Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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      Squad goals: Ocasio-Cortez warns Biden patience is wearing thin

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      They were pointed questions, not personal criticisms. But they will have conveyed a warning to Joe Biden that the patience of the left of the Democratic party and its leaders in ‘the Squad’ of progressive politicians is not infinite.“Are we passing the deal that helps working people the most?” asked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the firebrand New York congresswoman and best known member of the squad. “Are we passing the deal that makes the most jobs? Are we passing a deal that brings down the most climate emissions? Are we passing a deal that raises wages and actually improves our infrastructure for the next generation?”Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance on the influential TV program Morning Joe last week came with the US president weeks into negotiations with Republicans over a massive infrastructure spending package – and apparently little to show for it.The squad and others on the left of the party have remained broadly supportive of Biden as he seeks to restore an era of bipartisan cooperation. But with his agenda stalling on Capitol Hill, frustrations are mounting and threatening to crack the facade of Democratic unity.It was Ocasio-Cortez, a social media star with a global profile, who hailed Biden’s first hundred days in office as having “definitely exceeded expectations that progressives had”. After all, the president’s staggering $1.9tn coronavirus relief package had been swiftly passed by Congress and signed into law, albeit without a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage that liberals have long sought.Now cold reality is intruding, however. Legislation on voting rights, gun safety, immigration and police brutality is faltering in a House of Representatives where Democrats hold a slender 220-211 majority and a Senate split 50-50 with Republicans (vice president Kamala Harris gives the party the tie-breaking vote).Biden’s next big ticket item, the American Jobs Plan, which initially proposed more than $2trn for infrastructure, is facing a rockier road. He conceded ground in negotiations with Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito that ultimately collapsed. Then a bipartisan group of senators came up with a $1.2trn proposal but, progressives say, it fails to address the climate crisis, healthcare and childcare.Democratic leaders are now discussing a two-step process in which they pass a smaller bill with bipartisan support but then follow up with a second measure passed through a process known as budget reconciliation, which would require near total party unanimity.The underlying challenge for Biden is how to keep together an unwieldy Democratic coalition that encompasses conservative senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia – which is Donald Trump country – and senator Bernie Sanders, a self-declared democratic socialist from Vermont, who this week drafted a $6trn infrastructure package.Then there is the squad, the left-leaning group of House members that now consists of seven people of color. The more that Manchin digs in his heels against ambitious legislation, the more restive the squad is likely to become, raising difficult questions over whether Biden is applying sufficient pressure to bring the doubters on board.Yvette Simpson, chief executive of the progressive organization Democracy for America, said: “Right now people are really getting frustrated because it’s been six months and we don’t see Joe Biden engaging in the way that he should to push for more support. In fact, he’s negotiating against us and what Democrats want.“So I think there’s a growing sense of frustration among progressives and it’s understandable. We’re feeling like the clock is running out and we’re wasting valuable time and that’s where you’re going to start to see the squad and other members of the progressive movement push back and saying, ‘OK, we’ve got a limited window of time here. We need to put up or shut up’.”With more than two in three Americans supporting the infrastructure bill, according to a Monmouth University poll, Simpson argues that the squad is on the right side of history. “Their relentlessness, their fearlessness and their persistence on this should be rewarded; they should not be punished because they are fighting for what we should be doing anyway.“There’s going to be some blowback if the squad is fighting for things that we actually should get done and the rest of the party is saying, oh no, Republicans aren’t on board, oh no, let one person decide that he’s going to hold up an entire agenda for the entire nation, that the entire nation wants overwhelmingly.”Although the Biden administration has actively engaged with progressives in its early months, there have been some flash points. Ocasio-Cortez and others were quick to speak out when it emerged that Biden intended to retain Trump’s cap on the number of refugees allowed into the US; the administration blinked first and backed down.Squad members including Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib sharply criticized Israel for its recent bombing of Gaza and challenged the Biden administration’s unwavering support for the country. And when Harris told Guatemalans, “Do not come” to the US, Ocasio-Cortez called the comment “disappointing” and noted that it is legal to seek asylum. Ocasio-Cortez has also been pushing Biden to face up to the fact that bipartisanship with a radicalized Republican party is a doomed enterprise. She tweeted: “Pres. Biden & Senate Dems should take a step back and ask themselves if playing patty-cake w GOP Senators is really worth the dismantling of people’s voting rights, setting the planet on fire, allowing massive corporations and the wealthy to not pay their fair share of taxes, etc.”Jamaal Bowman, one of the squad’s newest members, said bluntly that Manchin “has become the new Mitch McConnell”, referring to the Republican senate minority leader infamous for obstruction, after the West Virginia senator declared support for the legislative filibuster while opposing an expansive voting rights bill.The interventions carry weight in part because of the squad’s outsized influence in both mainstream and social media. Ocasio-Cortez has 12.7m followers on Twitter. Activists praise them for speaking with moral clarity about Washington’s failings in a way that strikes a chord with the public.Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, said: “I don’t think they are outside mainstream thinking around the frustrations that people have with the Senate as an institution or the limitations that present themselves with such a narrow margin and with Joe Manchin continuing to buck his own caucus. They’re playing a very useful role.”Their willingness to dissent is a sign of party strength, not weakness, Mitchell argues. “When Joe Biden moves the struggle forward, they will give him credit for it. There are examples where the Biden administration has been outside of what we would consider progressive values and they’ve course corrected and it was, I think, because the squad were not afraid to call it.“It led to the Biden administration actually getting better on those issues. That’s an example not of disunity, but co-equal branches operating as they should.”But when it comes to the current legislative gridlock, some commentators argue that the squad would be wrong to take out their frustrations on the president, given the balance of power in the Senate.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “I don’t know how you criticise Biden for Manchin. Biden is putting up the legislation they’d like. The problem is Congress and the sheer numbers. It’s an arithmetic problem more than an ideology problem.”Democrats’ narrow majority in the House should, in theory, give the squad more leverage over party leadership than ever. They threatened to torpedo a $1.9bn spending bill to upgrade US Capitol security in the wake of 6 January insurrection over concerns about more money going to police; eventually three voted no, three voted present and one voted yes; the bill passed by a single vote.Dave Handy, a New York-based political activist and consultant who worked on Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, said: “We have a very slim majority in Congress. The squad now wield more power than they’re giving themselves credit for. I don’t know why they’re ignorant of their bargaining position and the hand that they’re holding.”“Everybody else at the table seems to be aware of this. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the Senate are very aware of the cards that they’re holding. The squad is completely aloof. I’m not even sure they know that they’re playing poker. They might think they’re playing checkers.”Handy argues that the squad should pressure Biden and other Democratic leaders much harder. “I don’t think that they’re wielding as much influence as they could be. The squad was elected to be rabble rousers. They are there to agitate. Theirs is the role of a reformer in Congress and, in my estimation, in this current Congress, they have not been doing that.” More

