, and
the other, are what is happening in public and popular conversations.
Our job is to be able to engage in that conversation, to read what is
happening, and to be able to develop a vision and translate it into a
course of action. All too often, I believe that a lot of our decisions
are reactive to public discourse instead of responsive to public
discourse. And so, just because there was this large conversation
about “defund the police” coming from the streets, the response
was to immediately respond to it with fear, with pooh-poohing, with
“this isn’t us,” with arm’s distance. So, then, what is the
vision? That’s where I think the Party struggles.

AREN’T YOU SEEING THE RESPONSE IN CITY HALL NOW IN THE SHAPE OF ERIC
ADAMS?

Well, I think you also see it in the shape of the City Council that
was elected. You have a record number of progressives. People often
bring up the Mayor as evidence of some sort of decision around
policing. I disagree with that assessment. I represent a community
that is very victimized by a rise in violence. (And I represent Rikers
Island!) What oftentimes people overlook is that the same communities
that supported Mayor Adams also elected Tiffany Cabán
[[link removed]].
What the public wants is a strong sense of direction. I don’t think
that in electing Mayor Adams everyone in the city supports bringing
back torture to Rikers Island in the form of solitary confinement.
What people want is a strong vision about how we establish public
safety in our communities.

One of the ways that we engage is by backing some of the only policies
that are actually supported by evidence to reduce incidents of violent
crime: violence-interruption programs, summer youth employment. When
we talk about the surge of violence happening right now, when I engage
with our hospitals, doctors, social workers, everyone’s telling me
that there’s so many things we’re not discussing. The surge in
violence is being driven by young people, particularly young men. And
we allow the discourse to make it sound as though it’s, like, these
shady figures in the bush, jumping out from a corner. These are young
men. These are boys. We’re also not discussing the mental-health
crisis that we are experiencing as a country as a result of the
pandemic.

Because we run away from substantive discussions about this, we
don’t want to say some of the things that are obvious, like, Gee,
the child-tax credit just ran out, on December 31st, and now people
are stealing baby formula. We don’t want to have that discussion. We
want to say these people are criminals or we want to talk about
“people who are violent,” instead of “environments of
violence,” and what we’re doing to either contribute to that or
dismantle that.

I’VE NEVER SEEN ANYBODY SO QUICKLY BECOME A LIGHTNING ROD FOR
RIGHT-WING CRITICISM AND OBSESSION. WHY DO YOU THINK THERE’S SUCH A
FIXATION ON YOU PERSONALLY?

I think there’s just some surface-level stuff. And, to be honest,
it’s not just the right wing. I was laughing because a couple of
months ago someone showed me some of the news footage and coverage
from the night that I was elected. And, obviously, I didn’t see any
of it because I was, like, losing my mind.

But there was this footage, I think it was Brian Williams. And it was,
like, breaking news: the third-most-powerful Democrat in the House of
Representatives seems to have been unseated by this radical socialist.
All the buzzwords that the right wing uses now were also completely
legitimized by mainstream media on the night of the election. I never
had a chance. People act as though there was something I could have
done. There really wasn’t. It was kind of baked in from the
beginning, and my choice was how to respond to that.

And I think because I respond to it differently, that increases a
certain level of novelty, which then increases interest. But then
there’s also just the basic stuff. I’m young, I’m a woman, I’m
a woman of color. I’m not _liberal_ in a traditional sense. I’m
willing to buck against my own party, and in a real way. And I’m
everything that they need. I’m the red meat for their base.

DO YOU WORRY SOMETIMES THAT YOU TAKE THE BAIT TOO MUCH OR POKE THE
BEAR IN A WAY THAT MIGHT NOT BE, IN RETROSPECT, SOMETHING YOU
SHOULD’VE DONE? LIKE, FOR EXAMPLE, THE MET GALA, THE “TAX THE RICH
[[link removed]]”
DRESS, OR YOUR RESPONSE TO THE REALLY WEIRD TWEET ABOUT YOUR
BOYFRIEND’S FEET?

All the time. Every day you make decisions, and you have to make
decisions about whether it’s a good idea to go after this or if
it’s a bad idea to go after it. Sometimes you make good decisions.
Sometimes you make less-than-optimal ones. And then you reflect on
them and you try to kind of sharpen your steel.

WHAT WERE THE LESS-THAN-OPTIMAL ONES?

Everything has a different goal, right? And so, if you’re at home on
Twitter, or if you’re at home on TV, there are some things that are
not for you. There are some things I do that you don’t like that are
not intended for you to like, such as what happened with the Met Gala.
There are a lot of folks who did not like that. There were some
“principled leftists” who didn’t like that. But, when you look
at my community, it’s not a college town, a socialist, leftist,
academic community. It’s a working-class community that I’m able
to engage in a collective conversation about our principles. And,
honestly, there’s a response to that in some circles online that may
be negative, but in my community the response was quite positive.

THE RESPONSE TO THE MET GALA WAS POSITIVE IN YOUR COMMUNITY? HOW DID
YOU FEEL IT?

