Ocasio Grew Up
Ocasio-Cortez graduated from Boston University, she moved home to the Bronx and supplemented her nonprofit jobs by waiting tables and mixing drinks at night. Hollis Johnson/Business Insider A scrappy army. Ocasio-Cortez's father died of. Ocasio-Cortez is a 28-year-old New Yorker who was born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents — her mother was born in Puerto Rico and her father in the Bronx. She grew up in a working-class. Certain corners of the right are obsessed with the idea that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez must be faking her working-class roots. After exposing the house she grew up in and the coat on her back.
© AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., joined at left by Rep.-elect Joe Neguse, D-Colo., exits a Democratic Caucus meeting Nov. 15, 2018, in the basement of the Capitol in Washington. Ocasio-Cortez seems to be everywhere. She’s cooked soup, live on Instagram. She’s done laundry in public. And she’s clapped back at critics of her clothing and a misstatement. The New York Democrat, who at 29 is the youngest woman to be elected to Congress, says she’s documenting her journey to Capitol Hill to lift some of the mystery of the place and make it, ‘real.’Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upbringing in suburban Westchester County was part of a social media tiff between the congresswoman and former National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch.
The fight was sparked on Twitter after AOC, who lived and went to school in Yorktown, attributed a spike in New York City crime to poverty and economic uncertainty brought on by the coronavirus shutdown.
The website The Hill posted a video of AOC in which she said police budgets had less to do with crime than poverty and a lack of social and education resources.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez Grew Up Wealthy
“Republicans are all upset that I’m connecting the dots between poverty and crime,” the 30-year-old congresswoman tweeted when sharing the video Monday. “I know most of them haven’t experienced or seen these issues first hand, but I have.”
Loesch, now a radio host, wrote crime is up because AOC and others pushed for a reduction in policing and penalties.
“Also, whenever you want to talk about poverty,' Loesch said, 'I’m happy to tell you about how hard it was for my single mom and me when I was growing up – and it wasn’t in tony *Westchester.*”
None of these policing reductions have even *happened yet.*
So a spike is happening WITH a $6 billion dollar NYPD budget.
You either know this & are intentionally lying, or you‘re a bad spokeswoman & haven’t verified your claims.
Given your work with @NRA it’s probably both. https://t.co/vHtq04ei86
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 13, 2020Any reductions to police budgets brought on as part of the national reckoning on racial inequality and police brutality hadn’t taken effect yet, AOC said in response. The spike is happening with the current NYPD budget.
“You either know this & are intentionally lying, or you’re a bad spokeswoman & haven’t verified your claims,” AOC shot back. “Given your work with @NRA it’s probably both.”
A series of tweets by both continued, with Loesch bringing Westchester back into the disagreement.
'So ... there is an increase in crime before you cut the budget and you still supporting cutting the budget?' she tweeted. 'Great logic there, Ms. Westchester. Also, before you reach for a weak reed of ergo decedo, I'm not a spokeswoman for anyone but myself.'
AOC, a Democrat who represents the 14th congressional district in the Bronx and Queens, grew up in the northern Westchester town of Yorktown and went to school there. Her ties to the area have often been invoked by AOC’s critics because they say they don’t mesh with her campaign narrative of being from the Bronx.
She became a rising star in the party and a face of the progressive movement in 2018 when she unseated longtime incumbent Joe Crowley in a Democratic primary. But the congresswoman’s high profile has made her a favorite target of conservative critics and social media trolls.
Ocasio-Cortez was 2 years old when her father bought a modest home in Yorktown for $150,000. The family moved from the Bronx to the house a few years later and AOC graduated from Yorktown High School.
She changed her address from Yorktown to the Bronx on her voter registration in October 2016.
Ocasio Cortez Grew Up Rich
Mark Lungariello covers government and politics. Follow him on Facebook @lungariello and Twitter @marklungariello. For our latest subscription offers click here.
Ocasio Grew Up
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Westchester roots again a target for critic