Talk:Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Add twitch streamer.

Come on guys Dpasten (talk) 03:20, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

no

Condensing political positions

The political positions section of AOC's article takes up a lot of the article's space. For most prominent politicians (cf. Mitch McConnell, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden or Paul Ryan), the political positions section is kept short, with the main article link to a separate page (Political positions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example). Could we not do this with AOC? IMO what we have now is somewhat clunky. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:985:0:8120:B414:8477:8503:6882 (talk) 20:48, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez heritage

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has made the claim of having Jewish ancestry. I think this odd statement is significant as she expressed many time her interest in antisemitsm.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/nyregion/ocasio-cortez-jewish.amp.html New York Times]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/10/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-reveals-jewish-ancestry-hanukkah-celebration/%3foutputType=amp washingtonpost]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna946041 NBC news]

One of the things that we discovered about ourselves is that a very, very long time ago, generations and generations ago, my family consisted of Sephardic Jews,” --Vanlister (talk) 13:43, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean that she has expressed interest in anti-Semitism. In any case the article already refers to her Sephardic Jewish ancestry. Such ancestry is fairly common among Hispanics because many Spanish Jews converted to Christianity and assimilated. TFD (talk) 14:44, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Spanish name

@Jjj1238 and MelanieN: Hi, I recently came across the February 2019 discussion on whether AOC's name uses Spanish naming customs. AOC herself has attributed her surname "Ocasio-Cortez" to "Latinx culture"; see her tweet on this. Several news articles have also discussed this issue: see NBC News, DiversityInc. If AOC herself describes her surname as Latine, I believe that using {{Spanish name}} on this article is accurate. feminist (talk) | free Hong Kong 07:23, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. That heading is usually added when the person uses the two surnames without a hyphen, or uses the second name rather than the third for everyday use - to explain why a person named Gabriel García Márquez might use "García Márquez" as their last name, or a person named "Vicente Fox Quesada" might choose to be known as Vicente Fox. Presumably she is hyphenating her last name so that everybody will know exactly what she wants her name to be; if she wanted it to be "Ocasio Cortez" lots of people would get it wrong. In any case, I think she is using a variant of Spanish naming customs and the heading is appropriate. -- MelanieN (talk) 17:33, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Two debates with Crowley before 2018 primary, not one

Hi! I have no wiki expierence and have to get right back to work; but just noticed what seems to be a (slight) error in the section about the 2018 primaries. I have the sources currently open in tabs, didn't want to let that go to waste and hope if I leave them and this message here, somebody who actually knows what they are doing might find and like to work it in.

The section "2018 campaign" states:

"On June 15, the candidates' only face-to-face encounter during the campaign occurred on a local political talk show, Inside City Hall. The format was a joint interview conducted by Errol Louis, which NY1 characterized as a debate."

According to the following articles, there was a second encounter between the two on June 21, 2018, in a place called "Jewish Center Jackson Heights". This seems to be the debate that was shown (well, excerpts of it) in the Netflix-Doku "Knock down the house"; which looks distinctly different from the NY1-interview/debate; and where Crowley tried to publicly tie AOC to Hiram Monserrate (didn't go down well for him, IMHO...)

"Knock down the house", timestamped to start at the debate:

Article containing quotes from that scene:

2003:E3:C736:6A48:A05A:5E41:92D0:7F23 (talk) 00:28, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Verbal Assault

Under the main page is a paragraph titled "Verbal assault". This is labeled incorrectly as there is no actual offense in law called Verbal Assault. There can be no assault that occurs from the use of words. These incidents can be untoward, impolite, ignorant or rude. However there is no actual thing as a Verbal Assault. It is an improper socially constructed idiom created by conflating the act of speaking with a physical act of assault. Even though it has become a phrase in common use and even has some dictionary references it actually has no legal meaning. It is often used by persons when confronted by a strong difference of opinion of which they disagree but would rather not debate. It is ironic that in many cases, as with this one, females who otherwise consider themselves strong independent equals to their male peers. Will take up this mantle of victimization that they would not if the other party was a female. An accusation almost never leveled between two males. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.119.101.98 (talk) 14:59, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

AOC's disputes with Jewish groups

Hello, everybody. I recently had an edit of mine reverted. The argument against this edit was that it was "POV pushing" and "non-neutral". However, I argue against these points because all I'm doing is summarizing reputable sources and citing them. The edit is below:

Throughout her tenure, Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly refused to meet with Jewish community leaders in her state, and ignored a request to comment by Jewish Insider . In November 2020, the National Catholic Reporter repeatedly contacted Ocasio-Cortez's office for clarification after she invoked a narrative used for centuries to justify persecution of Jews, but she declined to comment .

