The Tight Rope

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As we navigate the balance between hope and uncertainty, we invite you to join Dr. Cornel West & Professor Tricia Rose on The Tight Rope, a weekly program where we welcome listeners and guests as thought collaborators. The Tight Rope is rich in creative, unfiltered dialogue on topics ranging from culture, art, and music to the contours of systemic racism, philosophy, the power of Socratic self-examination, and the possibilities of a peaceful and just world. Our innovative and interactive format will highlight the professors’ combined expertise to encourage critical thinking, self-reflection, and human connection as we navigate The Tight Rope.

Episodes

Thursday Jul 23, 2020

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez AOC Is Not Understood For Who She Really Is

Thursday Jul 23, 2020

Episode Summary

In this inaugural episode of The Tight Rope, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aka #AOC shares her whirlwind journey from New York City to the halls of Congress, pulls the curtain on power, and explores what it will take to heal our nation. Plus, hosts Cornel West and Tricia Rose reflect on the movement to #DefundThePolice in their Office Hours segment.

Cornel West

Dr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.

Tricia Rose

Professor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Serving the 14th district of New York in the Bronx and Queens, U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez touts a 100% People-Funded Democratic Socialism platform. She is an educator, organizer, service worker with a deep understanding of income inequality. As a third-generation Bronxite, AOC believes in combating systemic problems by fighting for systemic solutions, like Medicare for all, federal jobs guarantee, the end to mass incarceration, and the Green New Deal. She attended Boston University and previously worked as Educational Director with National Hispanic Institute where she helped Americans, DREAMers, and undocumented youth in community leadership and college readiness. AOC serves working-class people over corporate interests and advocates for social, racial, economic, and environmental justice.

Insight from this episode:

Strategies on not being “locked in” while on lockdown.
How to respond and intervene in systems that are impoverished of empathy and compassion.
Behind-the-scenes look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s meteoric rise in politics, including the impact of her education, time abroad in West Africa, and close relationship with her father.
How to remain true to your morals, values, politics, and spirituality when faced with pressures to conform or be reduced down to a niche.
Benefits of the discipline of non-attachment to work, money, social acceptance, and ego.
Details on what “defunding the police” really means to Dr. West and Professor Rose.

Quotes from the show:

“I am one point that is a result of waves of generational inertia.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7
“You can’t let your identity be subsumed with this superficial political identity of red or blue or this tribe. [It’s] not what do you want to be but how do you want to be? ...People always try to analyze my actions in a strictly political context… I was already here. I didn’t know this was a political way of being. I just thought it was a moral way of being.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7

On her time in Niger: “That level of enjoyment just does not exist in American life. [Enjoying tea with friends] is something people do on a Friday night, maybe once a week, if they aren’t exhausted by work. But this is a way of life in Niger… that interaction was the sun around which life revolved. It’s our fellowship and connection to one another.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7

On switching majors from Pre-Med to Economics: “What you are treating and what you are healing is a result of systematic outcomes. And I knew that people would continue to be sick if our systems continued to be sick.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7

“The interesting thing about economics is that there may be an equation, but the real quest is discovering the story that has led to a number.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7

“In the tradition of my parents, I never was like, “I’m a Democrat with a capital D. If it’s got a blue sticker, I’m going to be for that.” I always grew up with this idea that you need to have an independent analysis of each and every individual and look at things in context.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7

“Politics ultimately is about the scaffolding of our relationships to each other. And the reason our politics are so broken right now is because our relationships to one another as a society are really deeply broken.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7

“I cannot be attached to keeping my seat as a member of Congress if I’m going to do my job because [my mission] is not to be the Congresswoman of New York’s 14th district. My mission is to advance principles of a better world and to advance a better world.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7

“How has AOC gotten inside of [the system]? People are so hungry and thirsty for something deeper than the legalized bribery and normalized corruption.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #7

On being intentionally vulnerable on social media: “I needed to break the mythology of perfection in people who hold power.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7

“The police have already been thoroughly been defunded in terms of the police that are supposed to regulate Wall Street… they are as weak as pre-sweetened Kool-Aid.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #7

“That hyper funding of police ended money for social workers and mental health facilities and drug treatment centers… a complete gutting of the safety nets that allowed people to have problems. And we’re interested in helping solve them. We’re not interested in making every response a punitive punishment, profitable response for others… to defund is to invest in communities.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #7

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