AOC Speech Transcript on RBG Death & What Democrats Should Do Next

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: (00:02)
Hi everyone. Hi everyone, thank you for joining. Hey, everybody, just wanted to give it a minute or two for everyone to hop on. Hey everyone. Hey, everybody, just wanted to give everybody a minute or two to hop on. But let’s get to it.

It’s a really incredibly sad day and sad evening. If you haven’t heard yet, Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg just passed away this evening. She was surrounded by her family and her friends.

It was the very last statement, one of the last statements that she gave, to I believe her granddaughter, that her final wishes was, that her vacancy and the vacancy on the Court that she would leave behind, not be filled until a new president is able to fill it.

As I’ve stated earlier tonight, I think it’s incredibly heartbreaking that this was the last thing. This is one of the last thoughts that was weighing on her shoulders before passing, on today of all days, Rosh Hashanah.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the first Jewish woman to sit on the Supreme Court. To pass on such a high holiday, I think just adds even more weight and significance to this moment, and particularly for our brothers and sisters and the Jewish community that are also feeling the duality of that.

So I wanted to hop on because a lot of people were reaching out to me on Twitter, and publicly and privately saying, “What now? What do we do? I’m scared.”

For those of you who don’t know, this vacancy on the court is extremely, extremely significant. It’s earth shattering, this kind of vacancy. This kind of tipping point is the difference between people having reproductive rights, and the government controlling people’s bodies for them.

This kind of difference, this kind of vacancy makes the difference between LGBT people having marriage equality and full rights. Not, this difference is the difference between labor protections, and your ability to be protected at work and your boss not being able to violate your rights.

This kind of vacancy is the difference between us having healthcare and not. It’s the difference between us having a future in our climate and not. The timing of this vacancy is extremely unsettling and scary to a lot of people. I want to hop on tonight to talk to you about this, and to talk to you about why now this moment is not the time for despair. It is not the time for cynicism. It is not the time to give up. It is not the time for us to say, “It’s too late. It’s too far gone. I don’t know what to do.”

We’re going to talk about it right now because it’s that important. Because it is not hyperbole. The actual balance of our democracy rests in the actions that we choose to make. That I choose to make, that you choose to make, that every single individual chooses to make between now and November, on election day and after.

So now is the time to tune in. Now is the time to really key in to our everyday decisions. I want you to know that if you’re a person that’s saying, “I don’t know what to do right now,” don’t worry. We’ve got you. We will support you. We will help you figure out what to do.

One of the most common questions that I get is, “What do I do in this moment? I don’t know what else to do in this moment?” I think the reason that answering this question is so difficult is actually a reason for optimism.

The reason it’s hard to tell you what to do is because everybody has something to give. Everybody has something unique to give. Everyone has something different to give. Part of figuring out what to do, is not just waiting for someone to tell you what to do. But it’s actually looking into yourself and asking yourself, “What do I want to give? What am I willing to share? What can I share? What do I have to offer?” We can go do that.

So let’s talk about the ABC’s, very essential basics that everyone is probably telling you what to do. First of all, I need everyone to go online right now and check your voter registration. That’s what I need you to do. I don’t care if you already think you’re registered. I don’t care if you think you’re good. You need to go online and check your voter registration to make sure it’s still good.

Maybe you moved. Maybe your voter registration is out of date, and you’ve moved since you last voted, and you need to update it. COVID. There’s so much stuff going on right now. A lot of people are moving in with friends or family, or what have you. Update your voter registration. Do it right now. Do it tonight, and make sure you vote.

If you are between the ages of 18 and 29, I mean hell, even a little bit older. If you’re between the ages of 18 and 35, 40, you have the ability to turn the outcome of this election. Period. Period.

When I won my primary … People want to talk about a hopelessness. Two weeks before my first primary, polls showed me down 25 to 35 points behind my opponent. Two weeks before the election, and we won. You want to know why? You want to know why that happened?

Even when I saw that poll, I knew something was off about it. It didn’t feel right in my heart. I knew in my gut that it was wrong. Let me tell you why it was wrong, and why I knew it was wrong. Because those polls, they polled likely voters. You poll the people who are most likely to turn out in the election.

You know what that means? It means they didn’t poll young people. They did not poll voters 18 to 35, 18 to 29, 18 to 40, in the way that they actually showed up. Now, here’s the thing. People say, “Oh my gosh, why is everyone in our government so old?” I don’t want to be ageist or anything like that, but we want a government that’s diverse. We want older people representing us in government, and we want younger people representing us in government.

