Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) takes aim at billionaire influence, corporate power, and Republican politics during a rally in Bakersfield, California. In her speech, AOC criticizes a political system she says favors wealthy elites over working-class Americans, calling for higher wages, affordable healthcare, and greater economic fairness. She also challenges Republican leadership and supports Randy Villegas in his race against Republican David Valadao. The speech raises questions about wealth, political influence, healthcare cuts, and the priorities of the Trump-era Republican agenda.
Watch AOC’s remarks on billionaire power, working-class rights, healthcare, and the political battle over America’s future.
#AOC #AlexandriaOcasioCortez #DonaldTrump #Trump #Billionaires #Republicans #USPolitics #AmericanPolitics #WorkingClass #Healthcare #PoliticalNews #RandyVillegas #DavidValadao #Congress #BreakingNews
~HT.178~PR.462~GR.506~ED.102~VG.HM~
Watch AOC’s remarks on billionaire power, working-class rights, healthcare, and the political battle over America’s future.
#AOC #AlexandriaOcasioCortez #DonaldTrump #Trump #Billionaires #Republicans #USPolitics #AmericanPolitics #WorkingClass #Healthcare #PoliticalNews #RandyVillegas #DavidValadao #Congress #BreakingNews
~HT.178~PR.462~GR.506~ED.102~VG.HM~
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you so much. Before I begin, I just have to say, there may or may not be a little
00:05bit of Spanglish here.
00:09Y yo soy puertorriqueña, so por favor, disculpe el acento, y también newyorriqueña además, so we're just going to start
00:19there.
00:21But how are we all doing today?
00:26I'm so deeply excited and grateful to be here with each and every one of you because you all, here
00:35in Bakersfield and in the Central Valley, in just 10 days, are going to change the United States of America.
00:48And you are going to do it by voting for, organizing, and electing our hermano, Randy Villegas, para el Congreso
00:59de los Estados Unidos.
01:02So thank you all so much.
01:05So I just landed here in, I just landed in Fresno last night.
01:12And we landed here from Maine, where Troy Jackson is running for the United States Senate.
01:19And it's incredible to see what is happening across the country and also the role, the deeply individual and specific
01:29role that so many communities play in our country, each unique and different.
01:35And as I was driving from Fresno out here to Bakersfield today, I was looking out the window, and I
01:45don't know if many of you all saw it, but there was this incredible rainbow.
01:52Do you all see that today?
01:55Incredible rainbow, a double rainbow if you all saw it.
01:58It's a sign, it's a sign, but under that rainbow, we saw all of the fields, the crops, the bounty
02:13that the Central Valley provides for the United States.
02:21That bounty is picked and harvested by the people of the Central Valley.
02:31First, second, third generation farm workers, new farm workers that have arrived from all over the world and that have
02:40been here for generations, that have built and fed nearly every American in the United States.
02:50And as I drove and looked out that window, as I looked over the citrus, the oranges, the almonds, the
02:58olive trees, everything throughout the state, everything, I thought about what happened here 61 years ago in Delano.
03:12I thought about the farm workers' strike where so many workers here in the Central Valley walked off the great
03:23fields demanding better wages and dignity.
03:27And I thought about all of the stakes that were out there for our farm workers here in the Central
03:35Valley.
03:36People were living in homes owned by the corporations that employed them.
03:43And standing up to the powerful meant risking your home, your family, your livelihood, being displaced.
03:52People were paid $0.10 for a 28-pound lug out here in the Central Valley.
04:01And they had everything to lose.
04:05Everything to lose.
04:07And the courage that it took for Dolores Huerta, for the Filipinos that stood up, for the Mexican farm workers
04:25who voted to join their strike,
04:28for the working people who said, there is a limit to fear, there is a limit to what we can
04:37lose.
04:38And at a certain point, on your knees, we have to stand up and fight for our rights and our
04:46dignity.
04:49When those farm workers first tried to initiate that strike, people brought in scab workers from all over the country
05:00to try to undercut them.
05:03And at first it looked like it looked like it wasn't going to work.
05:09It looked initially like they had found a workaround.
05:13But then the people of the Central Valley called on the rest of the country to help them.
05:20Called on a nationwide boycott of grapes until their needs were met.
05:27And what we found was that the people answered the call.
05:32The national strike on grapes from consumers from New York and Texas and across the country allowed everyday people to
05:42say,
05:42I'm not buying grapes until our brothers and sisters in the Central Valley get paid.
