Photo Courtesy Wikimedia by Franmarie Metzler, U.S. House Office of Photography
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez held a telephone town hall meeting on November 27th for her constituents in New York’s 14th congressional district. Ocasio-Cortez greeted everyone and thanked participants for her first-ever phone call town hall meeting. She explained that the town hall gave people the chance to speak directly with their representatives. But throughout the meeting, it became apparent that the phone made it difficult to take questions and give answers.
Ocasio-Cortez spoke about the recent news events. She began with the war between Israel and Hamas. She said, “On October 7th, a terrible attack was committed by Hamas. Eighty percent were innocent civilians (in Israel). Over 14,800 Palestinian lives have been taken. On October 8th, we called for the release of the hostages. Today, as of November 27th, Hamas has released hostages and Israel released women and children hostages.”
Ocasio-Cortez, instead of taking questions about Hamas and Israel, quickly went into the second topic about a government shutdown. This topic was rushed as well and it was difficult to stay on track with the occasional phone malfunction. It made Ocasio-Cortez’s voice break up and she was hard to understand.
She also discussed housing affordability issues. Ocasio-Cortez described how she said she and others have been advocating and pushing for housing affordability. Throughout the call, an operator polled callers to find out what Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s constituents thought about specific issues that didn’t always coincide with the topic being discussed. It felt chaotic and interfered with what Ocasio-Cortez was talking about because the operator asking the questions randomly interrupted her repeatedly.
The operator asked: “Do you support a bilateral cease-fire between Hamas and Israel?” The results were 87% supported and 13% did not.
Then they opened up to questions from those on the call. The first caller, who didn’t give a name, asked, “What is the United States doing to help the cease-fire between the two (Israel and Hamas)?” The congresswoman didn’t answer but said, “To me, regardless of the government, to look at the ratios of killings and comparing them is unacceptable.”
Another caller, a woman named Balquese from Astoria, Queens asked, “ What can everyday constituents like us do to support the Democratic party?” Ocasio-Cortez said, “When the cease-fire was first introduced to the House, only 13 members signed it. Out of 435 in the House, and 212 Democrats in the house, 13 is nothing. After the constituents started calling in, that number went to 50. 50 is a lot, 50 is 25%. A political force is growing. It is important and makes an impact when constituents call into their Congress.”
Evelyn, the final caller, asked, “What is being done to screen all the people moving to the United States, specifically New York? Where are these people going to go?”
Ocasio-Cortez responded by reminding the listeners that New York City is a border city and that every year the government is sending millions to the southern Mexico border which is not even our central problem. She explained that we are allocating all of our resources to areas that are overfunded, and negating the areas that are under-funded. She said, “It is necessary we better allocate our funds.” Ocasio-Cortez said that people seeking asylum have been required to go through intensive screening in recent months, but that the bigger issue is that, “Due to all of these migrant operations that the federal government is funding, we are now making cuts in important areas like schooling. Not a kid in this city should have a dollar less to their name because someone made a numbers issue.” Ocasio-Cortez affirmed her support of asylum seekers and said, “We need to see the numbers, dollar for dollar, where our funds are going and we need to know why these cuts are being made all of a sudden.”
