Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) speaks with Ta-Nehisi Coates at the “Blackout for Human Rights: MLK 2020” event at Riverside Church in New York City:
OCASIO-CORTEZ: “— But that organizing challenges many of the operating tenets that the United States was founded on, including racism, but also including the protection of capital over human beings. And — you know, another thing that I’ve been really thinking and sitting with today is that we — there’s this gun rights protests that’s happening down in Richmond.”
COATES: “On MLK Day.”
OCASIO-CORTEZ: “On MLK day. But here’s the image that has struck with me the most about that, is that when we go out and march for the dignity and the recognition of the lives of people like Freddie Gray and Eric Garner, the whole place is surrounded by police in riot gear without a gun in sight. And here are all of these people flying Confederate flags with semi-automatic weapons and there’s almost no police officers at that protest.
(Applause)
So who are — who or what are our institutions protecting from who? And that image conveys it all. Conveys it all.”