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      Manchin faces growing pressure from Democrats over Biden agenda

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      Joe Manchin, the conservative Democratic West Virginia senator whose defiance over the filibuster rule threatens to stall Joe Biden’s domestic legislative agenda, found himself under pressure from both wings of his party on Sunday.Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, adopted a conciliatory approach on CNN’s State of the Union show, offering a novel interpretation of Manchin’s assertion a week earlier that he would refuse to support Biden’s flagship For the People voting rights act, or vote to end the filibuster that would allow it to pass.“I don’t give up on Joe Manchin. I think he left the door open, I think it’s ajar [and] I’m not giving up,” she said, offering an olive branch following harsh criticism from other Democrats.“He has certain concerns about the legislation that we may be able to come to terms on. We have to make this fight for our democracy. It isn’t about Democrats or Republicans, it’s not about partisanship, it’s about patriotism so we must pass it.”Later in the same show, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive congresswoman from New York, assailed Manchin for clinging to what she said he saw as “the romanticism of bipartisanship” and an era of Republicanism “that simply does not exist any more”.“We have the influence of big money [donors] that impacts both parties in Congress and I believe that that old way of politics has absolutely an influence in Joe Manchin’s thinking, and the way he navigates the body,” Ocasio-Cortez said.“You have the Koch brothers and associated organizations really doing victory laps about Joe Manchin’s opposition to [ending the] the filibuster.”The contrasting approaches to the Manchin problem underscore the growing rift in the Democratic party. It controls the White House and House of Representatives but appears increasingly unable to progress key elements of Biden’s agenda, including voting rights, a $1.7tn infrastructure plan, racial justice efforts and gun reforms, through the Senate.There, seats are divided 50-50 and the Democrats have a tie-breaking vote in the vice-president, Kamala Harris, but the filibuster rule means the minority party can block much legislation that does not have the support of at least 60 members.Colleagues have urged Manchin to support efforts to end or restructure the Senate filibuster, but he is not in favor.Ocasio-Cortez said Democrats now faced “a fork in the road”.“Do we settle for much less and an infrastructure package that has been largely designed by Republicans in order to get 60 votes, or can we really transform this country, create millions of union jobs, revamp our power grid, get bridges fixed and schools rebuilt with 51 or 50 Democratic votes?” she said. More

