Congress is going to be changed by this year’s elections, because the incoming class of representatives includes some people who will not go along to get along, will not just say yes to power. Take Thursday’s bipartisan orientation and issue briefings—it’s the kind of thing we don’t usually hear much about. But thanks to Reps.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, we now have a sense of how power works and how new members are pressured into the same old mold.
Ocasio-Cortez later tweeted that the event was “cohosted by a corporate lobbyist group. Other members have quietly expressed to me their concern that this wasn’t told to us in advance,” and highlighted the lack not just of labor voices but of other activists and community leaders.
And there’s no question that the event was designed to teach new members where they rank and who they need to be deferential toward:
Yes. Yes yes yes. More of this, please! Show us the day-to-day of how corporations get the power and the people aren’t heard, so that activists can better see what rooms we need to be getting into and finding ways to push back against things we didn’t even know were happening behind closed doors.