The moment you own it
You better never let it go.
—Eminem, “Lose Yourself”
Financial struggle is as much a part of the cities and streets as the American dream, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has never forgotten the sacrifices that her parents made throughout her childhood to make ends meet.
So she started working at a young age. One of her first jobs, back when she was about fifteen years old, was working in an Irish pub as a hostess to pay for her extracurricular activities. In the Cortez home, money was in a constant sprint to catch up with the bills no matter how hard Sergio and Blanca worked. Debt eats fast, and as the bills kept coming each month, the mortgage was in trouble more than once. The American dream looked more like a constant struggle than a happy ending. Sacrifices were made, but they at least had their home and each other, and with a little hard work, they could prosper.
Sis, this is what many Americans are striving for. AOC is a real one because she understands firsthand that the American dream isn’t some rich man’s ideology but in fact it’s the dream of survival—one that’s dependent on a culture and a government that encourages us to keep rising up, generation upon generation. Whether you’re a janitor or a fashion designer, an architect or a hostess, the attainment of more ought to be possible. Alexandria’s story is our own, and this is why she fights.
But things would take a turn for the worst in September 2008 when, in the thick of the financial crisis that was sparked by the subprime mortgage collapse, Sergio Ocasio-Roman passed away. Alex was nineteen years old, just starting out as a sophomore in college. Sergio was only forty-eight years old, overcome with an unusual form of lung cancer. He had been diagnosed when Alexandria was sixteen, and the family had done all they could manage for those three years with healthcare and medical bills, yet still he slipped away. His last words would forever hold a place in her heart and become her calling card to America. She told Time, “I didn’t know that it was going to be the last time that I talked to my dad, but toward the end of our interaction, I started to feel like it was . . . I said good-bye but I think he knew I knew. And so I started to leave, and he kind of hollered out, and I turned around in the doorframe, and he said, ‘Hey, make me proud.’”
AFTER HIS DEATH, suddenly things were very different for Alexandria. The year before, she had just entered Boston University. Now she was back, and her GPA skyrocketed; she was on a mission to fulfill her father’s words. She was entering a new phase. The death of a parent is often a loss of innocence, and AOC was forced to see many things in a new light, including the importance of doing good and making a lasting, positive impact on the world. She had always wanted to make the world a better place, but now that focus had shifted. She changed majors from biochemistry to economics and international relations and got an internship in Sen. Ted Kennedy’s Boston office, her first real-life brush with national politics.
Not only did her life change in terms of her professional aspirations and how her eyes now saw the ever-changing world, but it also changed at home. Sergio had been the breadwinner of the family, without him they had to look at security differently, and they were economically vulnerable. She learned quickly how fast that rug could be pulled from under a person’s feet. Suddenly and swiftly, one of her greatest loves had been swept away, and it left an insurmountable hole in her heart that could never be filled. Even worse, that deep personal grief was compounded by a newly intensified struggle of financial responsibility on her and her mom. She later described those times: “My mother was done. My brother was lost. I took it hard, too, but I channeled it into my studies. That’s how I dealt with it. I was home for a week and went right back to school.”
Sergio had been one of those men who was ambitious as much for himself as he was for his children. He pushed them to achieve. Alexandria’s brother, Gabriel, has said that he grew up sometimes bristling at his father’s prodding, but felt his father saw something in him that he was not able to see in himself, until long after Sergio was gone. Alexandria always had a taste of nerd chic and was a daddy’s girl. When he pushed, she just worked harder. Her father, she has said, “knew my soul better than anyone on this planet.”
He would be so proud of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez we celebrate today, her willingness to stand against narrow-minded politicians as a young millennial woman of color and fight for the rights of people of color, for the love and protection of the environment and Medicare for All. She knows the government should look like her and represent the voice of a people still fighting to be seen and heard, but more importantly, have their needs met in policy and legislation, such as immigration rights, housing, and police reform, to be sure they are given a shot at generational success and not just shot with a list of generational curses. With a woman like AOC taking up a seat in government, especially on committees like the House Financial Services Committee, alongside other queens like Maxine Waters, and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, there would be progress.
BUT FOR NOW, our queen was still nineteen years old and in a dire situation, along with many other people in this country. The 2008 recession was the worst economic downfall since the Great Depression of 1929. Unemployment was at a record high, millions of people lost their homes, and the Cortez women had to figure out how to make their way while dealing with their grief. They struggled to keep their home. Housing prices fell due to a subprime mortgage crisis driven by greedy, wealthy people at the top of the economic pyramid. People making $35,000 per year were suddenly getting $400,000 mortgages they could never pay off, with wildly spiraling interest rates. You know the story.
In this tumultuous environment, Alexandria and Blanca had to fight back against the circumstances. Like many middle-class families, they had neither insurance or stocks, nor the leisure and luck of an inheritance to fall back on. These women were going to have to pull up their sleeves and claw their way out of it, and that’s just what they did. Even before the economy crashed and Sergio passed away, there had barely been enough for healthcare. Sergio had put everything into their home, the business, and providing from day to day. There was never enough for a safety net, only survival.
During all this, Alexandria was in the midst of college deadlines in Boston, and she’d go on to graduate cum laude. But when she was home in New York, she cleaned homes with her mom to make money. She had to help her mom pay the mortgage, and save her father’s legacy. And the phone calls from the banks and bill collectors only added pressure, and her grief only made it harder. Still Blanca and AOC pushed through it. They cleaned the homes of their neighbors to keep their own. It was the house that Sergio had worked so hard to maintain, the new beginning they had fought for. Blanca was a single parent now—a widow—and she’d make a way. She’d drive a bus. She’d clean a house. She’d answer phones in secretarial jobs. She’d do whatever it took to make ends meet.