The Israeli Holocaust museum condemned Ocasio-Cortez when she compared US migrant detention faculities to Nazi concentration camps. She refused to apologize. .

In 2019, Ocasio-Cortez's House friend and co-member of the squad Ilhan Omar made comments widely condemned by Jewish groups as anti-Semitic . Jewish organizations called for a House resolution condemning Omar , but Ocasio-Cortex successfully lead an effort to alter the resolution so it wouldn't specifically condemn her colleague .

Pretzel butterfly (talk) 18:33, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

If reputable mainstream sources cover this issue (which seems like a personal affront where there is none) then I would understand its inclusion, until now we'd have to count it as gossip. Trillfendi (talk) 18:36, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

This edit was not neutral. It's selective content, all negative, put together in the style of a WP:CONTROVERSYSECTION. What do you mean by "Jewish equality", anyway? – Muboshgu (talk) 18:46, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

The Jewish Insider source makes it clear that she does meet regularly with Jewish groups on the left. The stuff about Ilhan Omar does not belong in this biography. The whole thing comes off as a non-neutral attack. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 18:58, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

References

Just as examples: "Refused" and "ignored" are value-judgment-laden words that inherently reflect a non-WP:NPOV. Let's say my next-door neighbor calls out to me from his driveway as I'm dashing to my car to go to work, and I tell him, "Sorry, Don! I'm almost late for work!" and get in my car and drive away. One could characterize that as "Julietdeltalima refused to talk to her pleasant elderly neighbor Don," which is the tone that your addition reflects—what a jerk Julietdeltalima obviously is! Or, one could more neutrally, but perfectly accurately, say, "Julietdeltalima told Don she was almost late for work and drove away without further comment." The first version indicates that the writer was trying to portray my not talking to Don as a deliberate, calculated snub. Without knowing the state of mind of the purported "refuser," it's not appropriate to use that loaded word. All of this content appears very strongly to reflect value judgments in the mind of the writer; every verb choice and adjective reflects a desire to criticize.

Also: never use contractions in encyclopedia articles or any other formal writing. It's fine on talk pages but overly colloquial in article space. See MOS:CONTRACTION. - Julietdeltalima (talk) 19:03, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Got it. Agree with your point about how "refused" can be improperly used. I used it in that case because she declined repeated requests for comment from a news organization. That said, how would we feel about using "declined" instead of "refused"? I agree about contractions. Pretzel butterfly (talk) 19:50, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

(I fixed your indentation; you always want to use one more indentation mark than the prior commenter so folks can parse who's "speaking.") Did she literally decline or just not make any acknowledgement at all? Those are two different things. To invoke another of my neighbors in an example: I'm leisurely going to my car on a weekend afternoon and my neighbor Carlos is in his front yard trimming his palm tree (which, if you haven't had the pleasure, is like giving a pedicure to an agitated bobcat), and I wave in his general direction and say, "Howdy, Carlos!" and he doesn't even turn his head in my direction. "Carlos declined to talk to JDL" implies that Carlos shut off his tree trimmer and said, "I can't talk to you right now; I'm in mortal peril." "Carlos did not respond" is the more accurate depiction of what happened. Not returning a phone call isn't "declining" to return the phone call; it's just not returning the phone call unless and until your press person issues a statement that says, "Pretzel butterfly does not have any comment on these issues."

This stuff is hard to recognize at first! There are times and places for advocacy in writing; lawyers, for example, choose (or should be choosing, if they're competent) every word to maximize the benefit (in however tiny an increment) to their clients. The thing about an encyclopedia is that this isn't the time or place for advocacy: the "client", if you will, is objectivity. "Prime Minister Ardern has yet to comment" and "Prime Minister Ardern has not commented" might actually look to many people as utterly synonymous, but they're not. The first version implies that she had a duty to comment and hasn't gotten around to it yet; the second version simply says that she hasn't commented. We need to be aiming for the second version unless we have a reliable source to support the premise of the first. It's hard! But having this mindset will help you in ways going far beyond Wikipedia! Take care - Julietdeltalima (talk) 20:13, 18 December 2020 (UTC) (Oh, and I thought the "shouldn't" was yours. If not, my apologies.)

We would need to show that these claims have received substantial coverage before including them, per weight. In that case we would expect that she would reply. She might say for example that she meets with progressive Jewish groups but not conservative ones. Wikipedia articles are not supposed to tell people stuff that they won't find out from reading major news sources, but are supposed to summarize what they say.

What Ilhan Omar says is irrelevant to the article.

