MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Interview

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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST:  America prides itself in doing big things, stretching a railroad across the continent, storming the beaches of Normandy, landing a man on the moon, building highways and the infrastructure for the Internet.  Our politics today seem incapable of producing change on that scale.
 
We face a civilizational challenge right now and the clock is ticking.  If we don`t radically transform our economy away from fossil fuels in the next decade, we are courting climate catastrophe.
 
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D), NEW YORK:  We are facing a national crisis.  This is about American lives.
 
HAYES:  The Green New Deal is a vision for reinventing American society around a new vision of a carbon-free economy that works for everyone.  Is it a fantasy or the beginnings of a new historical pivot point?  The answer is unfolding right now before our yes.  This is ALL IN AMERICA The Green New Deal with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
 
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HAYES:  Good evening from the Bronx, New York, I`m Chris Hayes.  We are here at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine which is part of the fewer health system.  I was actually born in this very Hospital here in the Bronx.  And the year I was born in 1979, 40 years, you`re doing the math in your head, there were 338 parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the world.
 
In 1989, that`s ten years later, it`s also the birth year of the Congresswoman who represents this very district, it was up to 355 parts per million.  And as of 2017, it was 405 parts per million.  What do those numbers mean?  We`ll put it this way.
 
That 405 parts per million is the highest in recorded history in ice core records dating all the way back 800,000 years, OK.  And here`s the other thing.  Half of all the carbon emissions that we have put in the air as a society have happened in the last 30 years when we basically knew what we were doing.
 
So in 2018, the U.N. scientists issued a report and they basically said we have to get on this problem.  If we gotten on it earlier, it would have been easy.  If we started in 1979, we could have cut a little bit every year or if we start in 1989 or 1999.  But we didn`t and now we`re here and what we have to do to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change is to cut emissions in half in 12 years.  12 years, that`s the project we`ve been tasked with by the earth that we inhabit.
 
There is an urgency felt like never before in a rising generation of Americans and across the world who realize that the clock is ticking and getting close to running out.  And into the vacuum has come a bold new policy proposal that might be the most controversial thing in American politics at the moment you`ve probably heard about it.  It`s called the Green New Dea.
 
It envisions a carbon zero economy by the middle of the century and a transformation of the American economy and indeed society.  Some people call it a socialist monster, some people call it our only hope for survival here in the way of life that we hold dear.
 
The Congresswoman, the one who was born in 1989, the woman who represents this district, the youngest woman to ever represent a district the United States Congress who is the co-sponsor of that resolution has become kind of the mascot for it as well.  And tonight we`re going to talk to her about what her vision means.  Please welcome Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
 
AMERICAN CROWD:  AOC!  AOC!  AOC!  AOC!
 
HAYES:  Hey, how are you?  Have a seat.
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  Thank you.  Thank you.
 
HAYES:  Surreal hostile crowd.  This is going to be tough really.  How are you doing?
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  I`m well.  I`m well.  I`m excited now that I`m back in the B.S.
 
HAYES:  Yes.  I am too.
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  It feels good to be home.
 
HAYES:  How do you -- let me -- I want to start with a very broad and basic question.  And it`s something I ask a lot of politicians which is how did you get your politics?  Why do you have the politics you have?
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  You know, for me I think that my politics is just an emergence of my life experience and it`s a reflection of all of our experiences here, not just in the Bronx but as working people.  You know, I come from in some ways since I`m Puerto Rican, first-generation, 500th generation.  You know, it`s that`s a whole other issue.  But to grow up to a first-generation New York family on my mom`s side, on my dad`s side he was born in the South Bronx, two working parents, and to live the American Dream.
 
You know my dad started a small business.  My mom, she cleaned houses to get me through school.  And to also experience the other half of that which in 2008 where you can do everything right and have it all taken away at the same time and what happens in that case.  And to me when all of that happened, it became very important that -- and in my framework, in my belief that we not just have a wealthy society but that we have a moral society.
 
