During a 'Fight Oligarchy' event in Los Angeles, California on Saturday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) spoke about the growing wealth inequality in the United States.
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00:00But to get there, we need to be honest about how we got to this place.
00:07Because this moment did not come out of nowhere.
00:11It has been a long time coming.
00:14The destruction of our rights and democracy is directly tied to the growing and extreme wealth inequality that has been building for years in America.
00:28It is not a coincidence that billionaires like Elon Musk dumped billions of dollars in this election to elect Trump.
00:39And I'll tell you, L.A., he sure as hell isn't doing that out of charity.
00:45For years, we have known that our political system has slowly but surely become dominated by big money and billionaires.
00:56Time after time, we have seen and experienced how our government and laws are more responsive to lobbyists than to the will of everyday people.
01:07And we also know that the agenda of dark money to keep wages low and to loot our public goods to give to the rich is deeply unpopular with people of all backgrounds, all parties, and all places.
01:25Just look at what Republicans have been quietly doing in Congress.
01:32They have been voting just this week to advance cuts on hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid and veterans benefits and Social Security.
01:43So that they can take that money and give it to the billionaires who elected them in the form of tax cuts and sweetheart government contracts to companies like SpaceX.
01:54And you know who voted for that from California, by the way, David Valadeo of California's 22nd, Young Kim of California's 40th, and Ken Calvert of California's 41st.
02:12They know that that's not what you want.
02:17They know that it is deeply unpopular.
02:20They know that it hurts you.
02:22But they are not here to serve us.
02:24They are here to serve themselves and the billionaires who have paid them oligarchy.
02:30And they know that the only chance they have to get away with such an unpopular agenda, to get away with stealing in plain view, is to stoke deep divisions among us, along lines of race, identity, and culture, to keep us fighting and distracted.
02:53This has been the big money playbook, not just now, but for decades.
03:01And that is why Donald Trump is not an aberration.
03:07He is the logical, inevitable conclusion of an American political system dominated by corporate and dark money.
03:18And if we are here to defeat him, we must defeat the system that created him.
03:27Money in politics is the hands of oligarchy, Los Angeles.
03:34And we are at a crossroads.
03:37We can either have extreme wealth inequality with the toxic division and corruption that it requires to survive,
03:47or we can have a fair economy that guarantees health care to all, for working people, along with the democracy and freedoms that uphold it.
04:02Oligarchy or democracy?
04:05But we cannot have both.
04:08Los Angeles, I have made my choice.
04:11We must fight the oligarchy that has created this nightmare.
04:16And that is why I have never taken money from lobbyists or corporations, and it's why I never will.
04:23Let's watch cuestión comrade.
04:35Let's draw on the table.