EXCERPT:
LOUIS: “Yes. let me ask you the ‘Green New Deal.’ Right up front including in the where as clauses, you’re talking about a lot of stuff that people don’t associate with environmentalism or conservation. You’re talking about income inequality. You’re talking about living wage. That sort of a thing.”
OCASIO-CORTEZ: “That’s right.”
LOUIS: “Putting aside whether or not there’s a necessary connection strategically you’ve made a decision there that you’re not necessarily have to make. I mean — if this were a way to advance for example clean technology that didn’t really affect inequality one way or another would you take that?”
OCASIO-CORTEZ: “You know it all depends on the individual proposal because I reject the idea that these ideas are not intrinsically connected. Right, if you — one of the things that folks give push back, why are you talking about racism when it comes to the environment. And they say racism has nothing to do with environmentalism, my immediate response is look at Flint, look at Hurricane Katrina. It’s not as though income inequality or social injustice or racism are the separated out issues that you just legislate to adjust those things and fix. You can’t pass a law to end income inequality. You address it in every issue, every major systemic issue. And so if there was just a plane bill for example — to elevate technological standards for cars I think that’s fine. That’s part of the solution but it’s not the solution in itself.”
LOUIS: “You’re making a choice. If you say for example, we’re going to raise taxes on the wealthy to help pay for the ‘Green New Deal,’ there’s a whole lot of people who say I might have been with you but not if you’re going to take my money. Now you have a bunch of opponents you didn’t necessarily need to have.”
OCASIO-CORTEZ: “In politics, there’s a lot of trade offs. For me I think that one thing that i’m afraid to make conscious decisions about is to say we’re going to make a decision. We may lose a few people here but we’re doing that so that we can address an entire community over there. And for a very, very long time the issues most pertinent to working people to communities of color, to front line communities, to communities most impacted, always get left behind. They’re always the people that are negotiated out. And I think for once we need to have someone negotiating them in.”