[update below]
Everyone who follows American politics closely has probably heard about this terrific one-and-a-half-hour documentary, which is streaming on Netflix (the only place to see it; en France il est sous-titré). Its subject is the 2018 primary campaigns of four insurgent female candidates promoted by the progressive PACS Brand New Congress and, above all, Justice Democrats: Cori Bush in Missouri (against the incumbent Democrat, in the CD that includes Ferguson), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York, Paula Jean Swearengin in West Virginia (running against Joe Manchin), and Amy Vilela in Nevada (in a CD that includes part of Las Vegas, held by a Republican at the time). Voilà the story, as described on the film’s website:
When tragedy struck her family in the midst of the financial crisis, Bronx-born Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had to work double shifts in a restaurant to save her home from foreclosure. After losing a loved one to a preventable medical condition, Amy Vilela didn’t know what to do with the anger she felt about America’s broken health care system. Cori Bush was drawn into the streets when the police shooting of an unarmed black man brought protests and tanks into her neighborhood. Paula Jean Swearengin was fed up with watching her friends and family suffer and die from the environmental effects of the coal industry.
At a moment of historic volatility in American politics, these four women decide to fight back, setting themselves on a journey that will change their lives and their country forever. Without political experience or corporate money, they build a movement of insurgent candidates challenging powerful incumbents in Congress. Their efforts result in a legendary upset.
The upset was, of course, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning defeat of incumbent Joseph Crowley in the New York primary on 26 June 2018. As AOC was the only one of the four to win–and has since rocketed to star status–much of the documentary naturally focuses on her. She’s fantastic. I just love her (does any minimally progressive-minded person not?). And her story is moving, particularly at the end, on the night of the primary and then with her in front of the Capitol, talking about her father’s final words to her (he died when she was in college). Reviews of the pic are tops, as one would expect (et en France aussi, par ex., ici et ici). The trailer is here. And here is a 23-minute interview with director Rachel Lears—who, pour l’info, has a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from NYU—by Cenk Uygur, on the making of the documentary. Do see it, even if you don’t subscribe to Netflix (which may be had for a free one-month trial). This is the future of the Democratic Party.
UPDATE: The Washington Post Magazine (July 10th) has a profile of AOC’s Chief-of-Staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, which is worth the read.
Leave a Reply