WOMEN IN CONGRESS BRING DIVERSE REPRESENTATION

Photo by Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

If there’s one person who has been constantly popping up on social media, it’s a certain politician whose name is the attention grabber of every headline she is attached to.

Obviously, I’m talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. If you are confused about who exactly this person is, I’ll catch you up to speed: She is a 28-year-old from Bronx, New York who ran as a U.S. representative in her congressional district. She won the mid-term election in an upset against another Democrat, Joe Crowley, who was already an established politician and representative in that area.

Along with other newly elected representatives who are women of color and have gone down a similar path as Ocasio-Cortez, there are obvious, but differing opinions about her, from MSNBC to CNN and Fox News. I think that no matter how you view the current political climate and the different ideas that are considered “radical agendas,” I think this is an extremely important time in American politics.

Ocasio-Cortez isn’t the only person from a marginalized group to be sworn into Congress, but her strong political stances and her ability to be fiercely independent from special interests inadvertently made her the face of this new wave of “progressive Democrats” due to heavy media scrutiny. The new, 116th Congress has a lot of firsts – first Muslim women to be elected, first women of Native American heritage – and like I said earlier, a good majority of the newly elected members are women, specifically women of color. Nothing is more fitting for the title of “representative” than a person who comes from an unspoken group and embodies the community they come from and I think it is not only important, I think it’s something we must have more of in the future.

But all of this comes with certain media doubt. In the age of career politicians using status quo policies as fuel for their administration, some people have no choice but to doubt one who isn’t backed or even endorsed by these politicians. For example, Ocasio-Cortez is a self-proclaimed “Democratic Socialist” like Bernie Sanders, the politician she has looked up to and gained support from. Like Sanders, she has been scrutinized by her peers and the media for her ideas and tactics: center left-media saying her resentment towards the establishment will be her demise, and more right-wing media saying that her ideas are not only radical, they’re dangerous and unrealistic.

The issue with this premise is that when several political commentators on social media try to take her and the other women down, they give them more attention and support. To me, more attention on these women is a good thing, but counterproductive for the opposition. 

What I took away from the election of the 116th Congress is that representation matters the most when it’s the people in charge, those who have the power to say something where ordinary citizens can’t. This can be seen in the race with Ilhan Omar, a Somalian woman of Muslim faith who came to the country as a refugee. She campaigned in the last year as a progressive and got elected for government office by nearly 200,000 votes in her U.S. House district in Minnesota.

I expect to see more of this, not only because it gives a hopeful policy shift for unspoken and marginalized groups, but it also reflects the identity our country touts itself for around the world: the idea that the U.S. is a melting pot of different races, religions and ethnicities coming together to create a culturally diverse society in which everyone can make a difference.

Advocate Staff