05:49And what happened, Bakersfield, you know the story, is that it worked.
05:55Powerful growers had to sit across the table from the very workers that they had underestimated.
06:03And what we saw was one of the most inspiring and powerful labor movements in the history of the United
06:14States with the United Farm Workers.
06:19That is the heritage of the Central Valley.
06:26That is the history and the culture of this place.
06:33Because those farm workers didn't just win a contract, they won dignity, they won rights, and they won an inalienable
06:45role in the entire country of the United States.
06:50I bring that into this room because the heritage of that fight where there were countless of so many workers,
07:00there were so many workers that have come and gone from the Central Valley since then, two of them were
07:07a mother and a father who gave birth to several children.
07:16And they eventually set up an auto body shop whose son and their son helped them make ends meet in
07:28that auto body shop.
07:30That's the American dream at work, where we start from nothing and we can make something of ourselves, even if
07:40not in the short term, over the course of generations.
07:45And that young boy's name was Randy Villegas.
07:55About a year ago, Bernie Sanders and I came here to Bakersfield.
08:04And we came here under the backdrop of a big fight in Washington where there was about a trillion dollars
08:17in health care cuts on the table.
08:20We are talking about cuts to Medicaid, we're talking about increases in your private insurance, people on Medicare who rely
08:30on Medicaid for long term care and home care, all of our lives were on the line.
08:37And so Senator Sanders and I decided to go across the country because we knew that neither he nor I
08:45alone could stand up to that.
08:47But millions of people put together can.
08:52And so we wanted to go to working class communities across the country.
08:57And we came here to Bakersfield last April and Dolores Huerta was there.
09:09And I remember sitting with her and holding her hand and feeling how intergenerational this fight and this dream is.
09:23I myself am the daughter of a house cleaner.
09:27My mom cleaned houses.
09:28I cleaned houses with her growing up to afford, you know, lessons, SAT lessons so that I could try to
09:36apply to college.
09:38And Randy is no different.
09:41The son of two auto body shop workers, farm workers turned auto body shop workers, trying to make ends meet
09:48one of the first in his family to go to college.
09:53That's the only way we're going to change this country is with working people supporting other working people to break
10:03down the doors of Congress and allow the working class to walk through them.
10:13Randy grew up right here in Bakersfield.
10:17And when he worked in his family's auto shop, he went from Bakersfield College all the way to a doctorate.
10:26And then he made a choice that tells you everything about him.
10:31He decided to come and to stay home.
10:34He became a professor, helping other first generation students follow in his footsteps.
10:42Students whose parents work the fields, run neighborhood businesses and have spent their lives trying to give their children more
10:50than they had.
10:51And those families are all too often missing from the picture when people talk about the working class in America.
11:00All too often.
11:01And what we have before us is an opportunity to send a direct message that we are here.
11:12That we exist.
11:13And we are present and we are going to change this country.
11:21And we are present and we are going to change this country.
11:33changing and evolving America.
11:36There is nothing to be afraid of.
11:39Because we have always been a nation of working people who have come here with hope and nothing but the
11:47shirts on our backs to be honest and make something of ourselves for our children.
11:53There is nothing to be afraid of in that.
11:56And when I think about that rally that we had about a year ago, it was precisely to warn people
12:05like David Baladao to not hurt the very people who elected him.
12:13We went there to send a warning.
12:16Don't do this.
12:18You don't have to do this.
12:20We don't have to cut the health care of the very working people who feed this nation in order to
12:26line an insurance executive's pocket.
12:30We don't have to fund division and hatred and fear in our communities of family separation and violence and knocks
12:40on our doors without a warrant.
12:42We don't have to do that in order to line a billionaire's pocket.
12:47We can stand with the working people of this country.
12:53And instead of cutting our health care, we can guarantee it for everyone as a right.
13:04But as Randy says,
13:06Tell me who you are and I will tell you who you are.
13:13And Randy,
13:15he is with working families.
13:20Randy is with nurses.
13:23Randy is with teachers.
13:27Randy is with teachers.
13:28Randy is with families.
13:31Randy is with all of his workers here in this congressional district.
13:40And so it's not just a question of who Randy goes with.
13:45It's a question of who we go with.
13:48Who is the community?
13:52Because this congressional district is one of the youngest congressional districts in the United States of America.
14:03We have the opportunity to take the reins and to give direction to where our future will be headed.
14:13And I gotta tell you folks, the future is not with David Baladao.
