What AOC’s ‘Woke” Comments Say About Her and the Left

You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here.

Announcement

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn’t the only prominent progressive distancing herself from “Woke 1.0.” Senator Bernie Sanders and Mayor Zohran Mamdani have in recent days decried the idea of defunding police. In the latest edition of Right Now, Deva Woodly, a scholar of social movements who has extensively studied Black Lives Matter, argues that progressives and liberals who use the term “woke” and distance themselves from the activism of the early 2020s are making a mistake. Woodly says that they are using the language of the right and attacking allies who helped these politicians get elected in the first place. She also argues that the idea of ensuring public safety by spending money on policies other than policing is popular, even if the term “defund” is not. Woodly is a political science professor at Brown University and a fellow at the Kettering Foundation.