Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Made Every Second Count During Her DNC Speech

Madison Feller
·2 min read
Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images

From ELLE

As promised, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took her 60-second time slot during the Democratic National Convention, and she made the most of it. The freshman congresswoman was scheduled to give a pre-recorded speech on the second night of the virtual DNC, nominating Sen. Bernie Sanders for president. (As she tweeted, convention rules require nominations for every candidate that passes the delegate threshold.) When it was announced she would only have a quick minute to speak—she ended up speaking for a minute and a half—she tweeted out a poem by civil rights leader Benjamin Mays, ensuring everyone she would make every second count:

In her speech, the New York Democrat honored "a mass people's movement" that is working to "repair the wounds of racial injustice, colonization, misogyny, and homophobia." During the primaries, Ocasio-Cortez campaigned on behalf of Sanders and has been a staunch supporter of the senator long before she ever came to Congress.

Below, read her speech in full:

Good evening, bienvenidos, and thank you to everyone here today endeavoring towards a better, more just future for our country and our world.

In fidelity and gratitude to a mass people's movement working to establish 21st century social, economic, and human rights, including guaranteed healthcare, higher education, living wages, and labor rights for all people in the United States, a movement striving to recognize and repair the wounds of racial injustice, colonization, misogyny, and homophobia, and to propose and build reimagined systems of immigration and foreign policy that turn away from the violence and xenophobia of our past, a movement that realizes the unsustainable brutality of an economy that rewards explosive inequalities of wealth for the few at the expense of long-term stability for the many, and who organized a historic, grassroots campaign to reclaim our democracy.

At a time when millions of people in the United States are looking for deep systemic solutions to our crises of mass evictions, unemployment, and lack of healthcare, en el espíritu del pueblo and out of a love for all people, I hereby second the nomination of Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont for president of the United States of America.

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