At a "Fight Oligarchy" event in Folsom on Tuesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) discussed her commitment to protecting democracy.
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00:00But Folsom, this is why Donald Trump is not an aberration.
00:11He is the logical, inevitable conclusion of an American political system dominated by corporate and dark money.
00:20And if we are to defeat him, we must defeat the system that created him.
00:27Money in politics is the hand of oligarchy.
00:33America, we are at a crossroads.
00:37We can either have extreme wealth inequality with the toxic division and corruption that it requires to survive.
00:47Or we can have a fair economy for working people along with the democracy and freedoms that uphold it.
00:56Oligarchy or democracy.
01:02But we cannot have both.
01:06I grew up in a working class family.
01:09My mom cleaned houses.
01:11And my dad worked on a small business.
01:14And my parents worked themselves to the bone so that my brother and I could just have a shot.
01:22The American dream.
01:24And for a moment there, it looked like we were going to make it.
01:28We had a home.
01:30Bills were getting a little less stressful to pay.
01:33And I was doing well in public school.
01:36And what may have looked like a modest life to others was a dream come true for us.
01:44But suddenly, when I was a teenager, my dad was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.
01:53And after a long fight, we lost him.
01:56My dad actually passed away in September of 2008.
02:01Just as the economy crashed in the Great Recession and millions of jobs across the country vanished.
02:09It felt like the little world of our family fell apart just as the larger world was falling apart too.
02:18And overnight, my mom was left alone to figure out how to provide and put two kids through school.
02:26Keep our house, pay off our medical bills, all on a house cleaner salary.
02:32And that is how I became a waitress.
02:35To help pay the bills.
02:37Because at that time, just as it is now, it was millions of working families who paid the price,
02:46while billionaires and thieves who defrauded our financial system got off richer than ever before.
02:53And not a single one of them went to jail.
03:00And now that is the story that Republicans mock, not mine, but all of ours,
03:07when they say that a waitress or a working person is unqualified to serve in Congress.
03:14But the fact is, Folsom, many of us are far more qualified to know what real life is,
03:22real life is really like than any of them ever will.
03:29And I tell this story not because it is special, but because of how common and normal it is.
03:37And how normal this barbarism is of how so many people are allowed to live today.
03:44And while the details may differ, so many of us knows what it feels like for life to be one bad day,
03:53one bad piece of news, or one major setback from feeling like it's all going to fall apart.
04:00We don't have to live like this anymore, Folsom.
04:07We can make a new world, Folsom, a better country where we fight for the dignity of all people.
04:15And it looks like living wages, California.
04:19It looks like stable housing.
04:22It looks like guaranteed health care.
04:25And respect for all our differences, no matter who we are or where we come from.
04:32Oligarchy or democracy.
04:37And we are here today because we choose democracy.
04:42We choose freedom.
04:45And that means we must choose to out-organize the oligarchy.
04:51We must do away with the power of big money.
04:55And that is why, even as a waitress with a long shot campaign,
05:01I decided I would never take money from lobbyists or corporations.
05:06And it's why I never will.