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      AOC condemns Kamala Harris for telling Guatemalan migrants not to come to US

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      The progressive New York representative Alexandria Oscasio-Cortez has criticized Vice-President Kamala Harris, for saying undocumented migrants from Guatemala should not come to the US.On her first foreign trip as vice-president, Harris visited Guatemala on Monday. At a press conference with Guatemala’s president, Alejandro Giammattei, the former California senator spoke about investigating corruption and human trafficking in Central America, and described a future where Guatemalans could find “hope at home”.But she also had a clear message that undocumented Guatemalan migrants would not find solace at the US border under the Biden administration.“I want to be clear to folks in the region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border,” she said. “Do not come. Do not come.”Later on Monday, Oscasio-Cortez condemned Harris on Twitter, calling her comments “disappointing to see”.“First, seeking asylum at any US border is a 100% legal method of arrival,” said the congresswoman, an influential voice on the Democratic left since her upset win in a 2018 primary and widely known as AOC.“Second, the US spent decades contributing to regime change and destabilization in Latin America. We can’t help set someone’s house on fire and then blame them for fleeing.”Several human rights groups also spoke out.Rachel Schmidtke, Latin America advocate at the non-profit Refugees International, said: “We continue to urge the Biden administration to build policies that recognize that many Guatemalans will need to seek protection until the longstanding drivers of forced displacement are addressed and realign its message to the Guatemalan people to reflect America’s commitment to the right to seek protection internationally.”The Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, a non-profit that works with asylum seekers, tweeted: “Kamala Harris, seeking asylum is legal. Turning back asylum seekers is illegal, dangerous, & oftentimes sends them back to their deaths. Seeking asylum is a right under US and international law.”Despite Joe Biden moving to undo Trump-era restrictions at the border, including instituting changes to the asylum process, Harris’s speech underlined a continued stance of turning back undocumented migrants.Central America has long been affected by poverty and violence, amid entrenched cycles of political instability partly caused by criminal elites. Experts contend the US has often aided oppressive regimes. Despite the litany of dangers migrants often face when traveling north, the journey is often safer than remaining at home.“People are leaving because the corrupt governments (supported by the US) have tolerated and encouraged the growth of these criminal organizations,” said Jeff Faux, founder of the Economic Policy Institute, in an interview with USA Today.In April, according to CNN, more than 178,000 migrants arrived at the US-Mexico border, the highest one-month total in two decades. More

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorses Maya Wiley for New York mayor

