6 JULY 25, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
AOC pushes back against POTUS comments
BY MARK HALLUM
MHALLUM@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@MARKUUSAN
An immigration town hall in Corona
by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-
Cortez on Saturday drew not concerned
constituents, but also a small group of
Trump supporters and a member of the
Oath Keepers, a national militia group, who
could be spotted outside the venue.
The content of the immigration town
hall, paneled by a slew of immigration
leaders, condemned the language used
by President Donald Trump viewed as
an attempt to demean female members of
Congress either born abroad or from nonwhite
ethnic backgrounds.
According to Ocasio-Cortez, about half
the cases opened by her offi ce on behalf
of her constituents are immigrationrelated.
She claims that while refugees
and undocumented migrants are feeling
more roadblocks to asylum, the federal
government is also cracking down on legal
immigration.
“To try to lock ourselves, to try to keep
the world out … only hurts us. Our greatest
ability in my opinion as a country is our
ability to transform. America is a place
where you can actualize your potential.
Where everyone can actualize their
potential, and we have to protect that,”
Ocasio-Cortez said. “We cannot allow this
administration to misinterpret what is
actually going on because they’re trying to
close all the legal, normal, documented ways
of getting into the U.S. … They are denying
areas to Temporary Protected Status where
we should be having them, like for folks who
are leaving Venezuela for example.”
The event was a more localized response
to Twitter attacks from the president telling
“Democratic Congresswomen” to “go back” to
the “crime infested places from which they
came.”
….and viciously telling the people of the
United States, the greatest and most powerful
Nation on earth, how our government is to
be run. Why don’t they go back and help fi x
the totally broken and crime infested places
from which they came. Then come back and
show us how….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
July 14, 2019
A panel discussion was held with Amaha
Kassa, executive director of African
Communities Together; Jennifer Sun, coexecutive
director for Asian Americans for
Equality; Roksana Mun, DRUM’s director
of strategy and training; and Yatziri Tovar,
media specialist with Make the Road New
York.
But Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz also
spoke claiming she had witnessed a white
supremacist outside the town hall at P.S. 16,
located at 41-15 104th St., handing out a fl yer
to a child that said, “You don’t belong here.”
“I left Colombia when I was 9 after I
witnessed a murder in front of my house.
This was at the height of the drug war … I
spent 13 years of my life an undocumented
immigrant living in Queens,” Cruz said.
“Those experiences brought me to the idea
that those who go through the pain are
closest to the answer.”
Cruz, who later became an attorney, said
her family endured discrimination and
exploitation in their early years in the U.S.
and called on documented immigrants and
naturalized citizens to use their ‘privilege’
to stand up for undocumented.
“I just passed a white supremacist on the
corner giving a child a piece of paper that
said, ‘You don’t belong here’ – yes, the people
protesting across the street,” Cruz said. “It’s
up to us, those of us who suff ered and work
their way out to embrace that privilege and
work alongside us to stand up for that child,
that child’s parents and every single one of
us.”
About 200 people attended the town hall
despite a heat wave that marked the warmest
day in the city since 2011.
Ocasio-Cortez looked back to the strategy
that helped her win the 2018 Democratic
primary against Joe Crowley of convincing
non-habitual voters to turn out as a strategy
for defeating Trump in 2020.
“We do not have acquiesce to the
president’s racism, because he is using
racism, he is stoking white supremacy and
he is allowing frankly neo-Nazi groups to
go off unchecked because that is key part of
rousing his base,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But
we cannot allow or give in to that. I think our
response has to be turning up and turning
out an electorate, because he doesn’t have to
win districts; he has to win states. So when
we turn out Detroit, Baltimore, Minneapolis
… He’s a fraud and we have to tell that story.”
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez held an immigration town hall
on Saturday in Corona. Photo: Mark Hallum/QNS
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