Ocasio-Cortez Gets Hero’s Welcome at Local Swearing In

After weeks in the national spotlight, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez returned to her home borough of the Bronx on Saturday for a local swearing-in ceremony with hundreds of ticketed supporters and a handful of elected officials.

The event itself, held in the auditorium of Renaissance School for Musical Theater and Technology, near the Throggs Neck Section of the Bronx, was something of a humble homecoming for the freshman congresswoman who’s amassed more Twitter followers than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi while also driving major debates on issues like environmental and economic policy.

It was a chance to celebrate the official start of her two-year term with the people who put her in office, to be feted by the elected officials who wanted to be seen standing in her camp and for Ocasio-Cortez herself to deliver a message about what she hopes to achieve in Washington.

While the official swearing in took place last month in Washington D.C., it is customary for members to hold local inaugural celebrations in their districts particularly when they are taking office for the first time. The Honorable Judge Jenny Rivera, a member of the New York State Court of Appeals, administered the oath to Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday.

Her speech resonated with many of the same global themes that propelled her to national prominence, like advocating for a different approach to climate change and the environment known as the Green New Deal.

“The Green New Deal is the legislation of indigenous communities in the United States. The Green New Deal is the legislation of the residents of Flint. The Green New Deal belongs to the people of Puerto Rico. The Green New Deal belongs to the coal miners in West Virginia. It belongs to the victims of wildfires in California. And when we center our communities and allow them to lead, anything is possible,” said Ocasio-Cortez

She also promised to come home once a month to hold town hall meetings in the district which also includes a part of Queens. 

And she issued a call to action to her supporters urging them to engage more fully in their own communities, “Like joining your PTA or maybe to show up to your community board meeting for the first time or to lead a Girl Scout troop,” she said. “I'm a former Girl Scout so I have to do the plug.”

Her most pointed comments about New York City were statements directed at Amazon.

Speaking just days after officials announced they planned to scrap a new corporate campus in Long Island City, a Queens neighborhood adjacent to her district, Ocasio-Cortez remained a forceful critic of the deal, without ever calling out the company by name.

“We need to create dignified jobs in New York City. Jobs that pay well, jobs that contribute to community, jobs that are part of a moral economy. We do not have to settle for scraps in the greatest city in the world,” said Ocasio-Cortez

Elected officials who share her sentiments on Amazon joined the event, including State Senator Michael Gianaris, who represents a portion of her district in Queens and was greeted by cheers from the crowd for his outspoken opposition to the ill-fated deal. 

On a similar theme, of taking on powerful interests, newly minted State Senator Alessandra Biaggi said she and the freshman congresswoman have something in common. “Both of us beat very powerful men. Both of us were told that it was not possible,” she said.

Biaggi ousted former State Senator Jeff Klein, the one-time head of the breakaway Independent Democratic Caucus and a co-leader of the Senate majority with the Republicans for the past nine years. Ocasio-Cortez defeated 10-term congressman Joe Crowley.

"It took an entire community to unlearn the old ways of being to make this happen. It took an entire community rediscovering its power and its voice. You are all the political currency of our time," Biaggi added.

After the ceremony ended, audience members were invited to take a photograph with the new congresswoman. Margarita Rosa, one of the first people in line, described herself as an admirer of the congresswoman.

Rosa, who served as the state’s first woman and first Latina commissioner of Human Rights under former Gov. Mario Cuomo, trekked up from Manhattan’s Lower East Side for the festivities. “I’m of Puerto Rican ancestry and to have another Puerto Rican representing us as well as she is representing us was really a cause for pride and a reason to come up here,” she said.

People who knew Ocasio-Cortez before her political life also came out the event. Miguel Sanchez, a technology entrepreneur and Bronx native, said he used to work with her when she ran a publishing company out of a business incubator in Hunts Point.

“The whole world told me there was no way she could win,” Sanchez said, adding “I actually thought she could be president.”

Note: This article was corrected to reflect that Margarita Rosa was the first female and first Latina to serve as Human Rights Commissioner in New York.