Incoming socialist lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went to Washington, D.C. to join a sit-in climate change protest inside Nancy Pelosi’s office.
The environmental groups Sunrise and Justice Democrats led the demonstration of around 200 people, occupying Pelosi’s office on Capitol Hill to send a message to Democrat leadership to address “climate change.”
But the protest became high-profile as soon as Ocasio-Cortez joined in Tuesday.
“I just want to let you know how proud I am of each and every one of you for putting your bodies and everything on the line to make sure we save our planet our generation and our future,” she told the climate change activists.
Incoming Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joins sit-in in Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi's office calling for efforts to combat climate change: "We don't have a choice." https://t.co/uEMkN3JpIz pic.twitter.com/tMaaFGL0hR
— ABC News (@ABC) November 13, 2018
“We don’t have a choice. We have to get to one hundred percent renewable energy in 10 years. There is no other option,” she added.
California is burning. Fossil fuel billionaires have a grip on America's democracy. We're running out of time to act.
But we're going to win. We'll pass a #GreenNewDeal & win the solutions we need. We'll win because we have a movement behind us.
And together, we're unstoppable. pic.twitter.com/mw6dKSxPVj
— 350 dot org (@350) November 13, 2018
Pelosi released a conciliatory statement to the protesters, assuring them she would work to create a climate change commission to “address” its effects.
“We welcome the presence of these activists, and we strongly urge the Capitol Police to allow them to continue to organize and participate in our democracy,” she said in a statement.
“I have recommended to my House Democratic colleagues that we reinstate the select committee to address the climate crisis. House Democrats ran on and won on our bold campaign for a $1 trillion investment in our infrastructure that will make our communities more resilient to the climate crisis, while creating 16 million new good-paying jobs across the country.”
But the groups rejected her offer, saying a commission doesn’t go far enough.
“While the UN’s IPCC report says we only have 12 years left to get serious about getting off fossil fuels, Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party leadership are reviving stale, so-called ‘bipartisan’ ideas that get nowhere near the scale of the crisis,” Justice Democrats Executive Director Alexandra Rojas said in a statement.
“We cannot afford a repeat of 2008, when Democrats held the House, Senate, and White House but failed to take bold enough action on climate change, partly because they had not developed a plan that would have guided them in that moment of opportunity,” she added.
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