HAYES:  What happened in 2008?  What was that experience?
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  Well, so in the fall of 2008, as we all know the markets crashed and my father also passed away from lung cancer.  And all of a sudden overnight, I was the daughter of a single mom with a younger brother and we had to work our way through that situation.  We`re on the brink of foreclosure.  Our home was about to be taken away.
 
I started working in restaurants.  And so for me as an economics graduate in the wake of the recession, I started -- I decided that I needed to go back home to the Bronx and that I needed a work in education advocacy and organizing, but just economically speaking that wasn`t enough.  So I also worked in restaurants and it wasn`t that experienced being shoulder to shoulder with undocumented busboys and chefs with children, people at my age that were basically in the same exact situation.
 
So many of the people that I worked with were college graduates who had a parent pass away or someone in their family struck with an enormous medical issue and it really became clear from that experience that our issues and our economic issues are systemic and they`re not an accident.  They are a result of an economic system that enriches the few in enormous amount at the cost of the working class and middle class.
 
HAYES:  You come out of the gate, you represent this district here in the Bronx of Queens.  People got all sorts of issues, all sorts of issues.  And the first big issue you`re doing is the Green New Deal.
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  That`s right.
 
HAYES:  So why this issue front and center first thing?  What connects you to this?
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  So this issue is not just about our climate.  First and foremost, we need to save ourselves, period.  There will be no future for the Bronx, there will be no livable future for generations coming for any part of this country in a way that is better than the lot that we have today if we don`t address this issue urgently and on the scale of the problem.
 
But how I access this issue is that I started looking at all of our problems.  We have runaway income inequality.  We are at one of our most inequal points economically speaking in American history.  We are dealing with the crisis of how our economy is even made up.  Our economy is increasingly financialized which means we are making profits off of interest, off of leasing your phone, off of doing all of these things, but we aren`t producing and we are an innovating in the way that we need to as an economy.
 
And I also is looking at our issues of social justice, social and racial justice of which we are -- which we have a nexus here in the Bronx.  And what I started thinking about to myself was listen, we`re looking at all of these issues, Medicare for all, a living wage, tuition free public colleges and universities, and there`s this false idea that we need to put them all in a line and say do this or do that.  Do you care about health care or do you care about the economy or jobs.
 
And then I started to realize that these are not different problems.  These are all part of the same problem.  And this is -- in the past when we`ve confronted this type of stagnation and this type of systemic threat as a country -- first of all we`ve been here before.  We`ve been here before with the Great Depression.  We`ve been here before with World War Two even the Cold War.
 
And the answer has been an ambitious and directed mobilization of the American economy to direct and solve our problem, our biggest problem.  And historically speaking, we have mobilized our entire economy around war.  But I thought to myself it doesn`t have to be that way especially when our greatest existential threat is climate change.
 
And so to get us out of this situation, to revamp our economy to create dignified jobs for working Americans, to guarantee health care and elevate our educational opportunities and attainment, we will have to mobilize our entire economy around saving ourselves and taking care of this planet.
 
HAYES:  It comes out of the gate and I think it comes out of the gate in some ways as a political vision.  The political vision you just enunciated right, which is look, we don`t have to talk about a carbon tax.  Like, we`re not going to come out of the gate and like you`re going to pay more for fuel.
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  Right.
 
HAYES:  They try that in France and people literally rioted.
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  That`s right.
 
HAYES:  So we come out of the gate and say no, jobs, industrial policy, like clean water, the whole thing, and the right just loses its mind.  And
* I mean for sure.  I don`t know if you`ve noticed.  Should I even mention?  Maybe it`s not a good idea.  I just want to give a little taste of like it is a 24-hour -- on Trump T.V. it`s like 24-hour -- in the conservative movement, it`s 24 hour AOC GND, like that`s what it is.  Here`s a little taste of what it looks.
 
