In making herself this accessible, Ocasio-Cortez purposefully upends the traditional image of the Washington politician who’s typically buffed and polished within an inch of their life. — AP
LOS ANGELES: There’s an incredible, immediate intimacy in opening your phone, seeing that someone is live on Instagram, and clicking over to see their face staring straight into yours. Even as the comments and emoji reactions scroll by at a frantic pace, joining these videos can seem like an intrusion – as if you didn’t mean to call someone but now that you have, you might as well stick around and see what they have to say.
On Jan 13, a week after furious insurrectionists stormed the US Capitol building, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went live on Instagram to recount her experience in the wake of the event – or at least as much of it as she could, legally and emotionally speaking. Gazing directly into her phone’s camera as comments flew by, Ocasio-Cortez spoke for a full hour about realising the extent of the threat, feeling unsafe alongside Republican colleagues she couldn’t trust, and her growing anger at those who had incited it. She promised her hundreds of thousands of viewers more information soon, but until then, she could at least say that she was afraid she was “going to die”.
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