Yeah. Because sometimes you just need to give a little Bronx jeer to
the rich and to the spectacle. You need to puncture the façade. My
community and my family—we’re postal workers, my uncle is a
maintenance man, my mom’s a domestic worker. Sometimes you just need
to have that moment.

It is a bizarre psychological experience to live specifically now in
2022. We’re not even talking about a culture of celebrity. We’re
talking about a culture of commodification of human beings, from the
bottom all the way to the top. And there’s absolutely a bizarre
psychological experience of this that also plays into these decisions.
For example, like what happened in responding to these bizarre things,
like about my boyfriend’s feet. I’ve felt for a long time that we
need to talk about the bizarre psychological impulses underpinning the
right wing.

It’s not “politically correct” to be able to talk about these
things, but they are so clearly having an obvious impact on not just
our public discourse but the concentration of power. We have to talk
about patriarchy, racism, capitalism, but you’re not going to have
those conversations by using those words. You have to have those
conversations by really responding in uplifting moments. I don’t
really care if other people understand it. Sometimes what seems to
some folks a moment that’s gauche or something, I often do it with
the intention of exposing cultural or psychological undercurrents that
people don’t want to talk about. Which, by the way, is why I think
sometimes people _read_ these moments as gauche or low-class or
whatever they may be. And sometimes how I feel is, if I’m just going
to be this, like, commodified avatar thing, then I’m going to play
with it, like a toy.

IT’S A ROUGH THING TO DEAL WITH.

Yeah. It’s awful.

ONE OF THE CUDGELS USED BY THE RIGHT THESE DAYS, AND NOT ONLY THE
RIGHT, IS FEAR ABOUT CANCELLATION AND “WOKENESS.” WE’VE EVEN
HEARD MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE GIVE SPEECHES ABOUT THE DANGERS OF
SO-CALLED CANCEL CULTURE. AND, AT THE SAME TIME, IT DOES SEEM LIKE
NORMS AROUND SPEECH ARE CHANGING AROUND FEARS OF ONLINE BACKLASHES. I
KNOW YOU’VE CRITICIZED THAT TERM, “CANCEL CULTURE,” EVEN
DISMISSED IT, BUT YOU DID SO IN A TWEET.

You look at the capture of power in the right wing, the ascent of
white nationalism, the concentration of wealth. You cannot really
animate or concentrate a movement like that—you can’t coalesce it
into functional political power—without a sense of persecution or
victimhood. And that’s the role of this concept of cancel culture.
It’s the speck of dust around which the raindrop must form in order
to precipitate takeovers of school boards, pushing actual discourse
out of the acceptable norms, like in terms of the 1619 Project or
getting books banned from schools. They need the concept of cancel
culture, of persecution, in order to justify, animate, and pursue a
political program of takeover, or at least a constant further
concentration of their own power.

You talk about cancel culture. But notice that those discussions only
go one way. We don’t talk about _all_ the people who were fired.
You just kind of talk about, like, right-leaning podcast bros and more
conservative figures. But, for example, Marc Lamont Hill was fired
[from CNN] for discussing an issue with respect to Palestinians,
pretty summarily. There was no discussion about it, no engagement, no
thoughtful discourse over it, just pure accusation.

LAST MONTH, AN EX-STAFFER OF NEW YORK SENATOR KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND’S
TOLD THE NEW YORK _POST_ THAT YOU COULD MOUNT “A VERY, VERY
CREDIBLE CHALLENGE AND QUITE LIKELY BEAT HER.” HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT
THAT? HOW DO YOU VIEW YOUR POLITICAL FUTURE?

I’m not trying to be, like, “I’m not like the other girls.”
I’m not trying to position myself in that way. But I don’t think
that I make these kinds of decisions as if I’m operating with some
sort of ten-to-fifteen-year plan, like a lot of people do. Half this
town, if not more, has been to a fancy Ivy League school. And so, as a
consequence, everyone is, like, what chess pieces are being put down
for what specific aspiration? I make decisions based on where I think
people are and what we’re ready for, particularly as a movement. I
think a lot of people sometimes make these decisions based on
what _they_ want, right? What I want is a lot more decentralized. I
think it’s a lot more rooted in mass movements.

COULD YOU SEE YOURSELF WALKING AWAY FROM PUBLIC OFFICE ENTIRELY AND
GOING TO A LIFE OF MASS MOVEMENTS?

I think about it all the time. When I entertain possibilities for my
future, it’s like anybody else. I could be doing what I’m doing in
a little bit of a different form, but I could also not be in elected
office as well. It could come in so many different forms. I wake up,
and I’m, like, what would be the most effective thing to do to
advance the power and build the power of working people?

WELL, DO YOU WAKE UP SOMETIMES IN YOUR CAPITOL HILL APARTMENT AND SAY,
WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE? I’M ONE REPRESENTATIVE OUT OF
HUNDREDS. I’M IN A GRIDLOCKED SITUATION. I’M NOT EFFECTING THE
CHANGE I WANT TO, AND I’D RATHER JOIN, OR LEAD, OR HELP LEAD A
MOVEMENT OUTSIDE OF GOVERNMENT?

