{"id":192571,"date":"2018-12-05T03:35:46","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T08:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=192571"},"modified":"2018-12-05T03:35:46","modified_gmt":"2018-12-05T08:35:46","slug":"freshman-democrats-in-congress-ready-to-use-new-won-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/12\/05\/freshman-democrats-in-congress-ready-to-use-new-won-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Freshman Democrats in Congress ready to use new won power"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cIt’s a confluence of things. It’s about the committees that we’ll be appointed to. It’s about the values- and issues-based caucuses that we’ll serve on. And it’s about us simply leveraging the platform that we have available to us as well as our social media networks,\u201d Pressley said. (File Photo By ElizabethForMA\/Wikimedia <\/a>commons, CC BY 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. \u2014 Incoming members of the Democratic Party’s new U.S. House majority say they’re ready to turn the energy of their campaigns into real power on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n

Rep.-elects Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and a handful of other liberal-leaning incoming Democrats used an orientation event for freshman lawmakers Tuesday sponsored by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics to stake out some of their top issues \u2014 from gun violence to health care to climate change.<\/p>\n

They say they’re ready to leverage their victories at the ballot box into victories in Congress \u2014 an institution that prizes seniority.<\/p>\n

Pressley said power is about more than just how many terms a lawmaker has served.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a confluence of things. It’s about the committees that we’ll be appointed to. It’s about the values- and issues-based caucuses that we’ll serve on. And it’s about us simply leveraging the platform that we have available to us as well as our social media networks,\u201d Pressley said.<\/p>\n

Pressley won election to the House by beating a fellow Democrat \u2014 longtime U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano \u2014 in a September primary.<\/p>\n

Ocasio-Cortez said like-minded incoming Democratic members of the House have the numbers needed to press their case for change.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a magic number in the House … and it’s 218,\u201d she said. \u201cTwo hundred and eighteen is the magic number to get things done and how many member Democratic freshmen do we have? Sixty Three. Sixty-three of that 218 is brand new and 35 of that 63 have rejected corporate PAC money, 35 of that 63 is not funded by opioid companies, not funded by the NRA, not funded by for-profit health care, not funded by fossil fuels. Thirty-five are independent of the interests of corporate influence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez also won election by defeating another veteran Democratic incumbent \u2014 Joe Crowley \u2014 in New York’s June primary.<\/p>\n

Ocasio-Cortez said Democrats have to fight back against an opposition she said \u201cis predicated on us being turned against each other, of us accepting the idea of zero-sum thinking that one community’s gain must be another community’s loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that all of our issues are tied and are the same,\u201d she added. \u201cThere is no health care justice without gun violence reform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley have both pledged to support Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker after Democrats take control of the House in January.<\/p>\n

Other new and incoming Democratic House members who spoke at Tuesday’s event include Lori Trahan of Massachusetts, Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania and Andy Levin of Michigan.<\/p>\n

Pressley said the timing of Tuesday’s press conference wasn’t meant as a rejection of the Harvard orientation event.<\/p>\n

On its website the school says the sessions are designed to help incoming House members \u201cforge bipartisan relationships and learn practical skills of lawmaking just one month prior to taking the oath of office.\u201d Since 1972, the program has hosted nearly 700 current and new member of Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing adversarial,\u201d Pressley said. \u201cThis is about us lifting up the voices, the stories, the struggles, the innovation and the ideas of the people that we represent. So I think it’s a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. \u2014 Incoming members of the Democratic Party’s new U.S. House majority say they’re ready to turn the energy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":192572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-steve-leblanc","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}