One of the things that people ask me is, “Why do we have a government that is so disproportionately much older? Dominated by much, much older representatives and officials? Why does it feel like there’s almost no young people?” Well, it’s because young people historically have not shown up.

But that changed. When I got elected, as some of you may know, I got elected as the youngest woman in American history to be sent to the United States Congress. You want to know why that happened? Because on election day, our turnout, our voters under 40, the amount of people under 40 matched the number of voters above 60. That is almost unheard of in politics. It’s almost unheard of.

But you know what? We did it. We did it right here in the Bronx in 2018. There’s voter suppression here, big time. Big time. Don’t get it twisted that because New York is a blue state we don’t have voter suppression. We had, especially in 2018, no early voting, no mail-in ballots, no no-excuse absentee. All of that. We didn’t have any of that. We had to do it all between 8:00 AM and 9:00 PM, or 6:00 AM, if your poll site opened that early, and 9:00 PM on June 26, of 2018. But you know what? We were down 25 to 35 points two weeks before the elections, and we did it anyway.

That’s the kind of work that we need to do in every pocket of this country between now and the November election to save our democracy. Period. That’s what we need to do.

So when people ask, “What can I do?” There’s the basics. Check your voter registration tonight, and make sure that it has not been messed up, that the information is up to date.

Because don’t say, “Oh, I’m registered at my old apartment an hour away,” because you know what happens on election day? You try to get there, you get stuck in traffic, something happens, you can’t call out of work, and then you end up not being able to vote. Sometimes that one vote makes the difference. So update your voter registration.

… vote makes the difference. So update your voter registration and check your voter registration. And the third thing you need to do is vote. And I want to talk to some of my brothers and sisters and some of my brethren that don’t vote. And they don’t vote, not out of apathy, but actually, because they feel so heartbroken at our democracy. Because I understand why people say, “I don’t vote. What’s the point?” I really empathize with it. I’m not here to dismiss you. I’m not here to poo-poo you. I’m not here to say you’re wrong or that you’re a bad person. What I’m here to say is that this year, this election, voting for Joe Biden is not about whether you agree with him. It’s a vote to let our democracy live another day. That’s what this is about.

We need to act in solidarity and protection for the most vulnerable people in our society who have already experienced the violent repercussions of this administration. And the reason we need to do that is because yes, the political middle is willing to sacrifice immigrants. The political middle too often is willing to play both sides when someone dies to police violence. Absolutely. That’s why we need to show up. We need to show up because if we don’t show up, those people don’t get protected. Our trans brothers and sisters will not be protected. Our immigrant brothers and sisters will not be protected. Our brothers and sisters who are not making a living wage, that are working at McDonald’s and that they aren’t being paid a living wage, or they’re working at Amazon and they’re being forced to work in unsafe conditions, we got to show up for them. That’s what we need to show up for.

I’m not here to ask you to say that any one politician is the answer because no one politician is the answer. No one president is the answer. You are the answer. Mass movements are the answer. Millions of people are the answer. You are the answer. And so I need you. We need you. Even in Congress, we can’t do it alone. So we need you to show up.

So there’s a couple of things again, what can we do? I already talked about registering, checking your registration, registering if you haven’t, and making sure that you vote. Now, the other thing that I think we need you to do is to organize. Organize your community, and the thing that’s great about that is that you don’t have to jump into the frontline. You don’t have to be the one person that organizes your community. You don’t have to. And especially right now, this is not about starting a new organization. This isn’t about launching a new project. If that’s too much, or if you haven’t done that before, laid back and look at the people who are already organizing in your community. I promise you they exist. I promise you they exist. And if you don’t know about them, that’s okay, because very often the people doing that work are under-recognized. So just lay back and look around, be observant in who you see showing up in your community, who you see at a rally and follow them, listen to them, take them in. When they say, “I need you to show up at X corner for an action, or for food delivery, or for a protest, or what have you, show up. Do your homework. Make sure that they have extensive ties. But once you know that person or that organization is legit, or that one specific action is one that you feel passionate about, go for it. Go for it. But this moment right now requires all of us to do more and be better.

And listen, I know you’re tired. I’m tired. I got this news. I was driving back to the Bronx from DC today. Hit crazy traffic. It’s been an insane week. It’s been an insane year. 2020, what’s going on? I got bags under my eyes. I know you have bags under your eyes. We’re all tired, but that’s how authoritarianism works. This is how authoritarianism works, to wear you down until you give in. And right now, what we need to do is never give in. That’s our number one job right now, is to not give in and it’s to not give up.

