This is our monthly town hall so we are really excited and we are on track, we have not skipped a single month. Hall towntile hall per month and this is our nine out of nine town halls in addition to many local community events. Before we start, i want to acknowledge everyone here. Our staff that has worked so hard putting this together. Michelle, mabel, ariel, daniel, noreen. And marcus. He is live streaming. I am forgetting everything. We have Translation Services here today so we have our American Sign Language interpreter here. If you need it feel free to raise your hand. Our staff can make sure you get the Translation Services available. Hello, everyone. Evening. Are we at evening . Michelle will kick us off. We will dive right into it. Good evening. Today forfor coming our Community Town hall. Am Michelle Hernandez we want to thank you for coming today to discuss an important topic, which is antipoverty. The congresswoman recently packageut a legislative called they just society. It is an ambitious and monumental antipoverty legislative package and we are excited to be talking about that today. Quick acknowledgments, we want the Queens Public Library for sharing this space with us tonight. Martin,to thank sylvia thank you so much for helping us outreach. The promotional efforts and i would like to recognize Michelle Dunstan who is the president of the tenants association. We are going to start with opening mark remarks from the congresswoman. Staffthat, our chief of joining us from d. C. Is going to talk about some of the specificities of the bill. That, ifore we get into want to discuss some community rules. We want to recognize everyones voice so in order to do that, we are going to keep a little bit of time so that we can hear as many voices as possible. Sign. Will have a everyone will have about two minutes to present their questions or comments. Mabel will be keeping us on track. I also want to recognize one mike one voice. We all want to listen to the person that is speaking. We want to create a respectable environment so we can have this discussion. [applause] thank you so much. Hello again. As michele noted, one of the Major Updates that we have this month is that we introduce our next major sweeping sweep of legislation known as the just society. One of the things we wanted to talk about, its a package of about five bills and one resolution that attacks some of the central core issues of poverty. We are talking about not just how we measure poverty, housing, we are talking about who we allow to be eligible for our social safety nets in america. We are talking about proworker policy that protects working conditions and has and promotes proworker policies like paid family leave, living wages, et cetera and also compels us to join the Global Community in an elevated commitment to working people. Before i get into that, i want to address the news elephant in the room. One of the other things that happened. The house of representatives has decided to move forward with impeachment of the president of the United States. [applause] this was a major development. Some folks are saying finally. I certainly feel that way. I dont want to spend an enormous amount of time talking about impeachment but if you have questions im happy to talk to you about it. Long story short, the president of the United States used the power of the United States government to attempt to extort a Foreign Government into drumming up manufactured investigation into a political opponent. This is a violation of the constitution, and abuse of power of the trail of our country and anyone who does Something Like that, i dont care if you are a democrat or republican, if you abuse power and betray our country in such a manner, you must be impeached for us to protect our rule of law in our country. Pretty open and shut. If you have questions, please reserve them for the end. I feel like it is a pretty open and closed situation. I have advocated for impeachment for some time. This abuse of power has been going on for some time. I think for our community there are a lot of folks saying this is not a joyous moment or a moment to celebrate but i do think its important to acknowledge that this is a cathartic moment for many people in our community that have been the subject to the abuse of this administration for some time especially our Community New york 14 about 50 immigrant 70 people of color overwhelmingly workingclass. We have had to endure a lot in the last two years and so im not here to police your reaction to it because we all need to go through our process so feel what you need to feel but that is whats going on. Im going to move on because frankly i think the whole thing is boring he should been impeached a long time ago. Im over it. So thats how i feel about it because weve got work to do. The impeachment of this president is the shortterm action that we need to take to preserve our democracy. If we are really going to thrive as a country, we need to make longterm investments and keep our eyes on the prize of social economic and Racial Justice in the United States of america and that is what this is about. Lets dive in. Do i have the clicker . Diane will use the clicker. What we are going to do, what the just society is, it is about five bills and one resolution that is really focused on antipoverty legislation and its focusing on establishing economic and Racial Justice. I will go through it quickly but it is basically, the first is a recognized poverty act which speak which seeks to update the poverty line. 1955 spending patterns. Any time your qualification for everything is based on a measure that assumes one income earner in a home. One stayathome mother. It does not include the cost of childcare, health care, or a ton of other things or geographic costofliving. Really what the actual cost of living is in 2019. This fixes that. This directs the federal government to establish a new poverty line which we will talk about more. The second is a place to prosper act, sweeping set of housing reforms to the entire country, which includes a national cap on raising housing prices. As well as some punishments for abuse of landlords in the United States. The third is known as the embrace act and we have i will start worth i will start with mercy and reentry act. It allows us to open all of our social safety nets and it ends federal discrimination on our social programs based on people formerly incarcerated. One reason we do that is because one of the number one reasons for recidivism, wire mass incarceration is such a persistent problem, is poverty. People come out, we refuse and deny and we refused to extend opportunities to folks so then we create so much economic isolation in this country that people feel funneled right back into recidivism and we are incarcerating the same community over and over. The mercy reentry act ands discrimination for the formerly incarcerated and the embrace act, we are doing the same, its a piece of legislation that an similar discrimination based on documentation status. Kind of annex level piece of legislation and it is something people are going to say why would you do that. I believe we need to acknowledge the contributions immigrants make in america. If you contribute to our society i believe you should benefit from our society. The last is the uplift our workers act which creates directs the federal government to create a score for score federal contractors on how good they are to their workers from predictable schedules to union participation to worker cooperatives to paid family leave. It directs the federal government to spend their money with companies that are good to their workers. Last, directs the United States to ratify the u. N. Covenant on economic, social and cultural rights. We will dig into what that means later so we can move onto the next slide. And we are going to play this