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed Maya Wiley for mayor of New York, a dramatic intervention that could heighten the chances of the city electing a woman for the first time and only its second Black leader.Ocasio-Cortez, a leading progressive in Congress popularly known as AOC, shot to national fame in 2018 when she beat a longtime incumbent, Joe Crowley, for the Democratic nomination in a district in Queens and the Bronx.“If we don’t come together as a movement we will get a New York City built by and for billionaires, and we need a city by and for working people,” Ocasio-Cortez said on Saturday. “So we will vote for Maya No1.”Wiley is a lawyer and community organiser who was a counsel to the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, and has taught urban policy and social justice at the New School in Manhattan.“She will be a progressive in Gracie Mansion,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to the mayoral residence. “We can’t let New York become a playground for the wealthy where working people cannot afford to live.”Wiley lauded Ocasio-Cortez as a strong leader and promised to do the same for the city.“It’s time we have this kind of courage leading us at a historic crossroads,” Wiley said, according to New York Daily News, referring to the city’s prospects after the coronavirus pandemic. “We need the courage to bring every New Yorker back with us.”This week Wiley told the New Yorker: “There’s one progressive in this race who can win this race. And it’s me.”In April, she told the Guardian she wanted to change a history which has seen New York elect 109 mayors – 108 of them white men, the exception David Dinkins, who led the city for three years from 1990 and who died last November, aged 93.For long periods the New York race has been led by Andrew Yang, a centrist tech entrepreneur who achieved his own national fame with a surprisingly strong run in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.After failing to land a place in Joe Biden’s cabinet, Yang entered the race to succeed De Blasio in New York.Gaffes and missteps including choosing to live outside the city during the pandemic, not voting for mayor between 2001 and 2017 and supposedly misunderstanding the subway system did not stop him dominating early polls.Democrats will choose their candidate – and in all likelihood the next mayor, given the political leanings of the city – on 22 June. The primary will be conducted through ranked-choice voting, which lets voters pick up to five candidates in order of preference. Some early results in other contests might be known that evening but the nominees for mayor are unlikely to be known for weeks.Polls have tightened, with Yang, Wiley, Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams and former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia the top four in a crowded field.Garcia has been endorsed by the New York Times. Wiley will hope Ocasio-Cortez speaks to young New Yorkers as the Grey Lady does to the city’s establishment.Hit hard in the early stages of the pandemic, New Yorkers are only now beginning to return to normal life. In her interview with the Guardian, Wiley said Covid “laid bare once again – like all our crises that reveal racial inequity – our failure to invest in our people.“… You know, 88% of New Yorkers who have died from Covid are people of colour. We are not 80% of the New York City population. The highest rates of unemployment are in the same communities that had the highest rates of death due to Covid. And the highest infection rates, and are the same communities that are over-policed, and are the same communities that are struggling to get the vaccine.“If we want to recover from Covid we have to pay attention to all our people. And what we love about the city … is the fact that 800 languages are spoken here, and the fact that 40% of our people were born in another country, and the fact that we have descendants from North American slaves, and the fact that we have people who live in luxury housing and people who live in public housing, and that’s part of what makes us rich.”She was also asked how she would manage the notoriously difficult relationship between the mayor’s office and Andrew Cuomo, the powerful Democratic governor of New York state.“I would manage the relationship with the governor the way I manage all relationships,” she said. “Open communication, starting with principles and purpose that meets the needs of people.“We have a shared constituency. There are many partnerships, we need to get what we need from the state government. And if you want partnerships that focus on hard problems and real solutions, then pick a Black woman. Because that’s what we do every single day and in every single way.” More

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      AOC says Marjorie Taylor Greene is ‘deeply unwell’ after 2019 video surfaces

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said the Republican extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene has a “fixation” on progressive members of Congress, and warned that Greene’s behavior has “raised concerns” among Democrats.Greene, a Trump loyalist and a promoter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, was elected to the House in 2020, and has spent her first months in office harassing Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive Democrats.Ocasio-Cortez’s warning came after CNN unearthed a video showing her staff being harassed by Greene, then a private citizen, in 2019. The footage shows Greene, accompanied by a man who would go on to take part in the Capitol riot in January this year, shouting through the letterbox of Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional office.“You need to stop being a baby and stop locking your door and come out and face the American citizens that you serve,” Greene says. “If you want to be a big girl, you need to get rid of your diaper and come out and be able to talk to the American citizens. Instead of having to use a flap, a little flap. Sad.”The video emerged two days after Greene confronted Ocasio-Cortez outside the House chamber. Greene shouted at the New York congresswoman and accused her of supporting terrorists.Ocasio-Cortez told CNN: “This is a woman that’s deeply unwell. And clearly needs help. And her kind of fixation has lasted for several years now. At this point I think the depth has raised concerns for other members as well.”She added: “I think that this is an assessment that needs to be made by the proper professional.”Ocasio-Cortez, along with fellow progressives Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley, have been regular targets for rightwing extremists including Greene. In September, when Greene was running for Congress, she posted a Facebook photo of herself holding a gun alongside images of Ocasio-Cortez, Omar and Tlaib.“We need strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart,” the caption read.In her 2019 video, which CNN posted online, Greene announces: “We’re going to go see, we’re going to visit, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”She adds: “Crazy eyes. Crazy eyes. Nutty.”Ocasio-Cortez referenced the video in a tweet, pointing out double standards between the behavior of some Republicans and that of Democrats.“And now it’s revealed that this person [Greene] showed up to members of Congress’ doors with folks from the mob who infiltrated the Capitol, beat Capitol police and strung up nooses in front of the House,” Ocasio-Cortez said.“If the shoe were on the other foot, the GOP would be calling for my expulsion.” More

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      Republicans fret over AOC backing for Biden as 100-day mark draws near