I’ve had those thoughts, absolutely. We all have different options
in front of us. And the choice of what option we take at any given
point is a reflection of all of those conditions, our motivations, all
of those things. And there are times when I’m cynical and I
sometimes fall into that. I’m just, like, “Man, maybe I should
just, like, learn to grow my own food and teach other people how to do
that!”

But I also reject the total cynicism that what’s happening here is
fruitless. I’ve been in this cycle before in my life, before I even
ran for office, before it was even a thought.

THE SOCIAL-MEDIA FOLKS AT _THE NEW YORKER_ INVITED PEOPLE TO PROPOSE
QUESTIONS FOR YOU VIA INSTAGRAM. HOPE IS THE THEME THAT IS THE CENTER
OF ALMOST ALL OF THESE. IF I CAN DISTILL THEM, THE MOST BASIC QUESTION
IS, WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO PEOPLE, PARTICULARLY YOUNG PEOPLE, WHO HAVE
LOST HOPE?

I’ve been there. And what I can say is that, when you’re feeling
like you’ve lost hope, it’s a very passive experience, which is
part of what makes it so depressing.

And that’s what I had to go through. There was all this hope when
Obama was elected, in 2008. And, at the end of the day, a lot of
people that had hope in our whole country had those hopes dashed.

I graduated. My dad died. My family had medical debt, because we live
in the jankiest medical system in the developed world. My childhood
home was on the precipice of being taken away by big banks. I’d be
home, and there’d be bankers in cars parked in front of my house,
taking pictures for the inevitable day that they were going to kick us
out.

I was supposed to be the great first generation to go to college, and
I graduated into a recession where bartending, legitimately, and
waitressing, legitimately, paid more than any college-level entry job
that was available to me. I had a complete lack of hope. I saw a
Democratic Party that was too distracted by institutionalized power to
stand up for working people. And I decided this is bullshit. No one,
absolutely no one, cares about people like me, and this is hopeless.
And I lost hope.

HOW DID THAT MANIFEST ITSELF?

It manifested in depression. Feeling like you have no agency, and that
you are completely subject to the decisions of people who do not care
about you, is a profoundly depressing experience. It’s a very
invisibilizing experience. And I lived in that for years. This is
where sometimes what I do is speak to the psychology of our politics
rather than to the polling of our politics. What’s really important
for people to understand is that to change that tide and to actually
have this well of hope you have to operate on your direct level of
human experience.

When people start engaging individually enough, it starts to amount to
something bigger. We have a culture of immediate gratification where
if you do something and it doesn’t pay off right away we think
it’s pointless.

But, if more people start to truly cherish and value the engagement
and the work in their own back yard, it will precipitate much larger
change. And the thing about people’s movements is that the opposite
is very top-down. When you have folks with a profound amount of money,
power, influence, and they really want to make something happen, they
start with media. You look at these right-wing organizations, they
create YouTube channels. They create their podcast stars. They have
Fox News as their own personal ideological television outlet.

Legitimate change in favor of public opinion is the opposite. It takes
a lot of mass-public-building engagement, unrecognized work until it
gets to the point that it is so big that to ignore it threatens the
legitimacy of mass-media outlets, institutions of power, etc. It has
to get so big that it is unignorable, in order for these positions up
top to respond. And so people get very discouraged here.

GOING FORWARD, WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE OPTIMAL ROLE FOR YOU TO PLAY?

With the Climate Justice Alliance, some communities here at home say
that they don’t talk about leadership, they talk about being
leaderful. And I think that people’s movements, especially in the
United States, are leaderful. And we’re getting more people every
day. The untold story is actually the momentum of what is happening on
the ground. You have Starbucks that just unionized its first shops in
Buffalo. I went up there to visit them. Sure, I went over there to
support a mayoral election which didn’t ultimately pan out, but also
to support a lot of what was going on. I would argue that if it
wasn’t for that mayoral election and the amount of intensity and
organizing and hope and attention, a lot of these workers who were
organizing may have given up.

There is no movement, there is no effort, there is no unionizing,
there is no fight for the vote, there is no resistance to draconian
abortion laws, if people think that the future is baked in and nothing
is possible and that we’re doomed. Even on
climate—or _especially_ on climate. And so the day-to-day of my
day job is frustrating. So is everyone else’s. I ate shit when I was
a waitress and a bartender, and I eat shit as a member of Congress.
It’s called a job, you know?

So, yes, I deal with the wheeling and dealing and whatever it is, that
insider stuff, and I advance amendments that some people would
criticize as too little, etc. I also advance big things that people
say are unrealistic and naïve. Work is like that. It is always the
great fear when it comes to work or pursuing anything. You want to
write something, and, in your head, it’s this big, beautiful Nobel
Prize-winning concept. And then you are humbled by the words that you
actually put on paper.

And that is the work of movement. That is the work of organizing. That
is the work of elections. That is the work of legislation. That is the
work of theory, of concepts, you know? And _that_ is what it means
to be in the arena.

_[DAVID REMNICK
[[link removed]] has been
editor of The New Yorker since 1998 and a staff writer since 1992. He
is the author of “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama
[[link removed]].”]_

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