quickly. It goes a little more into depth into what the suite of legislation is so we can all get we can all dig into it more. We ran into some technical difficulties. Never mind. Is it not hooked up to the speakers . We can close it out we can close it out. Dont worry about it. All the things i just said. It was going to go into more detail. You have some followups as well. As i said, it is five bills and one resolution and all of these are tackling some of the core underlying issues of poverty in America Today. This is just a beginning. It is not the decisive and product. Theres a lot more that we need to go. I will go one by one. So the first thing we talk about is that a just society recognizes and eradicates poverty. This requires us to update the federal poverty line. So what this does, our first legislation requires us to update the federal poverty line, including these things, geographical cost variation. We will recognize that living in new york city is much more expensive than living in other parts of the country and we can adapt our federal poverty line to adjust for that. The second is the cost of health care is not covered in the federal poverty line so they assume that your Health Care Costs dont exist. The thirds work expenses related to family, a. K. A. Childcare. It also includes new necessities. In our federal poverty line, we believe that Internet Access is a new necessity. We are including the costs of new necessities. This is the housing legislation we were talking about. The place to prosper act. Has anyone heard of the sweeping housing legislation that we passed in the state . Kudos to all of our organizers. The inspiration from this is pursuing the state laws that we are picking up and applying to the federal level. That is how i believe a lot of our legislation should work. This includes provisions to protect tenants. A lot of our laws are not focusing on tenants. We are focusing on mortgages. We need to protect working and middleclass families. I dont believe we have enough protections for tenants federally. We want to improve the quality of our housing stock. We want to rein in corporate landlords. And ensure that housing is affordable and available to all. If you are a landlord and cover a lot of housing stock, and you are documented for abusing your tenants, you cannot get a mortgage to build more development until you get your act together. [applause] that is a huge part of our provision. The embrace act ends federal discrimination of social benefits based on documentation status. People say, why should we do that . It is very controversial. Immigrants pay taxes. All immigrants pay taxes, whether you are documented or undocumented. They pay for public schools, they help contribute to our society just like anybody else. If a billionaire can get away with not paying their taxes and reaping from public systems, undocumented people should be recognized for their contribution to society. [applause] as i said, a just society is merciful. So often someone becomes incarcerated. Often for unjust crimes. Once you get out, there are a lot of federal programs, medicare, medicaid, etc. , were you get, where you get caught up in a system. You already paid your debt to society. This contributes to this pipeline of incarceration and going in and out of the system. When you create a state of economic desperation, that is the kind of environment where you spread mass incarceration. This does the same exact thing where it says you cannot be discriminated against because you paid your debt to society sometime ago. The uplift our workers act creates a lead score for federal contractors. An anonymous amount of our budget and federal spending goes to contractors, where the government pays a private contractor to fulfill some kind of need. I believe the federal government is injecting a lot of money into our economy. That money should be going into workers pockets and helping establish a just economy. This creates a worker friendly score for federal contractors. It says, we will put you at the front of the line for contracts if you offer paid family leave, if you pay a living wage, if you have a unionized workforce. The last one says a just society guarantees cultural and social rights for all. In the 1970s, the u. N. Put forth the u. N. Covenant on economic, social, and cultural rights. 170 International Parties have ratified the covenant. The United States is not. We need to do this. One of the hunches i have as to why we have not ratified this is because it essentially codifies 21st century rights. The right to a dignified and safe workplace. Education, health care. Obviously we dont fulfill or satisfy all of those rights in the u. S. I think it is about time that we do. That is what advanced societies do. If we want to continue to say that the United States as a leader in the world, we need to be a leader in the human condition. Human rights. The quality. Equity. Really creating a robust economic and socially just society. These are all of the countries that have signed on to it but the u. S. Has not. That is it. [applause] given all of that, we want to open the floor for questions. This legislation, what we want to do is frontline any questions on this. But we will open the floor to other questions. Feel free to take it away. If you have any more, write them down on that slip. You have the first question. I do want to take a moment to acknowledge a councilmember who is here. Thank you for joining us. [applause] how are you doing . Rep. Ocasiocortez i am good. The last time we met was in the bronx. I gave a question and you gave a great answer. I want to ask it again since we are on camera. My question is concerning the Democratic Party. It has been reaching out to lgbt concerns and immigration concerns. But in recent years, there is one group that has been left out. It is africanamericans. We feel the trade. Or used by the Democratic Party. When donald trump said, what do you have to lose, some people did not vote for him but some people stayed home. How can you and your squad friends meet people like me and reach out to africanamericans. Rep. Ocasiocortez i appreciate that. That is a great question. [applause] i sympathize a lot with that sentiment. I understand why people say that. I experience it a lot when i am in d. C. it feels like our votes and support are taken for granted because of how reliably democratic our communities are. People say you are going to vote for us anyway. We dont need to worry. As a result, our concerns and our pursuit for justice take his seat. Our concerns are put to the end of the line. We kick the can on immigration justice. It is a black issue. All of the seven it is controversial to talk about these things. I understand and empathize. People are saying, we vote for the Democratic Party, why doesnt it vote for us . That is why i get into trouble. [laughter] [applause] that is why people say, she is a lightning rod on the left and the right. One of the reasons why we are controversial within the party is because we will say, why do we have to wait for these things over and over and over again . James baldwin has this really epic clip where he is in an interview and he says, my parents and my family were born waiting for our rights and they have died waiting for our rights. How long do you want me to wait . That is a very core part of the questions we are dealing with today. My family is from puerto rico. My grandfather was born without the ability to vote in federal elections and he died in the direct aftermath of hurricane maria. We will not wait. Like my friend Ayanna Pressley says, change cannot wait. We are at a breaking point in American Society with inequality in income, Racial Justice, outcomes. We are at the point where people are at the brink of eviction, dying because they cannot afford insulin, family caught up in a system of mass incarceration. We cannot wait to fix these problems. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can worry about swing district concerns and we consent to the concerns of the black community, of all sorts of communities that are deemed controversial to tend to. Equal and equitable outcomes should not be controversial in the u. S. And not in the Democratic Party. [applause] i recently received a newsletter from your office that outlines your priorities, which included appropriation of amendments for opioid treatments. I have not seen anything about alzheimers and related dementias. This is becoming a Public Health crisis. The People Living with this disease is set to triple. Send there will only be people who have it or have had it. Someone is getting it every 65 seconds. By the middle of the century the costs are projected to be a trillion dollars. I know most people dont think about it until they are personally affected. I wasnt until my mother was diagnosed in 2013. She was a new york City Employee so she had really good health care. The cost of putting her in an assisted facility was exorbitant. If my mother had not saved money, there would have been no way to take care of her. Right now im hoping as an advocate for the Alzheimers Association that you could sign on. Right now it has bipartisan support. Can we know that you will pay more attention to alzheimers and the way it is affecting people . It has a disproportionate impact on women and people of color. Rep. Ocasiocortez thank you. [applause] thank you for your advocacy. There are so many issues and so often the way we decide which one to do any given day is because someone in our communities stood up and made the request just like you did right now. Absolutely we will take a look at whatever legislation you are bringing up. I want to take this moment to say this is why medicare for all is so important. Not everyone is lucky enough to work for an employer who guarantees them health care. Even if you do, year after year that care is getting more expensive. And the coverage is getting worse. That is why i am such a huge proponent of medicare for all. The latest provisions include those for longterm care. I cannot understate how important this shift is. This is a big reason why i think there is a difference between a public option and medicare for all. It sets it up for a financial crisis. Medicare for all helps us address this issue. I believe this is also tied to demographic shifts in our country. Medicare for all is a huge issue. A huge puzzle piece. We need to do the research and make sure we are continuing to have special accommodations for members of our community. This is my chief of staff. She has been working as my legislative director. If you have specific legislative concerns you can bring them to her at the end. Thank you for being here. My question for you is that given that Climate Change is a pressing issue that must be addressed, which you approve of new Generation Nuclear plants . Rep. Ocasiocortez i get asked about nuclear a lot. We certainly leave nuclear and that energy mix. It has to come to specific proposals. What are the Environmental Concerns . What are the subsidies involved . We allow that to be a conversation within the community. We dont take a hard stance. It is about the specific solution. Folks have brought up Nuclear Technology is changing a lot. That is certainly something to consider. This is an ongoing debate. As sea levels rise, we have Nuclear Facilities that are very concerning. Indian point should have been shut down a long time ago. As sea levels rise, it will threaten integrity. It is a conversation we have to have. Im not an Energy Scientist and im not going to act like one. We know the science of Climate Change. We know we need to get to clean and Renewable Energy as soon as possible. There is a whole set of conversations to be had. This Congress Finds a resolution saying we need to fix the problem to be controversial. We are trying to take everyone along one step at a time. [applause] i live in astoria. My question is multifaceted. I have epilepsy and i currently face three surgeries including orthopedic surgery. That includes four months of recovery. I cannot work jobs that include a lot of heavy lifting. I seem to be doing a lot of all the right things and no one is willing to take a chance on me. I believe that is because recruiters and hiring managers are pretty rigid and have this mentality where they want the perfect candidate. Not something they can be flexible with. I know a federal jobs guarantee as part of the Green New Deal. It is something i support. Do you believe we should actually be paid to go to college and not the other way around . If something can be done where they will actually pay me to go to their classes, either online or on campus. The cost of housing is ridiculous. Even when i am offered a place, i got offered a studio for 853 a month because i was turned down because i was not on the lease. I applied to it two years before. What do you suggest . Rep. Ocasiocortez thank you so much. You covered a lot of ground. I think it is important to a knowledge, this is why we propose all of these policies at once. It is not because i am radical on education or criminal justice reform. It is because all of these situations are links. If you go this far in one area but have stepped in another area, you are not improving a persons life. This is a really exciting area of policy. A federal jobs guarantee acts as a shock absorber for our economy. There are a lot of jobs that pose a value to society that come at a loss for companies. For example, keeping our communities clean. How is that a profitable activity for a corporation . It is not. But it is a valuable activity for our community. There is a whole lot of other examples that work like this. A federal jobs guaranteed proposes creating a class of employment that allows a guaranteed minimum. It is like a public option for jobs. It guarantees a living wage. It forces companies to compete. To offer at least that much. It establishes a base quality of work. When the economy does poorly and people are out of a job, a federal job guarantee expands. As the economy improves, it lowers. It asks as a shock absorber for our economy. It is a fascinating proposal so we do not just have to rely on social welfare programs. It adds to the mix. It is a great proposal. It has been proposed by several economists. One thing that i did yesterday was i toured a job training and apprenticeship program. Our apprenticeship programs do pay people to learn. I think apprenticeships need to be added to more fields than they historically have been. That is something that was brought up. Rep. Ocasiocortez right now we offer apprenticeships in carpentry, welding, other building trades. But even the folks in the schools Offering Apprenticeships were saying that this is the future of how we create work in america. We need to have apprenticeships for child care, teaching, writing. That is one way people can transition into our economy without having to go for years without an income. Which people cannot afford while going to college. Some of the policy proposals accommodate not just people with disabilities but all people who need a flexible schedule. We are investigating solutions to the problems you are talking about. Your situation is a perfect example of why we need to make these adjustments in our economy. [applause] i was very involved in local politics lately and now i am making the shift to federal. I notice in the Green New Deal you have ideas for projects for Climate Change. I see monorails in all of the posters. Im very interested in that technology. I go to tokyo a couple of times a year. Tokyo is a very similar city to new york. We have a lot of trouble with the mta and our trains. Climate change will affect that. It will flood the tunnels eventually. Like it did with hurricane