ALEXANDRIA THE GREAT!

Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got

I’m still, I’m still Jenny from the block.

—Jennifer Lopez, “Jenny from the Block”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, nicknamed AOC, was born in the Bronx, pronounced “Da Bronx,” also known as the Boogie-Down. It was the original settlement of a Dutch farmer named Jonas Bronck but it’s since been crowned a name that has a bit more Latin flavor: the Bronx. Está bien. It’s the only borough in New York City so dope it has a definite article before its name. (Sorry, Brooklyn!) Other things amazing that come from the Bronx: Sonia Sotomayor, KRS-One, twenty-seven baseball World Series championships, A Bronx Tale, Billy Joel, leather hats, and Levi’s jeans with three patches.

But let’s keep it real about this incredible millennial and saucy representative of District 14 of Queens and the Boogie-Down, and begin this wandering into a new outlook on politics using her own words, because if you’ve scoped her Insta, you know, girl, AOC is infamous for keeping it 100 and she doesn’t need some dotty author’s introduction. This was the queen’s campaign ad that led to her election, that led to our fist emojis and praises of “yaasss, finally” every time she went viral taking down crooked politicians on TV, or when she appeared walking through a congressional hall in a white cape and big gold hoop earrings:

Women like me aren’t supposed to run for office.

I wasn’t born to a wealthy or powerful family. Mother from Puerto Rico. Dad from the Bronx. I was born in a place where your zip code determines your destiny.

My name is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I’m an educator, an organizer, a working-class New Yorker. I’ve worked with expectant mothers, I’ve waited tables and led classrooms, and going into politics wasn’t in the plan. But after twenty years of the same representation we have to ask: who has New York been changing for?

Every day gets harder for working families like mine to get by.

The rent gets higher, healthcare covers less, and our income stays the same. It’s clear that these changes haven’t been for us, and we deserve a champion.

It’s time to fight for a New York that working families can afford. That’s why I’m running for Congress. This race is about people versus money.

We’ve got people, they’ve got money. It’s time we acknowledged that not all Democrats are the same.

That a Democrat who takes money, profits off foreclosure, doesn’t live here, doesn’t send his kids to our schools, doesn’t drink our water, doesn’t breathe our air cannot possibly represent us. What the Bronx and Queens needs is Medicare for All, tuition-free public college, a federal jobs guarantee, and criminal-justice reform.

We can do it now.

It doesn’t take a hundred years to do this. It takes political courage.

How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went from bartender one day to one of the youngest members of Congress ever elected in all of American history the next is a story of our times in politics. It is the place where politics and activism must merge. It is the catalyst to a series like the Queens of the Resistance. Sis, it’s time to put down the latte and get your swirl on in politics no matter what your age. Women like AOC are pulling back the curtain on patriarchy and introducing a new swag in government. She’s been a guest judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race, for chrissakes! That’s hitting intersectionality, culture, and politics all in one night of fabulousness. And she rented the dress, honey. AOC is not one of these rich politicians rapping about the poor but has never seen a broke day in her life. She has student debt and rent-making issues like the rest of the millennials.

Politics is planning, it’s strategy, it’s science, it’s aching feet and nonstop eighteen-hour days, but when there are mice biting at the edges of democracy, new leadership must show its face. When the country has a unified fever for change, someone like AOC appears on the scene and we pay attention—it may look like magic where we wonder, mouth agape, how in the heck did she go from the Flats Fix restaurant to The View? But that’s the flava of a good American story, and there’s a lot more to it than “pretty bartender enters ringside.” It took hard work, a fierce team, and tons and tons of resistance.

Her drive to run for Congress stemmed from the absurdity of recent times that got many of us to pay attention to politics. And it’s a great thing when young people get fired up to change the world.

Martin Luther King Jr., Rep. John Lewis, and even Jesus were in their youth when they wrapped their arms around a fed-up society and had the strength to pick it up. There can be a generational divide on some things, but not matters of the heart. And let’s face it, AOC’s a millennial who likes to dance and does facials on Insta, baby. She’s not married with children; she’s still adulting, up late having wine and popcorn for dinner while waiting for her boyfriend. Girl, she’s like Olivia Pope but without all the relationship drama and lifelong soapbox in DC.

The beauty of AOC is not that she’s any different from us, it’s that finally we see faces in government that look like us. AOC’s come-up was with a squad, a tribe—representatives like Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and more. She and other Queens of the Resistance have had the courage to take on the huge challenge of giving a facelift to politics as we know it to get themselves elected. And now AOC continues to fight that same battle day after day in the House of Representatives. And she’ll do it in a pair of Timberland boots or six-inch heels; either way, she does it with her own style. She’s never anyone else but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her rise started with a response to an idea, which became a plan and birthed a strategy. She doesn’t lead using a template, because that’s not what has gotten her this far, sis.

But before we get to her trailblazing rise, we first have to understand where she came from. . . .