Not Here To Behave: What Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Shirley Chisholm Have in Common
VIEWS » FEBRUARY 27, 2019
Like Shirley Chisholm and Ella Baker, when candidates like Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib enter the halls of power, they bring their people with them.
BY BARBARA RANSBY
The elections of Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) were victories for social movements, and two progressive “outsiders” are now on the inside. But what can the Left expect from these insurgent Democrats? The lives of Shirley Chisholm and Ella Jo Baker, two 20th century political figures who challenged the establishment of their day while maintaining strong movement ties, offer us insight.
When outsiders are allowed into the inner sanctums of power, the first condition is that they assimilate. Shirley Chisholm, a tough-talking former school teacher from Brooklyn with Caribbean roots who became the first black woman elected to Congress in 1968, recalled how her colleagues, believing she didn’t “understand politics,” tried to “educate” her about Washington’s horse-trading ways.
. . .
The second condition for outsiders is that, once admitted, they distance themselves from the movements that got them elected. “When I first came to Washington, I would sometimes confide to other members how I wanted to help the people of my community,” Chisholm writes in her memoir, Unbought and Unbossed. “It became embarrassing. I was talking a foreign language to some of my colleagues when I said ‘community’ and ‘people.’ ”
. . .
Like Chisholm and Baker before them, Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib are not dazzled simply to be in the club nor intimidated by the threats of marginalization lobbed at them. When Tlaib called for Trump’s impeachment, she used gritty language from the street, not the parlance of the elite. In response, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted to Tlaib that “I got your back” and the “GOP lost entitlement to policing women’s behavior a long time ago. Next.”
More:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/21723/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-rashida-tlaib-shirley-chisholm-ella-baker
= new reply since forum marked as read