sandy. We have a lot of debris falling from the mta stations. I did a sketch of the circle line in japan. Applying it to queens. Im involved with trying to stop sunnyside yards. I think we could apply that to transportation. Use the idea of the Green New Deal. Use monorails. It is much cheaper. Thank you i wanted to propose it and see what you think. Rep. Ocasiocortez i find this very inspiring. This was the whole point of us creating the Green New Deal resolution. It was to elicit and challenge us and think about what we can do with public funds and public infrastructure. We dont even realize how much money were spending. It is all going to corporations, the military, and the very rich. The idea of Tuition Free College feels impossible because were not used to government working for us in these ways. If the government worked for us half as much as it works for billionaires and corporations, our lives would be transformed. [applause] projects like these are exactly what the Green New Deal is asking us to imagine. It always blows my mind how we lived through a time when we said, we are going to create an entire subterranean subway system in the biggest metropolis in the country. We are going to build an entire fleet of public schools. We are going to pursue projects we have never pursued before. We will go to the moon. At some point, we stopped being that country. At some point, we started to say, it is too hard. Even though we had already done it. When it comes to the mta, i believe it is being treated as though it is already a lost cause. I dont believe in that. I dont believe anything is ever to broken to fix. [applause] someone would look at this and say, you are crazy. But youre not crazy. Youre not crazy for thinking that we can be better. For so long, we have talked about this notion of american exceptionalism. This caused us to make investments in many places and areas that made us the best. In technology and infrastructure, we were the best. But we cannot rest on our laurels. At this point, when you compare us to japan, the Transportation System there, the Health Care System in norway and netherlands and canada, we are increasingly saying, we were once the best. I dont want to be that country. [applause] when it comes to the Green New Deal, people come from this zerosum mentality. We will take away your hamburgers and airplanes. What this is asking us is, what are we going to make . Not what are we going to take away. What will we establish . For everyone who says it will ground planes, i guarantee you, Climate Change, which threatens storms and turbulence, will ground airplanes far sooner and worse than any kind of climate legislation ever would. If we made scientific investments in zero carbon airplanes. At some point we will hopefully be able to create that technology. [applause] im here because im a 9 11 first responder. I have four different illnesses. I get emotional when i talk about it. I have ptsd. There was an immigrant freedom workers act. It seems like it will die in congress and nobody has picked it back up. I want to know if you will continue that. I am a haitian immigrant. I worked for law and order svu, the televiaion show. Rep. Ocasiocortez i would like all of us to technology the contributions that you have made to our country. [applause] he is showing me a photo of him at ground zero. I want to thank you for your service. There are so many aspects to your story that touch my core. When i hear the rhetoric of this president and so many people talking about immigrants and undocumented people as though they are disposable and unworthy, i think of people like you and how wrong that is. You said you have been here 51 years. And that you have not been extended a path to citizenship means that we were wrong. Not you were wrong. [applause] i dont want to mislead you. I came here legally. However, i got into some trouble. Rep. Ocasiocortez to me that does not matter. You have clearly given everything of yourself to our country. One of the bright spots we have had is that we passed the 9 11 victims fund. We finally got that through. But there is much more to do. If my predecessor had picked up it is a legislation that we are dropping the ball on, i can give you my word today that we will pick it up. When people talk about immigrants in this country, we need to tell your story. I am tired of people acting as though we are a merciless nation that is willing to throw people away because you make less than a certain amount of money, you lack a piece of paper. I believe in human dignity. I dont care what your status or your past is. The only way we improve is by giving people the opportunity to give. We need to take care of each other. We need to have a commitment to take care of you. We also do a lot of work on casebycase immigration. While we can work on passing this legislation, i want you to connect with marcus, or michelle, or marybelle. I want to to connect with us so we can take up your case personally. We have kept families together. [applause] i want to let some people know that if you know anybody, if you are in this room or if you know anybody who is carrying this burden, let them know that our offices here to help you. Just yesterday, i met with a constituent who has been here for 29 years. He has been going regularly and faithfully to his i. C. E. Check ins. He has no problem, no history, but he walked in and i. C. E. Detained him and put him into a detention center. He has three children ranging from 11 years old up to his eldest, i imagine in his 20s. His wife was here. That experience alone is traumatizing. That lowgrade its like, if you have ever lived without Health Insurance and you walk out the door every morning hoping nothing happens to me today, there are so many people who walk out their front door in the morning thinking that, whether it is because you have an issue with your documentation and you walk out the door and say, i hope nothing happens to me with the immigration system. Or you are uninsured and you say, i hope nothing happens to me where i need to go to the hospital. Or you walk out the door and you say, i hope i dont get fired from my job because of xyz reason or im not educated enough and i cant afford to go to college. When we have that level of anxiety, and there is a lot of it, it only creates chaos. It doesnt help us feel safe or secure. Yesterday, we were able to celebrate the fact that we reunited a family. Our constituent was arrested. He was brought to the airport. We were able to get him out, working with our community partners. [applause] we have been able to get constituents on a casebycase basis. Through work authorizations, we have been able to work with pro who can find things to dig up in the case. If you do that, it changes the outcome. If you can, i ask you to open a case with our office. We will do everything we can for you. [applause] thank you. Hi. I know i only have two minutes. Before i get to my question, i want to thank you for the place to prosper act. Where you are going to rain incorporate landlords. Rain in corporate landlords. I hope sometime soon down the road. In the beginning, you were in the forefront with other house members for the impeachment. Anyway, i know my question, i have to read it. In the beginning, there were some grievances between you and a few others with the House Speaker nancy pelosi. Now is a very serious time. We have to get this madman trump impeached. If there are any grievances or discrepancies that you may have with speaker pelosi, i think they should be kept behind closed doors. Dont let fox news have access to that. They created the vision. We dont need that at this time. We need the democrats united so we can get this guy out of office. Rep. Ocasiocortez absolutely. It was a rhetorical question. [laughter] can you do that . Rep. Ocasiocortez absolutely. Thank you for that. I think the way we talk about