Ocasio Cortez Owned
May 07, 2019 The idea of Rep. Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., challenging someone’s “critical thinking” skills is a stretch on its own, but for her to go after a sitting U.S. Senator leaves us to think. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez questions Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan during a House Financial Services Committee hearing.Full video here: https://cs.pn/2F6Dj93.
Ask a woman if she’s been called the B-word by a man — perhaps modified by the F-adjective — and chances are she’ll say, “You mean ever, or how many times?”
Because most women will tell you it’s a pretty universal experience, especially if they’ve held a position of power in the workplace. “I’d say, maybe 25 times?” estimates Ellen Gerstein, who spent years in technology publishing, a fairly male-dominated field, before becoming a pharmaceutical executive. “And that’s just to my face.”
In fact, Gerstein says, use of the word as a slur against women has come to feel so unfortunately routine that her own memories of it tend to blur together — unlike, say, the time 20 years ago when a male colleague asked her who she’d “lap danced” to push a project ahead. But she says she was filled with admiration when she heard Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez take to the floor of the House and call out a male colleague for vulgar words.
“I thought, listening to her, ‘Wow, you’re 100% right,’” says Gerstein, now 52. “Why didn’t I apply those same standards to myself?”
Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks on Thursday, widely shared online, amounted to a stunning indictment not only of the words of Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Florida, who she said called her a “f—————g bitch” in front of reporters, but a culture of abusive language against women that can lead to violence. Her speech resonated with many women — in politics and out, supportive of her politics or not — who said the language had been tacitly accepted for far too long.
The moment was extraordinary, says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, not because the language was new — as Ocasio-Cortez herself said, it was nothing she hadn’t heard waiting tables or riding the subway — but because of where it took place, and especially because the freshman congresswoman had the confidence and the support of her colleagues to call it out in such a public way.
“This is all part of a shift,” Walsh says, attributing the change to the #MeToo movement, in large part. “Women are feeling empowered to speak up and believe they will be heard.” More than a dozen Democratic colleagues — but no Republicans — joined Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, in speaking out against sexist behavior, including from President Donald Trump.
The moment led Gloria Steinem, the nation’s most visible feminist advocate, to reflect on her own struggles with the word Barbara Bush once famously said “rhymes with rich.”
“It took me years to learn what to do when someone calls you a bitch,” Steinem told The Associated Press in an email. “Just smile in a calm triumphant way, and say, ‘Thank you!’”
Steinem, 86, said she hadn’t realized the strategy could be helpful to other women until it made it into the script of a recent off-Broadway play about her life, “and every night, women in the audience burst out in big relieved laughter.”
Still, Steinem noted, “Refusing to be hurt may not really change the people who are trying to hurt you.” She called for both “cultural and workplace penalties for such behavior,” and, more profoundly, “raising our children to empathize and treat others as we want to be treated.”
Gerstein, too, says she found it helpful to repurpose what was intended as a slur into a compliment. “I didn’t want to feel like a victim, so my theory was to own it,” she says. “As if to say, ‘What you’re really saying is I’m tough, I’m bossy, I’m determined and I’m damned good at what I’m doing.’”
Ocasio-Cortez “owned” the word as well when she tweeted, in response to Yoho’s alleged remarks: “Bitches get stuff done.”
That itself was a throwback to a 2008 sketch on “Saturday Night Live,” in which Tina Fey and Amy Poehler discussed the slur as often applied to Hillary Clinton. “Yeah, she is. And so am I,” notes Fey on the “Weekend Update” segment. “You know what? Bitches get stuff done.”
Feminist author Andi Zeisler, co-founder of the nonprofit Bitch Media, notes that the sketch marked the beginning of a long and evolving process of women “reclaiming” the word, much like the word “queer.”
“We don’t get to control who uses it and how,” explains Zeisler. “We can only control the way we conceive of it.”
Of course, context is everything. When used as Yoho allegedly did, the word is intentionally gender-specific and heavy with implied power dynamics, says Walsh, of Rutgers.
It “otherizes women, it dehumanizes them and tells women they don’t belong in these institutions and positions,” Walsh says. “It is about silencing women and keeping them out.”
Ocasio Cortez
Jen Singer, a freelance writer in New Jersey, says that “when men call you a bitch, it’s a warning shot across your bow — a reminder that they have power and you had better not overstep your bounds.”
It’s the feeling that Jennifer Bogar-Richardson, an educator also in New Jersey, felt when she learned that a superior had referred to her as a “ho” in a meeting with colleagues years ago, using words from a Chris Brown song to indicate she’d been disloyal.
“I felt naked,” says Bogar-Richardson, 44, “because it obviously didn’t matter how smart I was, how intelligent or how well I did my job. I’m nothing more than that name.”
Mila Stieglitz, a 22-year-old New Yorker who graduated college in May, found herself feeling conflicting emotions as she watched Ocasio-Cortez’s speech.