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      As Joe Biden welcomed a series of polls showing majority approval for his first 100 days in the White House, and prepared to address Congress for the first time on Wednesday, Republicans attacked his progressive record in office.One senior senator said: “AOC said his first 100 days exceeded her expectations. That’s all you need to know.”Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was talking to Fox News Sunday about remarks by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman and leading progressive from New York.Speaking to an online meeting on Friday, she said: “The Biden administration and President Biden have definitely exceeded expectations that progressives had.”Citing the $1.9tn Covid relief and stimulus bill, Ocasio-Cortez said Biden had been “very impressive” in negotiating with Congress to pass “progressive legislation”. She also voiced dissatisfaction with Biden’s $2.25tn infrastructure package.On Sunday, speaking to CNN’s State of the Union, Vice-President Kamala Harris trumpeted the administration’s achievements.“We are going to lift half of America’s children out of poverty,” she said. “How about that? How about that? Think about that … That’s good stuff. That’s really good stuff.”Republicans oppose the price tag on the American Jobs Plan and priorities within it, including plans to raise taxes on wealthier Americans and proposed spending on environmental initiatives.So do some Democrats – on Sunday the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, a key vote in the 50-50 chamber, told CNN he favoured a slimmed down, “more targeted” bill.Graham was not the only senior GOP figure to complain about something many on the left have praised: that Biden campaigned as a moderate but is governing more as a progressive.Also speaking to Fox News Sunday, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, accused Biden of “a bait and switch. The bait was he was going to govern as bipartisan but the switch is, he’s governed as a socialist”.Graham said: “During the campaign, he made us all believe that Joe Biden would be the moderate choice, that he really thought court-packing was a bonehead idea. All of a sudden we got a commission to change the structure of the supreme court. Making DC a state, I think that’s a very radical idea that will change the make-up of the United States Senate.”Progressives defend Biden’s commission on the supreme court as a necessary answer to Republican hardball tactics that skewed the panel 6-3 in favour of rightwing judges. However, Biden’s commission to examine the issue both contains conservative voices and is unlikely to produce an increase beyond nine justices any time soon.A bill to make DC a state, thereby giving the city representation it currently lacks and almost certainly electing two Democratic senators, has passed the House but is unlikely to pass the Senate.“AOC said his first 100 days exceeded her expectations,” Graham added. “That’s all you need. I like Joe Biden, but I’m in the 43%.”Sunday brought a slew of polls. Fox News put the president’s approval rating at 54% positive to 43% negative, nine points up on Donald Trump at the same time four years ago. NBC put Biden up 51%-43%, ABC made it 52%-42% and CBS reported a 58%-42% split.Graham also insisted Biden had “been a disaster on foreign policy”.The South Carolina senator was once an eager ally of John McCain, the late Arizona senator, presidential nominee and a leading GOP voice on foreign affairs. Biden was a senator from Delaware for 36 years and chaired the foreign relations committee.“The border is in chaos,” Graham said, “the Iranians are off the mat … Afghanistan is gonna fall apart, Russia and China are already pushing him around. So I’m very worried.“I think he’s been a very destabilising president, and economically thrown a wet blanket over the recovery, wanting to raise taxes a large amount and regulate America basically out of business.“So I’m not very impressed with the first 100 days. This is not what I thought I would get from Joe Biden.” More

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      Ocasio-Cortez says Biden exceeded progressives’ expectations

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saluted the Biden administration on Friday, saying the new president had exceeded progressives’ expectations in his first 100 days in the White House.“The Biden administration and President Biden have definitely exceeded expectations that progressives had,” the New York congresswoman, a star on the left of the Democratic party, told a virtual town hall meeting. “I think a lot of us expected a much more conservative administration.”In March, Joe Biden scored a major victory when his $1.9tn Covid stimulus and rescue package passed into law without a single Republican vote.Progressives were disappointed, though, when a move to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour was dropped from the package after a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian.Moderates in the upper chamber also opposed the move. The Senate is split 50-50 and controlled through the casting vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris. Centrist Democrats such as Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona are thus placed in powerful positions.Ocasio-Cortez, an ally of progressive senators such as Bernie Sanders of Vermont, said that “the majority of the tension within the Democratic party lies in the Senate”.Biden is looking to pass another large legislative package, the $2.25tn, infrastructure-focused American Jobs Plan. Republicans remain ranged against him, opposing progressive priorities featured in the package.Not all progressives are satisfied either. Ocasio-Cortez said: “I think the infrastructure bill is too small. I have real concerns that the actual dollars and cents, and programmatic allocations of the bill, don’t meet the ambition of that vision, of what’s being sold.”She also said that she would not be able to attend Biden’s first address to Congress next week, thanks to Covid capacity restrictions.But Ocasio-Cortez also said Biden – who was a senator for 36 years and vice-president for eight under Barack Obama – had been “very impressive” in his approach to negotiating with Congress, resulting in the passage of “progressive legislation”.“It’s been good so far,” she said. More