it, and what they call the democratic caucus, which is basically all the democrats in the house of representatives. We literally get together in a room like this one once a week. We have it out like a family, we close the door and dont let anybody in. Like a family, we will disagree with each other, we will get into tiffs, we will get into disagreements on how we want to do things, but we do not want to fundamentally disagree on our goals. On the outcomes. We all want to move toward justice. We want to move toward economic prosperity. We all want to root out the deep rot of corruption in this administration. I am proud to have the independence of my seat. I am not funded by corporations. I am funded by grassroots. I am directly accountable to that community, so that means i will be speaking truth to power within the party from time to time. I can assure you that in this moment there is nothing that will shake the unity of the Democratic Party in impeaching the president. [applause] that is what they are scared of. Fox will make up the to act like there is beef. I assure you, there aint. Wheres the beef . Thats right you had it. [laughter] shirley from aid center of queens county. And there was a constituent who wrote a note on this sheet of paper. Ok. Here we go. Thank you so much. I am so honored to be in your presence. And your team. Rep. Ocasiocortez i am honored you are here. Thank you. My name is shirley from the aids center of queens county. My question is regarding hiv aids efforts. Given the current administrations plan to tackle hivaids, how do you see the distribution of funds affecting our community here in new york . We need to Work Together with the different sectors. This is not a biological disease. This is a social disease. Will your team help us to support ending this epidemic . Rep. Ocasiocortez absolutely. Thank you for this question. This is another area where we had a fairly bright spot this year. It was in the area of hivaids treatment and prevention. You are completely right that it is not just a biological disease. It is a social disease. It intersects with so many different issues. One area i can give you an immediate win we have had this year, i sit on the Oversight Committee of congress. We brought in the ceo of a pharmaceutical company. It is called gilead. Gilead was charging month in the United States for prep, the medication that helps prevent the transmission of hivaids. If you are charging someone , or even in a city 2000 a , month to keep someone from spreading a disease, if they cannot afford that, where does that leave the rest of us . We brought them in and heres what we found. They were charging over 2000 a month for prep. Who paid to develop it . We found out the public did. The cdc or nih funded Critical Research that established and identified the beginnings of what became prep. Gilead simply picked it up and started selling it for 2000 a month. What we paid for. This is not just happen with prep. It happens with a lot of other medications. Not only did we find that the company did this, that the public is actually entitled if not a royalty than the patent, but we brought them in and i asked him, this is funny, you are charging 2000 in the United States. In australia, you are charging six dollars to eight dollars. We have multiple tools as legislators. The bully pulpit is one of them. They do not like to be exposed. Sometimes we pass laws to force things to happen. Sometimes we can use the bully pulpit to expose what is happening to the public. They will change their behavior. They found that gilead, after that hearing, they announced that they are going to make prep generic one year earlier than they were anticipating, which is next year. After, after the hearing. So after the hearing, they announced they will make it generic. So we have a win on prep, but there is so much to go from research to Public Policy that is backed by Public Health research. Hiv, like you said, it is a social disease. When we talk about hiv, we need to talk about the homelessness crisis. We need to talk about opioid addiction. We need to talk about social stigmas put against the lgbt community. Also, anyone that contracts hiv. E have a lot of work to do this president mentioned goals around hiv. So long as his goals or constructive, i will pitch in. I will not not work with him just because of his name. I will double check his work. [laughter] but i am not strictly partisan in that way. Disease think hiv is a that can be ended in this generation because it is a social disease. We need to work on social conditions. Those conditions are direct results of Public Policy. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much. You are my favorite superstar on cspan. Rep. Ocasiocortez thank you. [applause] from the bronx. From norwood. Rep. Ocasiocortez ok. I dont know if i would do what you would do without at least a rehearsal. Honesty, again, if i may, i am just asking about hr 4088. Just quickly. Allows for the direct access of funds from oil and chemical taxes rather than relying on congress to appropriate funding from the general revenue. It has already six cosponsors. Virginia, Jerry Mcinerney from california, terry sewall from alabama, raul i believe his name is, from arizona. Matt cartwright from pennsylvania, and the wonderful Eleanor Holmes martin. Rep. Ocasiocortez she is fabulous. Im not sure the term, but this just faded out in 1995. To me, again within my two minutes, somebody who dumps on your front lawn and leaves that there and forces you to clean up, that is the anticipated antithesis of promoting general welfare. Getting somebody to literally pay for their own cleanup so the general funds go back to us rather than to someone else who should be paying for their own mess. Anyway, hr 4088, please consider it. If this isnt on the Green New Deal and the just society, i dont know what else would be. Rep. Ocasiocortez thank you so much. I appreciate that. [applause] we can definitely circle back and take a look at it. You said it is hr 408 eight. Sometimes there are thousands of pieces of legislation. If you ever see we are not on something, just bring it up to us. Sometimes literally there are so many. We are most responsive to constituents. Thank you for bringing it up. We will circle back to it. Isalso the woman from oregon the original sponsor and introduced it july 6, give him the credit. Rep. Ocasiocortez fabulous. The congressman is great. If you ever meet him, he will give you a little bicycle plan, pin, because hes passionate about that issue. We will definitely circle back and take a look at it. Also get at a very critical issue, which is that the companies and the corporations that are responsible for most of our environmental problems also need to be held accountable and be part of the solution to our environmental problems. This happens over and over again. Whether it was deepwater horizon, remember 10 years ago, it dumped all of that oil into the gulf of mexico . The public paid for a lot of the. This happens over and over again. They make a mess and the public clean set up. They make a mess and it gets dumped into our system. We get cancer. When it comes to Climate Change, exxon mobil knew before the government knew that burning fossil fuels, we will create this issue. Deceivingoney into the public and legislators about this issue. Generation, the majority of our Carbon Emissions that are in pearly the planet right now have come since the First Episode of seinfeld. Almost about 85 of Carbon Emissions have happened since world war ii. We got here in one or two generations and now we have one generation to bring us back from the brink. It is going to take a really big reckoning with power and the fossil fuel industry. If you think wall street is , it is like much of wall street is predicated on the profits and funding of fossil fuels. Oil, natural gas, etc. Heard of