On the one hand, she was disheartened to learn of the sexist language experienced by the congresswoman — at 30, only eight years her senior — something she’d hoped was more an issue for an earlier generation. On the other, she said she was inspired by her outspokenness, and the support she received from colleagues.
“As I enter the workforce, I recognize there’s been so much progress since my mother’s generation, for which I’m grateful,” Stieglitz said. “But these instances also highlight to me how much more needs to be done.”
Elected officials, including Bronx/Queens Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are now backing the workers' strike at the Hunts Point Produce Market, where employees have entered day four of a strike over wages.
Some 1,400 employees represented by the Teamsters Local 202 union, comprised of warehouse workers and drivers at the gargantuan industrial site in the Bronx, help move around 300,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables daily. The Hunts Point Produce Market is a cooperative of 30 merchants who purchase produce from farms and importers and distributes the goods to grocers, restaurants, and more. All told, they handle 60% of the city's produce.
On January 17th, members negotiating for a $1 hourly increase went on strike following a stalemate during negotiations with market owners. And with every day that passes, the effects of reduced output from the market will be felt by supermarkets and restaurants that depend on them.
'If you notice that aisles of produce are little low and you see the stuff starting to turn a little bit, you know that's when you're gonna notice,' Raymond Rivera, a driver and union member, said.
'When you're standing on this line, you're not just asking for $1, you are asking for transformational change for your lives, over the lives of every food worker across this country, for kids or food workers across the country,' Ocasio-Cortez said, flanked by New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and state Assemblymember Amanda Septimo on a frigid Wednesday night outside the enormous, city-owned property. 'Because there's a lot of things upside down right now in our economy. And one of those things that are upside down [...] is the fact that a person who is helping get the food to your table cannot feed their own kid. That's upside down.'
Negotiations stopped nearly two weeks ago after members had pushed for a $1 increase plus greater health coverage. Owners returned to the table with a 32 cents per hour wage increase, and 60 cents going towards health coverage.
Meanwhile Hunts Point workers continue their strike: https://t.co/CFkpbIL32e
— Rebeca Ibarra (@RebeIbarraC) January 21, 2021On Wednesday night, dozens of workers stood outside their workplace in solidarity, huddled around bonfires as music played and wearing protest signs, with a giant inflatable rat looming nearby. Employees spent the night chatting among themselves, outraged over the company's lack of progress over the union.
For Francisco Flores, a 26-year employee at the site, the counter-offer is a slap in the face for many workers who stepped up during the COVID-19 pandemic, which did not halt operations at the site.
'We've had our contract disputes with them [...] it's been different this year with the pandemic and actually seeing and knowing some of your friends that you've worked with in here for 28 years die, and then have friends of yours, not coming to work because they're home quarantined, sick, makes a big difference,' Flores told Gothamist/WNYC. 'And then we're here every day during the pandemic, we try not to miss as much as we can, because we need the money. And we get no kind of thank you.'
Flores, a married father of three kids living in the Throggs Neck section of the Bronx, said throughout his time working at the company he's been living paycheck to paycheck. He can't even save money. With every day that workers are on strike their pay is docked.
'I've even argued with my father from time to time. He tells me, 'You got to try to save money.' I'm like, 'Dad, I can't. I don't know how you did it,' Flores recalled. 'But in this economy and the way things are going, they don't give you room. And I'm like, even though we might get a little bit of a raise, everything else goes back up. I've been to the supermarket with $100, and I used to come out with four or five, six bags. Now I come out with two or three.'
BREAKING: 21 train cars of merchandise turned back at Hunts Point Market strike line.
“The locomotive engineer said, ‘we’re @Teamsters too,’ turned the freight car around, and headed back to Ohio.”
UNION SOLIDARITY ✊🏿✊🏽✊🏻 #1u#HuntsPointStrikepic.twitter.com/b1zqhT3ARU
Charles Machadio, a trustee with the union, said the offer is only fair since the workers were deemed essential during the pandemic.
'We're not being, like, greedy,' Machadio said. 'The men really deserve a $3 or $4 raise for coming here risking their lives. But we're saying give them $1 raise and pay the health insurance and we do the contract and go home.'
In a previous statement, the company said that the current economic climate cannot allow for any increase beyond what was offered.
'Even with the continued uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, we are offering our dedicated workers wage and benefit increases over the next three years that are a multiple of the current annual cost of living,' a statement from Hunts Point Produce Market reads. 'Under our offer we will continue to pay approximately $10K per employee/year for pension benefits, and $15K per employee per year for healthcare benefits in addition to base wage increases. Unfortunately, the union walked away from the bargaining table 12 days ago and since then has focused only on bringing its members out on strike, which is harmful to the members and the community.'
This article has been updated to reflect the correct counter-offer from the company.
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Andrea Ocasio Cortez
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