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      'A breath of fresh air': readers on women who changed the world in 2020

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      Amanda Gorman‘She was a breath of fresh air on inauguration day’She is a young, intelligent and brilliant woman who will accomplish great things for good causes such as feminism, [and fighting] marginalisation, oppression, racism, etc. Our world today needs women and men of this calibre in order to live better together. In this difficult period, with the Covid-19 pandemic, it was so wonderful to get a breath of fresh air on Joe Biden’s inauguration day, and the accompanying enthusiasm to maintain good mental and physical health. Young people, especially, need hope for a future that looks so bleak. Nicole Dorion Poussart, retired historian, Quebec City, CanadaGreta Thunberg‘She dedicated her childhood to defend this planet’She dedicated her childhood to defend this planet. She is still very young but knows how to address the public and express her ideas and ideals. I don’t know how she came to be so dedicated – it’s outstanding! We need people who can persuade politicians to do something and cut emissions, save our flora and fauna and the land.Australia could become a desert if we don’t do something about water and stop the multinational companies from making millions from destroying this environment. We have a beautiful country and lots of people I know want to keep it beautiful, but it is difficult. We need people like Greta – I hope she lives for ever! Nathalie Shepherd, 79, originally from Holland but living in Adelaide, AustraliaAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez‘She is a political powerhouse’AOC is a Democratic representative from New York’s 14th congressional district. She is a political newcomer and a rising star because of her popular democratic-socialist policies and ideas. It’s ideas like the “green new deal”, tuition-free public college, affordable housing and many more that have gained traction among the working class and future generations.Love her or hate her, you’ve got to admit AOC is a political powerhouse. She works tirelessly to amplify progressive voices that have been neglected by our government for decades. It feels really good having a member of the government actually care about the people rather than the handouts they receive from oil companies and evil corporations. Never has a member of Congress been so transparent and supportive of effective political reform. Abdullah Chaudhry, 19, student, Texas, USZelda Perkins‘She’s been really brave in speaking out against Harvey Weinstein’She has been really brave in speaking out about her regret around the NDA she signed [in 1998] after allegations against Harvey Weinstein, who was convicted of rape and sexual assault in 2020 and sentenced to 23 years in prison. Breaking the NDA, and the debate this sparked about how pernicious they are in enabling abusive behaviour to go unchecked, makes her a really important figure and unsung hero in the post-#MeToo landscape.She’s really committed and brave, and clearly not in it for the fame. She has articulated really well the hold that men like Weinstein have on the women who have come into contact with them, and why this is not just about Weinstein, but addressing a toxic power imbalance. Ruth, 45, LondonStacey Abrams‘She’s been nominated for the Nobel peace prize for her work in the 2020 US election’She is a US democratic politician, lawyer, author and voting-rights activist who played a significant role in getting the state of Georgia to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 US presidential election. She was also largely instrumental in ensuring that the new Democrat government had a working majority in the Senate by getting Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff elected in the runoff election that took place in January 2021. She has recently been nominated for the Nobel peace prize for her work in the 2020 election.In this time of political turmoil, I am inspired by Abrams because she has shown what is lacking in so many of our politicians in the UK and US – intelligence, honesty, bravery, transparency, decency, pragmatism, hard work and a wonderful sense of humour. She has shown that an individual can make a difference, and without cynicism. We should thank her, for we owe her a lot. John Glasser, 74, retired computer consultant, Tring, HertfordshireHannah Gadsby‘She touches on topics such as abuse and autism and puts them in easy words’She’s an Australian standup who has done two Netflix comedy specials. Her second one, which was released in May last year, was on her autism. It’s super-funny, but at the same time touches on so many important topics and subjects that are usually quite hard to explain. I’ve watched both her shows at least 10 times so far and I will probably watch them again at some point, because they don’t get boring.She inspires me by putting subjects such as abuse and autism in easy words and explaining feminist concepts so well. It’s highly educating and encourages me to fight my own feminist battles, to put my own struggles in words and explain them to others. I’m still much less agreeable than she is when I’m talking about feminism, so I hope I will be able to put things into words as lightly and at the same time convincingly as she does. Anna, Berlin, Germany More