hoed the Koch Brothers . Everyone has heard of the Koch Brothers. Brothers, brother. Right. Theres one now. Just koch. Everybody knows those guys. They are notorious for basically owning every republican in the United States senate. But where did they get their money . They are an oil dynasty. We have to step back and acknowledge how bad inequality has become in America Today that we can name specific families that own our democracy right now. Like, who has power in america . S, the waltons, the Koch Brothers. The fact that you can name individuals that run our society tells us everything about america and our economy, and you can call it late stage capitalism, plutocracy, i dont care what you call it. That is the state of our economy today. That is all of it in a nutshell. The fact that we can say which family owns the senate and which family owns certain areas of Public Policy tells us there is something wrong in our democracy. [applause] the ones that dump the money into fox news. Literally, there is a guy that , that annew york post individual owns that. Which should not be a surprise when no offense if there are any of those folks in here, but when we talk about these institutions, the money, the direction and the framing, who they are tech are attacking and challenging their hold on power. [applause] rep. Ocasiocortez particularly, when fox news becomes the 24 7 squad network, that tells me we are doing a good job. We are making the right people mad. I want to say how appreciative i am of our community for understanding that. For seeing through it, for knowing where to call bs. Recognizesty that that truth. If the community didnt recognize it, if the community was easily duped, i wouldnt be able to have a seat in congress. I want to extend that appreciation to you all as well. Thank you. [applause] saahe next question is for d. Morthen Carlos Mireles ales. Im afraid i wont be called on and i really think we have to take on this question. I read the entire transcript of the conversation that trump had with zelensky, there was no quid braguo, but joe budden did joe biden did brag about withholding 1 billion from ukraine if they did not fire the prosecutor. I concur with the president that there is a coup ongoing. It is directed i will be and it comes from london, the british house of lords said the special relationship between the u. S. And britain would not survive a second term of trump. Pelosi didnt support impeachment until she met with the head of the bank of england, and i dont know what he i will stop when my two minutes are up. [crowd chatter] rep. Ocasiocortez one thing i will say is i just want to make sure we respect process. Very often when we disrespect process, the people who are disrespected by that process are the people who are always marginalized. I want to name that. I dont want to silence your concern. I am not here to say, we are only going to listen to the people we agree with. I want to name that. Im going to take this question and im going to come back and respond to what you have to say. Thank you. [applause] i want to thank you so much. I know i only have two minutes to ask my question. I dont know if you remember this, but when you are in the gay parade in jackson heights, i said you would be on stephen colbert, and you laughed at me. [laughter] nobody im so glad that that happened. A more lighthearted question. I do want to ask because i work in retail. I work at best buy. Im very passionate about technology. If the Green New Deal is very important to you, i think innovation and technology should be as well. Since Net Neutrality is something very important to me, and back before you were a representative, a jeep i ajit pai was trying to dismantle it and trump was for it. Some of the only companies against it were tmobile and sprint. They said they would guarantee Net Neutrality. I think its important there is not a monopoly on our free speech. That is what our society has evolved to. I wanted to ask, why is rashida tlaib, why are you, why is the squad against the merger, even though they want are one of the biggest innovators in Net Neutrality . And i have one more question after this as well. Rep. Ocasiocortez sure. Thank you for asking, it is a really good question. I commend any company that stands up for Net Neutrality. In the tmobile sprint merger, tmobile did the right thing by being for Net Neutrality. Sprint did the right thing and doing that. This is not about opposing the arger or even approving merger as rewarding good behavior, per se. Let me tell you why. This merger is an antitrust problem. Like in 2008, to big to Fail Telecommunications is an area where there are something known as natural monopolies. Back in the 1990s, you had bell and all these companies. Imetimes these companies know, thats a throwback. Bell. This is an area where there is always this push and pull with antitrust. Because it will naturally move toward larger and larger networks. One of the big problems that we have in our society is the concentration of wealth, and the concentration of power among corporations. So i prefer, for example in the case of Net Neutrality, you allow both of these folks to merge then all of a sudden youll have one company that is supporting Net Neutrality. Whereas Net Neutrality can be one form of competition between members of this area. So i oppose the merger on the antitrust grounds. I am concerned about corporations merging too much. We see this with viacom comcast , all of these things. It is funny, because a lot of people will say she is a democraticsocialist, we believe in the free market, blah, blah. Meanwhile, they want corporations to become our government, to consolidate in huge massive entities. I oppose the merger based on antitrust grounds. Because we need to have separate actors in this market. But you bring up excellent points and i do want to reiterate a commitment to Net Neutrality. And even in our measurement of the poverty line, we talk about internet as a new necessity. And there has been a lot of i has done. Ajit pa he was a former verizon lobbyist. They are putting wolves in the henhouse in every part of government. He is the wolf in charge of our telecommunications henhouse. But we disagree with it on grounds of antitrust and corporate power. It is not because we disagree with Net Neutrality. Ok. Thank you so much. [applause] one more question on a little bit of a more serious note. Im a palestinianamerican and im proud of that. I will not apologize for that. It has been very hard for me to not apologize for that for the past couple of years. This very important question has it does not have to do with palestine directly, but i do see on twitter and on the news a lot of things going on with uighur muslims in china. I feel if we are going to so blatantly say that we stand by the Jewish Community and are never going to let the holocaust happened, or we stand with the Japanese Community or the Asian Committee and are never going to let internment camps happen in world war ii, why are we not doing the same thing for muslims . Why is it that i only see al jazeera or muslim news sources bringing this up . If one religion is attacked right now, everyone will be attacked in the future. [applause] rep. Ocasiocortez absolutely. Thank you for bringing visibility for that. You are 100 right. We have joint letters talking about this issue of the uighur muslims. What you are talking about is exactly correct. We need to amplify this visibility around this issue. We have been doing work and joining letters, filing congressional inquiries on this. It is a huge issue. Detention, its no secret how i feel about it. Literally today on the train, i heard their organs are being taken out and sold on the black market. Thats disgusting. Rep. Ocasiocortez the reports coming out of these camps are shocking. You are right. This is an issue we need to draw more attention