Get up to Speed with Alexandria ocasio Cortez

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, now popularly known by the initialism AOC is an American politician and a member of the Democratic Party. She currently the representative of the New York’s 14 th Congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. At twenty nine years old, she is the youngest member of the House, and the youngest person to ever win a seat in the House in the country’s History.

Ocasio-Cortez was born on the 13th of October 1989, in the Bronx, New York City to parents of Puerto Rican descent. AOC has always been a bright young girl, and while in Yorktown High School, she finished second place in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the largest pre-college scientific research event in the world. Also while she was a student at Boston University between 2007 and 2011, she served as the Secretary of State of the National Hispanic Institute’s Lorenzo De Zavala Youth Legislature. She graduated cum Laude from the Boston University College of Arts and Sciences with a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Economics.

It was while AOC was in college that she first got her first experience of American mainstream politics, working as an intern in the immigration office of Edward Kennedy (1932-2009), the third longest continuously serving Senator in United States history, and the Democrat representative from Massachusetts in the United States Senate for forty seven years. In 2016, she also worked as an organizer for the campaign of the Democrat presidential Candidate, Bernie Sanders. Even though

Sanders eventually lost the Democratic Primaries to Hillary Clinton, the experience taught AOC a valuable lesson.

In 2017 she announced her intention to run for the U.S. House, challenging the Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley in the process. Not only was she regarded as less experienced than her opponent, she was also less rich, having been working as a bartender at the time. She thus decided to try a different tactic from what Crowley was doing, while Crowley raised money from business people in his district and spent money generously to get his people’s support, and spending 3.4 million dollars on his election, Ocasio-Cortez did a grassroots campaign, on the ground and on Social Media especially twitter where she often showed pictures of her shoes, worn out from meeting people in her district one on one.

Despite never having held any political office she defeated Joe Crowley in one of the biggest upsets American election history.

Being a millennial, and by virtue of her election Ocasio- Cortez is regarded as one of the major voices of youth in American politics. She is one of the most popular members of the congress and uses her knowledge of social media, especially twitter, where she has a large following, to mobilize young people to participate in policy making. Right now in terms of reach and popularity she only ranks below

President Donald Trump. Even though it is still early days in her tenure she has already made bold statements in education, tax, as well as the Arab- Israeli conflict using her reach to amplify her voice.