AOC protests Trump, Wall Street during Copenhagen conference

It used to be that American politicians abided by a code of conduct when visiting other countries that included leaving politics at the water’s edge. That meant politicians didn’t go overseas and bash the president or America to foreign audiences. That was then … this is now.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez traveled to Copenhagen last weekend. The freshman congresswoman from New York was invited to speak during the C40 World Mayors Summit. The summit brought together mayors from around the world to discuss climate change. Apparently AOC is an internationally recognized expert on the subject now. Since she was in town anyway, she decided to join the weekly Fridays for Future rally at Copenhagen’s city hall.

Fridays for Future is the brainchild of precocious environmental activist Greta Thunberg. After she delivered her speech to the mayors, AOC spoke to the group of protesters and trashed President Trump along the way.

After her speech, Ocasio-Cortez joined the weekly Fridays for Future rally outside Copenhagen city hall, where she called on the gathered activists to “make sure the politicians sweat a little bit”.

A substantial crowd, combining local activists with mayors and youth delegates from the summit, had turned out to meet her.

“We have to face the oil and coal industry, the CO2-emitting industry, Wall Street, Bolsonaro, Donald Trump,” she said to cheers from the crowd. “We can’t and won’t win by staying home.”

Not exactly deep thoughts but she recited all the usual words that trigger the far left. She was inspiring.

Emilie Baliozian, a youth delegate who had come to the summit from Paris, watched Ocasio-Cortez’s speech despite the pounding rain.

“It was so empowering. It was clearly directed to us. I know it, she’s going to be president one day, because we’re going to be the voters of tomorrow,” she said.

“It’s super cool that she came all this way,” said Selma White, 14, a regular at Copenhagen’s Fridays for Future protests. “It’s really inspiring.”

AOC was given a royal welcome to Copenhagen, too. Thursday night Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, and his wife, Princess Mary, hosted a dinner at the city’s Christiansborg Palace to which Sandy from the Bronx was invited.

During her speech on Friday at the summit, AOC personalized her delivery by including a mention that her grandfather died, she claims, due to the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. And she said her desire for motherhood is “bittersweet” because of the effects of climate change that will dominate the earth. Or something. Mind you, this speech was described as a keynote address.

I speak to you not as an elected official or a public figure, but I speak to you as a human being,” the freshman congresswoman told a climate summit in Copenhagen. “A woman whose dreams of motherhood now taste bittersweet, because of what I know about our children’s future,” she added, apparently choking back tears.

Ocasio-Cortez went on to decry the impacts of climate change and indicating that Puerto Ricans died because they lived “under colonial rule.”

“I speak to you as daughter and descendant of colonized peoples who have already begun to suffer. Just two years ago one of the deadliest disasters in the United States struck in the form of Hurricane Maria,” she said.

“The climate change-powered storm killed over 3,000 Puerto Ricans, American citizens — my own grandfather died in the aftermath — all because they were living under colonial rule, which contributed to the dire conditions and lack of recovery.”

The King of Climate Change Grifters, Al Gore, was also a featured speaker. The mayors agreed on a series of pledges and measures to cut carbon emissions which include reducing meat consumption to tackling air pollution with cheap bus fares and vehicle bans. As with the Paris agreement from which President Trump rightfully withdrew, none of these pledges have any teeth to them. It’s just a lot of feel-good gobbledygook. It screams look at us, we are doing something. Except they aren’t, really. How are the promises in the Paris Accord going? The United States has met its goals. The same cannot be said for the big polluters like China and India. The point being, these agreements, or pledges, or whatever any of these actions are called have no measures of accountability. Each country has to do its own thing.

AOC celebrated her 30th birthday in Copenhagen. She relished her time in the “social democracy” of Denmark. I imagine her best present was receiving a “rockstar welcome” from the world’s mayors. Her applause was bigger than Gore’s applause. Looks like the torch is being passed.

From the moment she began speaking, the main hall at the summit became completely still, and when she finished, the ovation she received far exceeded that received by the veteran climate campaigner and former vice-president Al Gore, Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen; or the UN secretary general, António Guterres.

“She got a rockstar welcome in that audience,” Nicholas Reece, a city councillor from Melbourne, Australia, said. “There’s just something about her which is really mobilising and electrifying people around the world, particularly young people.”

She even was able to work in a call to her young activist fans to fight President Trump, Wall Street, and the oil and gas industry. It was the icing on her birthday cake.