to. It is truly horrifying. It is truly horrifying. We are doing the work on the congressional side. I think a big part of that push is a commitment to amplifying that. And im happy to join you to figure out how to put more sign shine on this issue to figure out how to Pay Attention to it. [applause] thank you so much. I appreciate that. Rep. Ocasiocortez and i did say i would address over here, after that question. What i would say and what i would encourage people to do you and i clearly have different takes on this issue. Im not going to try to tell you you are wrong or anything. What i will do is i will invite everyone to actually read the transcript. Come to your conclusion. To me, when someone says, i and you to do me a favor, that favor is to investigate a political opponent, and then you connect that person to your personal attorney and the domestic attorney general not a foreign secretary that, to me, is a crime. Again, we may disagree. Thats totally fine. Thats why i invite our constituents. Read it yourself. Come to your own conclusions. [applause] but i have heard from our community. Is inere are a bunch of naz ukraine. The United States under obama ran a coup in ukraine rep. Ocasiocortez again, i invite everyone to do the research thats a crime that should be investigated, not trump. Rep. Ocasiocortez again, i invite everyone to look into it, etc. We can all come to our conclusions. As the congresswoman from this district, i have heard loud and clear from the majority of constituents where we stand on this issue. My job is to follow [applause] thank you for being here. Life, afirst time in my politician like you has called my attention. And i will exercise my vote and be participating eventually to vote on behalf of someone like yourself. I hope someday you will be the leader of this country. Youre protecting our families and our communities. [applause] protecting our families and our community. You have been a voice for us. Im a banker by trade. I do mortgage financing. And yet it is a most impossible for anyone to qualify for a loan. Theres no saving ability. The cost of medication is too high. How come whenever they are doing questions to vote for president , how come no one addresses why we have to wait 20 and 40 years to lower the cost of medication when other countries its 80 cheaper . Rep. Ocasiocortez youre preaching to the choir. I think youre completely right. That is a condemnation of our system that it is controversial to believe that all people should be entitled to the right to health care. Should be entitled to health care in the United States. I know it is controversial to me , it is actually pretty heartbreaking. Because i grew up in a very patriotic family. Im first generation. Im puerto rican, so it is complicated. [laughter] but i grew up and my parents always, you know, talked to me about the american dream. The always talked to me about how incredible and blessed we are to live in the United States of america. And we are. And we are. But that is why it breaks my heart that we are always talking about what we are not capable of. And meanwhile, everyone else is doing it. Canada guarantees its People Health care. The u. K. Has a National Health service. All of these countries that are developed know that in order to be an advanced society, you need to guarantee People Health care. And we have not earned the right to call ourselves an advanced country if we do not do that. So it should not be controversial to say that we need to do things we have never done before, because thats what growth means. Now is when we need to do it. Not 20 years from now. That is why we need you. We need to build more inventory of housing per its so many people want to buy. Medication is too expensive. We need someone like yourself to put a voice in congress and be have what everybody is looking for. A leader of the great country. [applause] rep. Ocasiocortez i appreciate it. We need to elect a lot more people in being committed to this. Because i for one am tired of us operating in a political system where people do things out of fear. Either they do things because they are scared of what theyre going to lose, or they do things because they are scared of what people are going to say about them. We need to operate more out of our convictions and revisions because if we are always operating from a place of fear, if i do this am i going to lose reelection, if i do this am i going to be less powerful now than we were before . We have to stop operating out of fear and we have to stop operating out of elections. And we need to start operating out of principle. That is not really what politics does. [laughter] but it is something we can encourage as electorate, as voters, as people who demand accountability in our system. [applause] so these are the last two questions. After this, some closing remarks. If you are interested in greeting the congresswoman, maybe taking a picture, at the end, please line up in the middle and we will create a line so you can do so. The last two questions. Please raise your hands. Because of a Climate Crisis we only have a few months left. I love that you support the green deal. But getting rid of fossil fuel will not solve the problem fast enough. A swedish professor is saying it is not fast enough. I think the next Campaign Slogan has to be we have to start eating babies. We do not have enough time. Theres too much co2. All of you, polluting. We have to start now. Please, youre so great. Im so happy are supporting the green deal. But it is not enough. Russia, we have too many people, too much pollution. We have to stop having babies. Babies. Eeded to eat the [indiscernible] rep. Ocasiocortez one of the things that is important to us is that we need to treat the Climate Crisis with the urgency that it does present. Luckily, we have more than a few months. We do need to hit net zero in several years. But i think we all need to understand that there are a lot of solutions we have. That we can pursue. And if we act in a positive way, there is help. We are never beyond hope. [applause] thank you so much for your message of hope for all the work you do. And what you stand for in the government right now. I myself am a granddaughter of someone who passed away from alzheimers, so thank you for your question. She had alzheimers for 10 years. Fortunately, we were able to get the money to take care of her and her needs. Also, my cousin is in federal prison. I want to thank you for the just society bill you just represented. My question to you, for all of us Young Millennials out there in our 20s and 30s, and just starting out from college, what can we do, not just on social media, which we can see a change from that. Look at your platform and what you have accomplished. But what can we do in actions outside of social media that can help you . Because we know it is a lot of work that you are doing in all areas of government. And all the things that we brought up today in the town hall meeting. But what can we do to help you and your platform to thrive and really help change this government . Rep. Ocasiocortez thank you so much. That is a really great question. One of the things i think is best to do is that, it is not just about helping me. Because i am part of a larger grassroots movement. Im here because people, Critical Mass of people have demanded justice in our criminal justice system, in environmental education, decarseration, etc. I think one of the best things you can do is to find that issue that you are, that has touched your life. That youre most passionate about. You do not have to read for it. Usually, your Life Experience forms that for you. In Life Experience informs you. The issue that touched my life was Early Childhood education. When i was a kid, my parents, i was born in the bronx. And my parents felt they had to pack up our whole lives and move to another zip