So what can you do? Vote, registered to vote, organize, get involved in organizing and supporting organizers in your community. But here’s the thing that I also believe. I believe that every single human being has something to give. Every single human being has something to offer. And so, you know what you have to give. Maybe if you’re blessed, you’ve got money in your pocket, maybe you’ve got that to give. Maybe you don’t have money in your pocket because COVID has just completely wrecked the country. You have talents, you have time, you have relationships.

Let’s talk about relationships because there is someone, I guarantee you, there is someone in your life that only you can get through to. I guarantee it. There is someone in your life that you have a very special relationship with. I guarantee it. You can get through to them in a way that maybe nobody else can. I need you to use your relationships. That’s what we need you to do right now. Maybe you’ve got an uncle in Ohio. Maybe you’ve got family in Florida. Maybe you’ve got people that you know in Colorado or in a swing state, or even not a swing, or in Georgia or whomever. And the beautiful thing about politics is that a lot of it is relational. And we don’t take it personally, but you know, I could make a point and just because I’m me, there are people that will not listen to it, just because I’m the one who said it, right? It’s not the point. It’s the fact that I said that point, right?

There’s someone in your life that maybe they won’t listen to anybody else, but you can get through to them. I need you to use your relationships to get through and check-in on people and making sure that they’re stepping up and that they’re doing the right thing, and that they’re not staying home on election night and that they’re not giving their vote to Donald Trump. That’s what I need you to do. So I need you to give your relationships. I need you to pick up the phone. I need you to message somebody. I need you to get through to that person that only you can get through to, that only you know how to talk to. In your workplace, in your job, in your school, in your family, in your friends, whatever, I need you to do that. I need you to give your relationships.

One thing you can do tonight, write down a list of five people, that for whatever reason you think that if you get through to them, whether it’s getting them to switch their vote, whether it’s making sure that they’re registered, whether it’s you know that they don’t normally vote, or that they’re voting a spotty, sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Maybe they need encouragement or a buddy. I need you to write down five people, five names that you’re going to check-in on in the next week or the next two weeks.

It’s September 17th, 18th, we’ve got until September 30th. Let’s do until the end of the month, I want you to make a list of at least five people that you know can make a difference, that if they turn out and they wouldn’t normally turn out. Latinos [foreign language 00:09:12]. As Latinos, we have family that maybe they speak Spanish and they don’t know the dates. Maybe they don’t know the rules. There’s also a lot of people don’t realize this, there’s a massive Spanish language misinformation campaign going on right now online. And when people are talking about like, “Oh, Latinos, their vote is shifting a little bit,” because of enormous amounts of misinformation that are going on.

If you are Latino or Latina, I want you to step up too. I want you to talk to your family. I want you to talk to your Spanish-speaking family and check-in, and make sure that that stuff hasn’t gotten through to them because there’s a lot of it. And listen, if we wait until November to do this, it’s going to be too late because those gears are turning and they’re working on people. So we need to get ahead of it. And so we need to be making sure that we’re identifying five people, go through it. The next week, five more people, go through it. Those are things that I need you to do.

Lastly, maybe lastly, we’ll see, another thing that I need you to do is that I need you to be ready. I need you to be ready. And I need you to be ready to be responsive. And by that, I mean, we don’t quite know what the next play is in terms of this issue on the Supreme Court. Mitch McConnell sent out a statement tonight. And as I said at the opening, be…

As I said at the opening, the very last dying wish of RBG was that her vacancy not be filled until the new president takes office in January. That was her dying wish. Tonight, Mitch McConnell publicly, the night of her passing, he couldn’t wait 24 hours, issued a statement saying that he was going to give Trump a vote in violation of her dying wish.

People can say, “How appalling,” people could say, “This is horrible,” et cetera, but we know who this man is. We know who this man is. This is a man who does not care about a dying woman’s final wish, clearly.

So listen, we need to size up what we are up against. What we are up against is a profoundly corrupt established network, because this isn’t just Trump, right? Trump would not be able to do any of the things, almost any of the things that he has done if it wasn’t for an entire Republican apparatus that allows him, that defends him, and that propels him. So this isn’t just about Trump. That’s why I talk about that this presidential election is not the end of this. This presidential election is just the tip of this. Because Trump would not have been able to do these things if a Republican Senate didn’t protect him, advance him, and allow him to do these things. So this is on every Republican’s hands right now.

So when I say the last thing I want you to do is be ready, what I mean is listen, Mitch McConnell’s ready. He’s ready. He wants to jam through a nominee.

In 2016, he blocked Obama from getting his Supreme Court nominee in his final year with Merrick Garland. Mitch McConnell, he said, “We can’t do this in a president’s final year. We need to let people have their say.” You think he cares about that now? No, he doesn’t care about that now, because he cares about power.

