Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Monday she is a survivor of sexual assault, a disclosure she made during a strikingly personal and moving account of her experiences during the uprising for Trump against the American Capitol last month.
“I am a survivor of sexual assault,” Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, said during an Instagram Live appearance, her voice swaying with emotion. ‘And I’ve never said that to many people in my life. But when we go through trauma, trauma connects us. ”
Talking to more than 150,000 viewers – a number that varied up and down through the evening – Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, 31, led viewers through the days leading up to the riot as well as its day.
In moving detail, she described how she was forced to hide from the violent crowd and navigate a besieged Capitol and how she heard a man ask, ‘Where is she?’ while she sometimes feared for her life.
At one point, she seemed to wipe away tears.
Those who argue that it is time to move on from the events of that day have, according to her, “used the same tactics as every other abuser who just tells you to go on.”
That was the tactic, she suggested, “of the man who touched you improperly at work and told you to keep going.”
“Are they going to believe you?” she said. “Or the adult who, if you hurt a child, and you grow up and confront you, and they try to tell you that what happened never happened.”
“This,” said Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez added, referring to the responsibility of those responsible for what happened on January 6, about ‘basic humanity’.
Mrs Ocasio-Cortez, whose district includes parts of the Bronx and Queens, has become one of the most prominent progressive leaders in the United States since defeating Representative Joseph Crowley in a beautiful primary upheaval in 2018.
She is an influential voice in the city as well as national politics, and her endorsement is one of the most popular among progressive candidates, although her positions sometimes make her at odds with the more moderate members of her party.
Me. Ocasio-Cortez often drew intense, sometimes poisonous, criticism from those on the right, and she was particularly the target of ridicule and attacks by some prominent Republican men, including of her congress colleagues. She did not shy away from the confrontation.
After Ted Yoho, a then-Republican congressman from Florida, allegedly used sexist language and explicitly to confront her, she received an outpouring of support, including from some Republicans, when she hacked back on Twitter. Mr. Yoho later apologized on the floor of the house, although he denied using the language ascribed to him.
Just last week, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz suggested on Twitter that he was willing to work with the congresswoman across party lines on the issue of online brokerage app Robinhood’s imposition of trade restrictions amid the GameStop frenzy.
The answer from Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez on mr. Cruz, who embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s unfounded and false allegations of electoral fraud, made it clear that the violent riot at the Capitol by supporters of Mr. Trump still feels raw.
“I’m glad to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s a common cause, but you had me killed almost 3 weeks ago so you could put it out,” she told Cruz. on Twitter. “Happy to work with almost any other GOP who is not trying to kill me.”
By the end of her Instagram Live appearance, she was crawling over Mr. Cruz and Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, who unequivocally disputed President Biden’s victories in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
“We knew violence was expected,” she said. “We knew the violence depended on someone telling the lie, the big lie, about our election.”