The narrative AOC used was the story of the money changers in the temple in the New Testament, which is read by Christians, including Catholics. I have not seen any other source call it anti-Semitic, although I see how it could be interpreted that way, as have many of the events in the New Testament. I note that Joey and Toby Tanenbaum, who are widely respected in the Jewish community,[1] donated the painting "The Expulsion of the Money-Changers" to the Art Gallery of Ontario.[2]

TFD (talk) 19:59, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, this is helpful! Agreed that what Omar says is irrelvant. The passage about the House resolution was meant to highlight not what Omar said, but AOC's opposition to the Congressional resolution, which did get a lot of attention in mainstream sources. Were we to add more references for that passage, would that satisfy concerns? If so, what types of references would we need (ie. would a reference from the New York Times or similar be sufficient?) Pretzel butterfly (talk) 20:12, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

The Jewish Journal piece by Micha Danzig is an advocacy opinion piece by an attorney/activist, not by a professional journalist reporting the news. Sources like this are unacceptable for contentious material in a biography of a living person. As for opposition to a resolution, it is as unsurprising that a progressive would oppose a conservative resolution as that a conservative would oppose a progressive resolution. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 01:59, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm really sorry! I think we still have a misunderstanding which is my fault, I should have explained better. The resolution was put forth by other Democrats. Does that change your perspective? I hear you loud and clear on the Danzig source, and agree. We add in some mainstream news sources as substitutes. For example, here's one from the New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/us/politics/ilhan-omar-israel.html Pretzel butterfly (talk) 02:05, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

The party affiliation of the various members of Congress involved in this is of no interest to me. What I care about is that the highest quality reliable sources are used, and that your writing neutrally summarizes the sources, without any slanting or advocacy, Pretzel butterfly. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 03:34, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Danzig says that Harris, Sanders and Warren also defended AOC. Pelosi defended the wording of the revised resolution, which the Democrats and most Republicans supported. It's misleading to single out what AOC did. You should familiarize yourself with rules for contributing to articles by following the links I posted to your page. If you want to contribute to biographies of living persons, you should not begin by looking for bad things said about them and putting them into articles but review what mainstream sources say about them and summarize the information. TFD (talk) 02:30, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello again! Thank you for taking the time to respond to my comment! Yes, totally agree that Sanders, Harris, and Warren supported the revised wording. Good point. We're definitely in agreement that a number of people supported the change. That said and agreed on, I reread but think the references make clear that AOC initiated the effort which others later joined - would you agree, and if so, would that change your point of view? Check out the last paragraph of the Danzig reference. The NYT reference gives further support for this. I'm pretty familiar with Wikipedia's policies but if there is any policy in particular that you think I may have forgotten about, let me know and I'd be happy to refresh! Pretzel butterfly (talk) 03:50, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Once the full context of AOC's actions are explained, as in the NYT article, it loses the bite it had in right-wing editorials and hence becomes unimportant. Notice too that the article is about Omar, not AOC. We would like to see articles about AOC discussing her actions. Again, it looks like you have found something you think should be in the article and are searching for reliable sources to add it. What you should do is ensure that the article accurately and concisely summarizes the body of articles written about AOC in reliable sources. I would point out that there are liberal editors who mine for smears against conservative politicians, but that's not the way articles should be developed. TFD (talk) 05:09, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you again very much for your feedback! Most definitely agree that we should be summarizing sources only. And definitely agree we should be looking for the mainstream news sources and not editorials as I initially suggested since we aspire to neutrality. However, I think you might be misjudging my intent (understandable, since you don't know me very well yet!) The sequence of events was that I saw articles like these, and then thought that the events narrated therein were notable and merited inclusion, just as other events and actions involving AOC were reported in both mainstream media and in the present article. I thought that the article did indeed report that AOC was a leader in this effort, check out the below quote and see if you agree. Note that I'm not making the case that what AOC did was improper (which would be POV pushing), just that Jewish organizations believe it to be so. The overall narrative of this passage is reporting how she is clashing with these groups, just as other parts of the article reports she is clashing with other interest groups.

“ On the other side are younger members like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, and liberal groups like Justice Democrats and IfNotNow, a movement of young Jews dedicated to ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. They accuse Democratic leaders of singling out a woman of color while letting slide comments from Republicans that they deem racist, anti-Semitic or bigoted, including many from President Trump. “One of the things that is hurtful about the extent to which reprimand is sought of Ilhan is that no one seeks this level of reprimand when members make statements about Latinx + other communities,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter, mentioning a Republican House member who shouted, “Go back to Puerto Rico” on the House floor. ”

Pretzel butterfly (talk) 15:11, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

You wrote, "I saw articles like these, and then thought that the events narrated therein were notable and merited inclusion." But where you saw these articles was in minor or unreliable sources, and some of them were editorials, or mentioned AOC in passing. You are going about this backwards. A google news search shows almost 2 million articles that mention AOC. As editors, we have to determine the most important points based on weight. Our personal judgment that something is important and readers need to know about it isn't a valid reason for inclusion. Here is the relevant section of the policy:

An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. For example, discussion of isolated events, criticisms, or news reports about a subject may be verifiable and impartial, but still disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic. This is a concern especially in relation to recent events that may be in the news.

