AOC Revealed She’s a Sexual Assault Survivor While Discussing the Trauma of Capitol Riots
"These folks that tell us to move on...these are the same tactics of abusers."
In a February 1st Instagram Live session with her supporters, Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said that the response from the Congresspeople responsible for inciting the January 6th Capitol riots is eerily reminiscent of past trauma she’s gone through. Getting emotional, Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she is a survivor of sexual abuse and knows all too well the tactics abusers use to keep exerting power.
“The reason I’m getting emotional in this moment is because these folks that tell us to move on…these are the same tactics of abusers,” she told her audience. “I’m a survivor of sexual abuse, and I haven’t told many people that in my life. But when we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other. Whether you had a neglectful parent or whether you had someone who is verbally abusive to you, whether you are a survivor of abuse, whether you experience any sort of trauma in your life, these episodes can compound on one another.”
AOC reiterated the fact that people who request we all just “move on” are using the same methodology as abusive people, whether they know it or not. “The reason why I think it’s important for us to hold this to account is that because we know that if we don’t hold people accountable, what they are asking for when they say ‘can we just move on?’ is that what they are asking is, ‘can we just forget this happened so I can do it again without recourse?'”
How I feel and how I felt was ‘not again,’ she said of her fellow Congresspeople’s denial. I’m not going to let this happen again. I’m not going to let it happen to me again, I’m not going to let it happen to the other people who have been victimized by this situation again, and I’m not going to let this happen to our country.
“We need accountability,” she said. “It’s not about revenge. It’s about creating safety…And we are not safe with people who hold positions of power who are willing to endanger the lives of others if they think it will score them a political point.”
AOC said that the Congresspeople responsible for the violence have doubled down rather than apologized in the month following the Capitol attack, “so that tells me that these people remain a present danger because what that tells me is that when given another window of political opportunity for themselves, even if they know that it means it will endanger their colleagues, they will do it again.”
As she noted earlier in her video, Ocasio-Cortez’s story is not the only story impacted by the Capitol attack, nor is it the central story, but she says that no matter what story is being told, no story from the Capitol will conclude with simply “moving on.”