Ocasio-Cortez drops in on trans rights fundraiser Donkey Kong Twitch stream, is basically Neo

It started when this guy went all “pipe down and know your place” to the batch of upstart new Democratic members of Congress, outspoken and diverse representatives who aren’t just taking direction from the party leadership but are directly and unapologetically challenging the American political-economic-racial-gender-religious power structure.

Aaron Sorkin: The new crop of Dems need to "stop acting like young people" pic.twitter.com/qGZqWDpXi8

(West Wing fans, now may be a good time to re-evaluate the messages behind the show about political power dynamics, especially considering their substantial impact on Democratic politicians.)

As half of left Twitter dunked on Sorkin, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez walked onto the court:

Let’s dig into “gravitas,” bc it’s an ambiguous word, selectively applied.Ever wonder how expression that’s feminine, working-class, queer, or poc isn’t deemed as having “gravitas,” but talking like an Aaron Sorkin character does? 🤔Men have “gravitas,” women get “likeable.” https://t.co/0g9FNpExAl

At the end of the thread, Ocasio-Cortez specifically refuted Sorkin’s dismissal of transgender people’s rights. He opined that it’s merely a Republican trap and that it’s not important enough to make part of the Democratic platform. She promulgates a politics of moral clarity and bravery, not of defensiveness, not of allergy to controversy, not of confrontation-aversion.

If you’d like to use this as a good moment to support the queer community, there’s a charity twitch stream going on for @Mermaids_Gender: https://t.co/vCvvqRhAwb

And that’s when things went inter-dimensional. It so happens that there was a Twitch stream going on as a fundraiser for a British-based transgender rights and support organization, Mermaids. YouTuber Hbomberguy had just entered his 50th hour playing Donkey Kong 64. Go ahead and laugh—it is pretty funny (!), and the people involved are fully aware of the silliness of it—but also consider that it’s not much different from any fundraiser that involves entertainment. Along the way, he had various YouTube leading lights and activists like Chelsea Manning calling in as he played. His followers jumped on Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet to ask her to call into the stream [update Jan. 21: and having already been clued in by Manning]… she did.

Amidst discussing what video games she had played, Ocasio-Cortez voiced strong support for the charity effort and said, “Trans rights are civil rights are human rights.” She even made a subtle but important point about a particular attempt to pass a law about trans rights, that because the bill was about something that was already constitutionally protected, it was better to push for enforcement of rights under that aegis rather than to pass a redundant law that could cast doubt on the constitutional guarantee. Amazing.

As more people heard about it and tuned into the stream, the donations total blew past $200,000.

So what’s the big deal? It’s that a leftist member of Congress, unbossed by owners of large corporations and unconstrained by the strictures of conventional political wisdom, uses her media reach to reinforce allies on matters like civil rights, and that she does it in an unscripted, live, online interaction among advocates. It’s not merely that she’s speaking to people to get a message out, it’s that these modes of engagement are currently-evolving pathways for democratic rejuvenation.