code just so you just so that i could have a chance. I grew up and moved back to the bronx. Because i did not want, i did not want the next generation to have to make the choice my parents made, because i do not believe that a childs destiny should be determined by their zip code. So Early Childhood education became a passion of mine thats what i mobilized in. And through a series of accidents, coincidence, circumstances what brought me here. I think that one of the best things you can do is dive into the areas that directly impact your life. So if you are being directly impacted in an urgent way by housing, join the housing organization. Join your tenants organization. Work with the justice for all coalition, et cetera. The best thing you can do is start to organize back here in our own backyard. That builds all the way up. And i would hope around election time i would have the privilege and the honor of asking you for your support. Because i believe that i have to fight for it every time. So the best thing you can do is lean into work around alzheimers, as our neighbor did right here. Lean into work around incarceration because that seems to have touched your life. Lean into work around housing, around the environment. We do not all have to be the masters of everything. Sometimes the best path there is to really lean into the things that have touched our lives. For me, it was Early Childhood education. For you, it may be something else. The best thing you can do now to help this movement is to be a really amazing organizer of people. [applause] alzheimers society. And wanted to give you. Absolutely. Of course. Thank you. [applause] hello. I am so glad to meet you. Can you hold the microphone close . From the time you were elected. Im from sherwood village. I wondered. I see you on tv, but never hear you anywhere in the neighborhood. Thank you for coming and im glad to be here. I listened to all these. My sister died in england from dementia. In my church, we have an Outreach Program for people incarcerated. It is called angel tree. So i head up the community that gives to the people who are incarcerated there. Children at christmas time, we give them presents. We get presents for the kids. So everything here is to my heart. My question is the community in the building that i live in. We have such a hard time. Everything is monopolized in that place, including how we get our internet. It is all one spectrum. It was verizon. And then verizon could not come in, only spectrum. I retired senior citizen. 147 per month. I do not know is there anything , anyone can do . I had a meeting with the manager today and he is telling me it is the same with all around. I do not think so. Because my friend in Springfield Gardens is only paying 80 per month because she has a house and she has a choice. Why do i have to pay 147 per month . [applause] rep. Ocasiocortez you bring up an excellent question. First, i have to say we have been in the community a lot. Theyre almost a Million People in our district. We are out and about. Im glad to have the facetoface with you now and i hope to have more in the future. I will say that this is one of the reasons we oppose the tmobile sprint merger, because of this outcome youre experiencing now. We have just a handful of these cable providers or telecommunications providers. Providers in our backyard, depending on where you are, you have maybe two. In my neck of the woods in parkchester, it is verizon, or cablevision, which is now optimum. It is verizon and optimum. In some places it is spectrum, you know, spectrum, comcast. All of these are all stacked up against each other or on top of each other. And one of the reasons why sometimes arguably these services are so expensive is because there is a lack of competition in the area. Theres natural monopolies. We have to check in your individual scenario to see if there is something you could qualify for that could help us bring your cost down. But it is a similar thing that some of these services are far too expensive, particularly for vulnerable populations. We will have to check on your specific situation and figure out what building it is you live in, what neighborhood, et cetera. To see if there is something we can do for you. But it is really expensive. And this is part of the cost of living that is pricing out our entire community. And this is part of a much larger story of new york city, people are talking about. If anybody grew up here, they know that the whole city has transformed. In some ways, for better, in other ways, we are getting priced out. My opinion is that displacement is not a form of community development. And a lot of times, what we do is we say that we are improving the community, we are investing in the community, but all that we are doing is taking everyone ng the community and booti them out and then importing payable that are already making more money, who can already afford a Higher Quality of living. And then we are acting as if we have improved everyones income. That is like not how im interested in doing it. So when people talk about amazon, amazon, they want to continue making this a controversy. I will be very clear. I am not sorry about the stance we took. [applause] because people talk about jobs, jobs, jobs. Where did that number come from . Where did the 25,000 job numbers came from . It came from amazon. First of all, were those jobs for us . And we also have a natural experiment here. Because they were trying to put hq2, right . Where did hq 1 go . The other one went ironically, right in the backyard of washington, d. C. And virginia. In virginia. And what we found is that they did not build it here. They did build it there. They are moving forward with building at there. They are not even done with it and rents have already gone up over 20 , or rather cost and sales and things like that, it is skyrocketing. So our community, like this is a displacement strategy and a displacement approach to development. So my approach is that we do not invest in buildings, is not just about in investing in buildings, we need to invest in people. And if we are not investing in the people, what is the point of investing the buildings if we cannot afford to live in them . [applause] i think that was our last question. Were going to wrap up as michelle and noreen talked about. I see we have a lot of elders, we are going to go row by row. Rep. Ocasiocortez ok, ill start right over here. Awesome. Thank you all again so very much for coming, we really appreciate it. [applause] here we go. 1, 2, 3. Perfect. 1, 2, 3. All right. Thank you so much. Ready . 1, 2, 3. Perfect. Done. Thank you. Chatter]nible everyone, please sit down. Hello, everyone. A process for pictures that makes the most sense is if everyone just sits down. And then what i am going to do, kind of like a church usher, come in and we will form from here. Does that make sense everyone . If youre waiting for a photo, take a seat. I will play church usher to make sure everyone can get a picture. Cool. The first step is everyone sitting down. Thank you. [indiscernible chatter] thank you so much. Ok. Is everyone seated . Alright, you can tell me when we are ready. [indiscernible chatter] all right, here we go. 1, 2, 3. And 1, 2, 3. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Ok, here you go. Perfect. One second. One second. Come on. All right. Ready, here we go. 1, 2, 3. And i want to see the other folks. Right here. Ready . 1, 2, 3. Perfect. Done. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming. Thanks for coming, maam. Here we go. 1, 2, 3. Hello, how are you . I heard you in there saying you did not want to spend a lot of time on impeachment but it is clear it is on residents minds. Talk with that a little bit about local concerns. For us, the impeachment of the president is obviously a very serious matter and one that is being covered extensi