These people do not care about democracy. They do not care about fairness. They do not care about equality. They do not care about justice. They care about power and they care about money, and they care about making more money. They don’t care who dies. They don’t care whose rights get violated. That’s why we need to show up.

So I need you to be ready. Because what that means is that we need to be ready to organize. We need to be ready to follow grassroots leaders on the ground. It’s not just about listening to me, it’s about listening to people who have been doing this work for generations as well.

But everyone has something to give. Again, I know we’re all tired. So our thing to do tonight is to identify what are you going to give? Are you going to check your voter registration tonight? Because you haven’t done it in awhile. Are you going to identify five people that you don’t know how they’re going to vote or you don’t know if they’re going to vote? Are you going to identify five people, five of your friends, five people that only you can get through to, or someone that you think you can talk to? Are you going to do that tonight? Are you going to do that over the next week?

If you have some extra time right now, are you going to be able to use that time? Are you going to be able to write? Are you going to be able to correct misinformation that you see on Facebook and social media? Because we’re going to need that too. We’re going to need a lot. We’re going to need everything that you can give between now and election day. We leave it all on the field. Okay? We’ve got to leave it all on the field.

But now is not the moment for cynicism. Now is not the moment for hopelessness. Now is not the moment to give up. We do not give up. We don’t give up. Really, cynicism is not just unproductive, it’s actively harmful for our democracy. It’s an active harm for the progressive movement. It’s an active harm to our democracy. It’s an active harm for our future. Because cynicism says it’s over. Cynicism says we can’t do it. Cynicism says don’t bother trying.

If those are the sentiments coming out, then at this point, you are helping every person that is trying to marginalize the rights, the economic future, and the just prosperity of people, of all people that are deserving here in our country, which is everybody. Everybody’s deserving of safety, and prosperity, and justice.

So listen, let this moment radicalize you. Let this moment really put everything into stark focus. Because this election has always been about the fight of and for our lives. If anything, tonight is making that more clear to more people than ever before. And I’m going to tell you, it’s going to get more and more and more clear up until election day.

Things are going to happen. They are. We have an authoritarian president. That’s what we have. He has no regard for the dignity of human life. He has no regard for law. He has no regard for justice. He has no regard for anything, unless it personally helps him, and his power, and his money, and that of the Republican establishment. That’s just what it is. It’s just what it is.

So listen, on the left, there’s a huge diversity, right? And we get mad at each other. That’s the way it is, because it’s incredibly frustrating. I get incredibly frustrated. You all know. I get incredibly frustrated with my own party, too. We all have our disagreements. That’s fine, because we all recognize that November… Frankly, I wish it wasn’t like this. And it only serves to highlight the brokenness of our entire system. But whether we like it or not, November is about survival. November is about survival.

We need to work to honor all of those who came before us to fight for our future, and to fight for our democracy, and to fight for something more just. Because our ancestors have stared down the barrel of hopelessness before too. They’ve done that too. And they persisted and they allowed us to be here. Now we need to work to allow… One day when we are ancestors, for us to allow the people that are to come to be here too and to thrive too. That’s what this is about.

Native people, they talk about kind of like the precept or the concept of seven generations. That every moment and every decision, every point that we are here right now is the result of the decisions and the actions taken seven generations before. And the actions and the decisions we make now should also be made with the seven generations ahead of us in mind. This is a seventh generation moment. This is our present moment. Are we going to allow our fear to paralyze us and to make us give in? Or are we going to turn our fear into fuel? Or are we going to turn it into fuel?

I’ll give you a piece of advice. I don’t know, perhaps unsolicited. But I talk to thousands of people. I talk to people all the time, every single day in the street, when I go to get lunch in the bodega, what have you. I talk to people all the time. One of the most common questions that people ask me is, “Where do you get the courage?” Like, “Where do you get courage to do things?” I’m always taken aback by that question, because it doesn’t feel like courage to me.

By that, I mean it’s fear. It’s fear. I’m scared all the time too. This moment and these moments are not about ignoring your fear. It’s not about setting it aside for me. I can’t set aside fear. I’m scared all the time. Sometimes the actions that I take or the decisions that we’re making, they’re huge. They’re enormous. They are life and death for people. And I’ve had moments where I’m terrified. But what you do with that fear is that you look at that fear and you turn it into fuel.

