🔰AOC's Speech at NY Rally with Federal Workers | Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Are you all ready for this fight? Yeah! You all ready to lock in? Yeah! We are not giving up this country without a fight. Isn't that right? We will not give up on our people and the institutions and the programs and the services that help people live their lives without a fight. They should know we are not going down without the biggest fight they have ever seen. I want you all to know that we have a plan and that we need one another in this moment. This moment is bigger than any one of us. This moment takes all of us. But we will win. We will win. These folks, Elon Musk and whatever group of corrupt people he's got coming in here, looting Social Security, looting our federal programs. We had countless more people that were laid off unjustly this weekend. How many of you know someone that's been affected by this? People need to understand that federal workers do work that is part of the lifeblood of our society. National Park Service workers, National Forest Service workers, everyday working people, sometimes the only vacation they can afford to take their kids on is to our national public land, to our national public parks and services. And it's those people that folks like Elon Musk are laying off, preventing not just the workers but millions of Americans who rely on everything from Medicaid to public parks to have any semblance of dignity in our lives. That's what he's stripping away. That's what he's trying to take away. Don't let anyone take the focus off of what is happening right in this present moment. Elon Musk is not going after efficiency. He's not going after making these things better for people. He's trying to steal Medicaid so that he can enrich himself. He's trying to steal and gut NASA to line his pockets with SpaceX. He's trying to gut everything that is good in America for his own private profit. This is the culmination of what oligarchy is all about and what oligarchy seeks to do. It's the fusion and the capture by the billionaire class of our democracy. That's what they're trying to do. But it's very important to understand that it is not sustainable. They may seem like they have power right now, but all of this dramatic action is trying to create the sense of inevitability, the sense of power, so that we abdicate in advance. I want everyone who is here and folks who are watching who are not here, especially our federal workers, to listen to me very carefully because we have very specific instructions in this moment. And I don't say this as a Democrat. I don't say this as a person with any sort of specific political views in this moment. I say this as an American who has sworn an oath to the United States Constitution. And as someone who cares about this Constitution and who cares about this country, we have an obligation to resist kings. We have an obligation to resist oligarchs. We have a sworn duty to this nation to resist oligarchy, including any billionaire that tries to undermine our Constitution. America is not for sale. They are only as powerful as we consent to believe them to be powerful. So when we are sitting down and we try to storm these offices and dismiss people, the key here, make them. Make them. Don't agree in advance. Don't go quietly. Don't make it easy. Make them. And there are specific ways that we all can do it. Document it. If they want to do something, put it in an email. And I say this very intentionally, because we will work in the streets, in the courts, in public opinion, in our art, everywhere. We can overwhelm them. We outnumber them. Understand our power in this moment. Don't give up our power. Don't shy away from our power. Every small action matters. They want us to give in to this idea of meaninglessness. They want us to be seduced by nihilism. They want us to be cowed down by cynicism. Don't let them. Every action matters. Make them. Every five minutes you stall matters. Every email you send forcing that little extra layer to ensure that they comply with the law matters. It matters. Because you have to understand that we are working in tandem. And I want to give you a really specific story about this. I haven't shared this publicly before. But about two weeks ago, I was in Washington, D.C. And I got notice. We had caught wind of the fact that the DOJ team was trying to infiltrate the Department of Labor. And that they were going to come in and try to intimidate nonpartisan federal workers into handing over some of the most sensitive labor data that we have in the Department of Labor. And understand, just like there are consequences at the Treasury Department and so many other departments, at the Department of Labor, if those numbers get compromised, our jobs report is hard to believe. U.S. economic data becomes less reliable to believe. Highly consequential. And we had heard, I had heard, that the DOJ team was going to head over there around 4 p.m. that same day. And I said, well, here's one thing that I know they can't do. Is that we can remind some of our federal workers over there of all of our legal obligations to comply with the law. That forbid us from handing over sensitive classified personnel and classified information. So I drafted up a letter. I drafted up a letter reminding the Department and reminding folks of their legal obligations. Say, okay, you know, DOJ wants to write letters to the speaking power, let's use our authority. Drafted it, and I marched on over to the Department of Labor. I was able to access the building without anybody knowing. Access the building, and I went inside the Department of Labor. And I was able to drop this off and remind the exact people who DOJ was going to pressure of their legal obligations. And I said, can I get your commitment that you will do your best to comply with the law? Should you be asked to hand over this information? They said yes. What we can at least do is ensure that it goes through all those proper legal channels. Go to the Solicitor General and all this other stuff. Which is more than we can say at other departments, right? Where they just felt like they didn't know what to do, so they just handed it over. But we got that commitment, right? And every step of the way, one person or person could easily say, oh, a letter doesn't matter. Oh, taking that step doesn't matter. Who cares, they can hand it over. But watch this. That meeting was supposed to be at 4 p.m. I walked through those doors at 3.30 p.m. before this thing popped off. Got that commitment. Left. That meeting happened. And they were able to say, we've made a promise. We can't hand over that data right now. As a nonpartisan federal elected official, they had to answer to two people, right? DOJ came in, they had to take that meeting, but they also had to take my meeting, too. And in that time, they said, listen, we have to ensure compliance with the law. We're going to hand it over to the Solicitor General. In that time, in that delay, we got a court injunction. We got a court injunction. So in all of these times, in these moments, when we say, oh, what does it matter? Understand that there are millions of us at work at the same time. We are in the business of creating conditions. There's not one act that is going to save all of us. It is going to be the constant pressure and commitment to saving our democracy. They cannot withstand the constant, consistent pressure. They will crumble under it. Every day, our job is to wake up and say, what can I do today? There is no act too small that does not matter. Every single action matters. And so when they try to come in, make them. Make them show a warrant. Make them show a document. Make them assert their authority. Ask them, who are you? Who are you? Because at the end of the day, they're no one. They're just like you, and they're just like me. And he's running around because he thinks he's got a bank account with a lot of zeros in it, that it makes him some kind of super citizen. I don't think so. This is America. So I want you all to know that being here matters. The constant pressure matters. We will resist. We will prevail. We outnumber them. They cannot sustain, and we cannot give up. So thank you, everyone. Let's keep working on it. See you next time.