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HAYES:  Yes, the infamous Stalin five-year program to get rid of hamburgers.  Were you expecting that?
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  Yes, 100 percent.
 
HAYES:  That?
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  Well, I mean --
 
HAYES:  I mean, they`re -- they took it to 11 --
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  It is next level.  I didn`t expect them to make total fools of themselves.  I expected -- frankly, I expected a little more nuance and I expected -- I expected a little more concern trolling.
 
HAYES:  Well, you`ve gotten that too.
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  Yes, but more on my party, I think.
 
HAYES:  Yes.  I mean, on the concern trolling, there are people that you guys issued an FAQ.  It had some things that people thought were ridiculous and radical like anyone that was unable or unwilling to work when we guaranteed a job.  The FAQ was withdrawn and said it was preliminary, a draft.  There was a lot of fight about that.  Like you do you -- do you think you guys rolled it out the right way?  Did you bring it back any on yourself?
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  What I will say is that there -- I definitely had a staffer that had a very bad day at work and did release a working draft early.  So I get that that`s what they`re seizing on.  But really what we need to do is have a serious conversation.  And even in in those draft versions, what they were talking about and -- is really about the fact that we need to innovate on our technology you know?  Obviously like, I had a staffer you know, released a document to talk about cow flatulence but --
 
HAYES:  Which is an issue, I just want to say.
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  Which is an issue but here`s the thing.
 
HAYES:  It sounds ridiculous but it literally is an issues.
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  But actually it`s an issue when it comes to contributing to methane but that doesn`t mean you end cows, it means that we need -- what it means is that we need to innovate and change our grain -- our cow grain from which you know, they feed in these troughs, that we need to really take a look at regenerative agriculture.  Like these are our solutions.
 
HAYES:  One of the things I want to do tonight is talk about what this thing is and we`re going to bring on some folks and get into that.  But before we do, it`s a sort of a personal question but I`m going to ask it anyway we`re just you and me here.  Like what -- it`s just you were in the center of like every aspect of America`s polarized, divided politics is right now coming right at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who was waitressing a year ago and just got health care insurance for the first time.
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  Yes.  First time in years I should say.
 
HAYES:  Yes.  What -- like what is -- what does that feel like?
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  You know, for me it`s surreal obvious.  And I`m just really thankful that I -- you know, I still live in the neighborhood and I`ve always lived in the Bronx in Parkchester, you know.  And I go to my same bodega guy and that`s what I always go back to because -- and it`s not -- that to me is not like oh, look at me I`m still the same person, it is literally the grounding force for my life.
 
Because I do find when I go to D.C., I`ll be there and you know, the workweek is about four days a week in D.C. then I come back home and do community work here.  And on that fourth day, fifth day in D.C. I`m like get me out of here, you know.  It can seriously be the upside down.  And I have to come back to my life in order to come back to the solutions and to the commitment to these solutions.
 
Because this is not -- this is -- in a lot of what the Green New Deal is, it`s about shifting our political, economic, and social paradigms on every issue.  Because we don`t have time to wait, we don`t have time for five years for a half-baked you know, watered-down compromise position when people are dying because their insulin is skyrocketing.  Because when people -- you know they`re sending to their kids to schools that have led in the water, it is -- this is urgent.  This is urgent.
 
And to think that we have time is such a privileged and removed from reality (INAUDIBLE) that we cannot tolerate.
 
HAYES:  I agree about the urgency and I think that`s where a lot of the world is right now, actually.  So I want to talk about what is this thing?  What is the Green New Deal aside from the fact they`re taking away my hamburgers.  If you will stick around --
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  Yes, which is not happening.
 
HAYES:  Which is not happening, not happening.  We`re still going to have burgers.  Just stick around.  We`re going to be right back.  Don`t go anywhere.
 
OCASIO-CORTEZ:  Absolutely.  Thank you.

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