Because what does fear do? Even on a physical level, take a step back, feel your fear. Really feel it. Don’t push it aside. Don’t try to push it down. Don’t try to ignore it. Don’t do this. Feel your fear. Feel how it’s making your heart beat faster. Feel the sweat. Feel-

… [inaudible 00:33:01]. Feel the sweat. Feel the antsiness because it’s telling you to act. Your fear, when you are feeling that fear you turn it into fuel by taking this and using it to act, to leap, to jump. That’s what you need to do right now. That’s how you use your fear.

There are moments where looking back on the outside people call it courageous, but on the inside how I felt, they were the moments that I was the most scared in my entire life. They didn’t feel courageous. They felt terrifying. But courage is a funny thing because at least in my experience courage is just something you see when you play the tape back.

Courage is something that you just see in retrospect, because in the moment you don’t feel courage. It’s not like a present tense emotion. You hear that all the time from people who laid down their bodies in the civil rights movement when they were being hosed down and stuck with dogs.

When we have people who were doing everything they could… When our queer brothers and sisters were spreading their partners’ ashes, and during the HIV crisis on the White House lawn in the 80s. When you ask people, “What drove you to that moment? What gave you that courage,” they will almost always tell you, “I wasn’t being courageous. I was just doing what I though was the right thing to do.”

When you’re propelled by either that fear, or the concentration of that moment, you can turn it into focus. You can turn fear into focus. You can turn fear into fuel. Right now we need to focus on this election. That’s what we need to do. We need to focus on organizing. We need to focus on this election. We need to focus on voting for Joe Biden. I don’t care if you like him or not.

That’s not what this is about. This is not about our opinion on personalities at this juncture. This is about the preservation of our democracy. Again I’m not here to shame you. I’m not here to do any of that because I don’t shame people for how they vote or how they’re thinking about voting, but I’m just sharing with you my perspective and why this is so important.

We can do that. These are tools that we are going to have to use for the rest of our lives too, because this is not over. We win in November, I’m sorry to tell you you’re not going back to brunch. We’re not going back to brunch. That’s not happening unless you’re doing a little self care break in your house especially, et cetera.

But there is no going back after November. Gear up, because we got a lot of rebuilding to do. Also, if you’re one of those folks that are like, “This whole Dem… I’m not excited by where Dems are right now,” you got to work even more. Welcome. You got to work even more. That’s what this is all about. That’s what this is all about.

Because this is trashed by the entire political establishment, because this is not where big money is right here. Sometimes you got to be the bad guy, but you got to have your skin in the game. We have to be at the table. We have to be at the table.

Listen. We’re going to do this. I need you to do this. If you’ve got family in Georgia I need you to be there for them. If you’ve got family in North and South Carolina, friends in North and South Carolina need you to be there for them. Jaime Harrison is going up against Lindsey Graham, one of the most spineless people in the Senate that protects Trump the most with his hypocrisy.

I need you to support Jaime Harrison. I need you to support… I need you to help… If you’re in Iowa I need you to give Chuck Grassley the boot. Need you to do it. If you’re in Maine, Susan Collins, got to go. That woman really needs to go. There’s plenty of people who deserve the boot, and only you can give it to them. Only you can give it to them.

In conclusion this is going to take all of us to do more. I’m here to tell you that I need to do more. We all got to do more. You need to do more. Everybody’s got to do more. There’s no limitation. If you can’t vote, you still have a role to play. If you can’t vote for any reason, if you’re under 18, if the registration deadline has… Whatever it is you have a role to play too.

You can organize. You can call. You can make your list of five people. You can create art. Art is incredibly inspiring and incredibly important. Right now is the time for artists too. That’s not some granola type of thing. Art fuels people to act. Good art compels to feel and to act.

If you’re an artist you can give your art if you aren’t already. If you are bilingual in any language you have an enormous gift, and an enormous amount of people that can be reached. We need you. We need you. There’s no limitation. If you have a physical disability you already know you have plenty of gifts to give, plenty of gifts to give emotionally, relationally, sharing your story.

Everybody has something to give. What I’m asking you to do is that maybe you don’t ask other people, “What do I do?” Maybe you ask yourself, “What do I want to give?” That is where your actions will be the most passionate, and be the most impactful. You will find a way. I know you will find a way.

If you don’t know, if you need places to be inspired, take a step back, go to a local action. It doesn’t have to be directly electoral if you don’t know what to do. Go to a food relief effort. Just show up. When you show up enough there will be people who will take you on.

I know it because this is how the grassroots works. I come from the grassroots. You show up. There will be elders. There will be people who will help guide you the way. The first thing you need to do is just show up, all right? Let’s leave it all on the field. If Mitch McConnell is not going to honor RBG’s final wish, we will. We will, and we have to. All right? Bye everyone.

AOC Speech Transcript on RBG Death & What Democrats Should Do Next

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