This is just an amazing speech.
Last Night AOC spoke at The Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn to a crowd gathered to discuss the dreadful events that transpired over the weekend.
“Beyond calling for national gun-control measures, many speakers focused their remarks on denouncing white supremacy, drawing loud cheers from the crowd. They pointed to white supremacy as the cause of mass shootings like the one in El Paso, which was carried out by a man who allegedly wrote that he was responding to the “Hispanic invasion of Texas,” and as the reason why gun violence in neighborhoods like Brownsville doesn’t receive the same response as other types of shootings.
In her speech, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said legislation should be passed making it easier for the FBI to investigate and crack down on “white supremacist terrorism.”
She also dedicated a portion of her speech to directly addressing people who “are falling into the grips of white supremacy that find themselves getting radicalized in a funnel of vitriol.”“We will always be here and hold space for you to come back,” she said. “We will love you back. You are not too far gone.”
H/T to Kossack vacantlook who provided this transcript of the portion of AOC’s speech featured in the clip above in the comments:
“When we allude to people as an invasion, as an infestation, we are directly pulling from the language of white supremacy. So, I don't want to hear the question, "Is this president racist?" anymore. He is.
But what I have to say to the young men and increasingly some of the young women in this country that are falling into the grips of white supremacy, that find themselves getting radicalized in a funnel of vitriol towards Latinos, towards immigrants, toward African Americans, towards all people black, toward all people Jewish, towards all people of different faiths, what I have to say to you is come back.
Because there is a mother waiting for you, I know it. I know there's a teacher waiting for you, saying, what happened to my kid? What happened to my friend? And we will always be here and hold space for you to come back. We will love you back.
You are not too far gone. And I know that this society is isolating. I know that this society creates depression. I know that the lack of opportunity here from Brownsville to El Paso -- because Jumaane is right, all of us is right, this is not just about assault weapons, this is about gun violence in all of our communities. So whether it's from misogyny or whether it's from racism, you're not more of a man with a gun. You're not more of a man if you are capable of violence. You are not stronger if you tear another life down. We have to make sure we address that in our culture. Fixing this is about fixing the laws, but it's about addressing our culture. We're going to have to go deep. We need to go deep because it's not just those who have succumbed to hate who have to change, we need to learn to love bigger to bring them back.”
In response to “Send them back” she said...
“Come back. We will love you back.”
Good for you, Alexandria.
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[cross-posted to PolitiZoom]