14:19It's simply not.
14:21The future is Randy Villegas.
14:25The future is the son of immigrants and an auto body shop workers.
14:31The future is a young man who became the first in his family to go to college.
14:37The future is that young man who has dedicated himself to his community.
14:43And I want to close with this.
14:45Because those six decades ago, those 61 years ago, in that Delano strike, they had a saying.
14:59One of the mottos of the strike was peregrinacion, penitencia, y revolucion.
15:11Pilgrimage, penance, and revolution.
15:17The pilgrimage at that time was about the walks and the marches to the state capitals and the municipal capitals.
15:27The marches that they had to many of their political organizing sites.
15:34And that was theirs then.
15:38But we have our own pilgrimages today.
15:41Whether it's the pilgrimages that our parents make to those farmlands to harvest crops to give us a better future.
15:49Or whether it's the pilgrimage that their children, us, we must make to the ballot box to change the future
15:57for all of us.
16:00We have a pilgrimage to the poll sites in just a few days.
16:06We have a pilgrimage to your mailbox if you're just sending in that ballot.
16:12That second piece, penitencia, penance.
16:17The farm workers believed that the pain that we endured was purifying.
16:27That the hardship, that the blistered and calloused hands, that our aches and our bodies were preparation for the difficult
16:37political struggle that we had to endure.
16:40That we had to go through that to understand what it took to stand in solidarity with one another.
16:48And I want to give the message that the Central Valley and Bakersfield has paid that penance for a very
16:56long time.
16:58We have paid the penance in the fear of our families being separated.
17:03We have paid the penance in being underpaid for work that is worth far more than what is reflected on
17:11our paycheck.
17:14We have paid the penance in being denied at the doctor's office and in the bills that we get from
17:20our care.
17:21We have paid the price.
17:24And it is time for that penance to prepare us for the third piece.
17:29Revolution.
17:33Revolution.
17:35Revolution.
17:35Change.
17:36Cambio.
17:37Transformacion.
17:39Because when we pull that ballot, when we fill out that ballot, we understand that it is not the culmination,
17:48but it is simply a step in the larger journey that we have to reorient the United States from a
17:57corrupt politics that is bought and paid for by the 1% and the elite.
18:05To a nation that centers and honors the dignity of working people with higher wages, breaking up the monopolies that
18:15are driving up our prices.
18:18And guaranteeing health care to every single one of us as a right.
18:24Randy has proven that he is able to do that not once, but soon with our help twice.
18:33Because he had to win, he will have had to have won, not just one, but two different kinds of
18:41elections.
18:41And the first was in a primary where he took on the elite of our own party.
18:51And Randy was already outspent and won.
18:55Randy already stood up to the pre-chosen by the elite and won.
19:01And now we have to help him do it again.
19:07We've got the big fish to fry in November.
19:12And so I want to thank each and every one of you because it is only going to be with
19:20us that he is capable of doing that.
19:22Democrats and registered Democratic voters have been out registered in this district against Republicans for a very long time, actually.
19:33And yet a Republican has won the election here for many, many cycles.
19:39That only happens when we stay home.
19:44It only happens because their fear keeps us home.
19:49I understand that it's not just apathy.
19:52I understand that it's also intimidation.
19:56So many of us, if not most of us, if not nearly all of us, come from mixed status families.
20:04And we don't want that target on our back.
20:07But just like 61 years ago, Bakersfield, we can't live on our knees anymore.
20:14We have to stand up and cast our ballot for our brothers, for our sisters, for our mothers, for our
20:22fathers, for our neighbors.
20:23And we have to tell them, I don't care how many people you send out in those streets.
20:28Nothing is going to stop us from casting our ballot and changing this country.
20:34So Bakersfield, let us complete the work of this cycle.
20:38I want you all not just to cast your ballot, but check in on your friends, on your families, on
20:44your neighbors.
20:46Ask them if they've sent in theirs.
20:48Don't take it for granted.
20:50You might be the one person that reminded your friend that they needed to send in their ballot if they
20:56would have otherwise forgotten.
20:57You might be the one person that helped your coworker develop the courage to go to their poll site on
21:05election day.
21:06You might be the one person that makes a difference between Congressman Randy Villegas and the incumbent winning.
21:15It is up to you.
21:17And so I want to thank you all so much because I know deep in my heart that you will.
21:23That you will.
21:25And so with that, I would like to introduce the man of the hour.