A crowd of around 20,000 people listened on Saturday as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez laid out how the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign would work to reshape society in a fundamentally fairer and more democratic way.
“This is a movement decades in the making,” said Ocasio-Cortez.
The first-term New York Democrat told the crowd that the fact pundits and politicians only care about how to fund government programs when they benefit the poor, but not when they’re for war or tax breaks for the rich, shows that budgets are moral documents that determine a society’s priorities.
“They tell us, dollar and dime, how much we value ourselves and our priorities,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “In that order.”
“And what this campaign is about,” she continued, “is a radial realignment of our priorities in the United States of America.”
The crowd for the rally was estimated at 20,000 people.
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Before Ocasio-Cortez spoke, actor Tim Robbins and activist and professor Cornel West both took the stage to rally the crowd.
Ocasio-Cortez asked the crowd of supporters to do whatever they can for the Sanders campaign.
“I want to ask you to wear out your shoes for this,” she said.
The congresswoman also dismissed the centrist argument that asking for progressive values to be reflected in Democratic leadership is too much.
“For anyone that accuses us of instituting purity tests, it’s called having values,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “It’s called giving a damn.”