TFD (talk) 20:50, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Jewish groups is a bit misleading given they are Zionist groups and should be called as such.PailSimon (talk) 20:54, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you all for clarifying, this is helpful! PailSimon, I totally agree that that if we were discussing Zionist groups, than that would go in a different heading. Check out the article for Anti-Defamation League - that article currently classifies it as a Jewish group and I think justifies it as such. TFD, I agree with you too that we need to make sure we only include notable information. What are your concerns about the notability of the resolution controversy? Pretzel butterfly (talk) 21:58, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

The term in Wikipedia is noteworthy not notable. Noteworthiness is determined entirely by weight, which depends on the relative degree of coverage in mainstream sources. Mainstream sources may provide excessive coverage to unimportant aspects of a person's life and they may also give minimal coverage to important aspects of a person's life. It is not the role of editors to correct that.

Again, you are going about editing the wrong way around. Instead of reading something somewhere and adding it to the article, you should research the body of literature about AOC and determine what the most widely reported points are and ensure that the article includes them and excludes the points that they ignore. And when you do that, ignore articles in obscure publications and opinion pieces. If everyone did that, we wouldn't be having these lengthy discussions on talk pages.

TFD (talk) 23:57, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

The ADL is a Zionist group as well. All the organisations here are Zionist and saying that AOC has "repeatedly refused to meet Jewish groups" is misleading given that I'm sure if a non-zionist Jewish grouping like Jewish Voice for Peace were to ask to meet with ere she would (maybe she already has). PailSimon (talk) 09:59, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Zionist can mean anything from belief that Israel has a right to exist to far right Israeli nationalism as in the Jewish Defense League. It was anyway the ADL CEO, not the ADL itself, that made the criticism. The problem is that his comments had limited coverage and AOC did not reply. If major media had covered it she would have replied, experts would have weighed in and we could report the incident in a neutral manner. TFD (talk) 11:56, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I understand your proposal to first research in significant depth all facets about this person and then trying to contribute in all relevant ways. I like this suggestion in some ways actually, it's analogous to how in academia people are required to get a broad background before they have the credentials to make narrower contributions. I don't think this is currently Wikipedia policy, I'm seeing a lot of examples of people making smaller contributions to articles based on their available knowledge.

I concede your point about editorials. I won't use editorials as references in the future. Your argument is accepted! Also definitely agree that even though AOC is notable, not everything that we could say about her is noteworthy enough to belong in the article. We wouldn't comment on her corrective lens prescription, whether her car has one of those pine tree air fresheners, or whether she prefers Coke or Pepsi. Regarding the noteworthiness of the House resolution controversy, at the time it was headline news, and the headline of the New York Times article clearly refers to AOC ("Generational Fight"). That would seem to satisfy the criteria, no? Pretzel butterfly (talk) 00:41, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

It didn't receive on-going media attention. It made the news 5 March 2019 and was quickly forgotten. The articles were mostly about Omar and the resolution, not AOC. AOC's support of the revised resolution was probably considered unimportant by mainstream media because all Democrats and the vast majority of Republicans voted in favor. A BBC article on the squad published several months after the resolution fails to mention the resolution at all, although it mentions allegations of anti-Semitism against Omar. Note that policy says weight "is a concern especially in relation to recent events that may be in the news."

Again, we don't develop articles by adding information we find important but by reflecting the body of information in reliable sources according to its weight.

TFD (talk) 01:10, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Understood, thank you again. Everything you're saying is very reasonable, but since I don't know you very well yet, I'm most interested in Wikipedia's policies even if they are narrower than your personal preferences. For due weight, that should be WP:DUE, right? Pretzel butterfly (talk) 01:28, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes. And the relevant section for reporting facts is "Balancing aspects." The selection of which facts to report or omit, or to emphasize or minimize, greatly affect the overall presentation of individuals and events. That's why a policy is necessary. There are of course different possible policies for due weight that attempt to correct the perceived bias of mainstream media and scholarship, for example Conservapedia.

BTW last year a story about a foot that was falsely claimed to belong to AOC was reported in The Independent, Vice, The Guardian, The New York Post, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Scottish Sun and other sources. It's not in this article, although it received more attention than her defense of Omar. A lot of stuff gets published and quickly forgotten.

TFD (talk) 03:05, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Page overhaul needed

I believe that there are many issues with this page as is and should be edited to a more compact and straight to the point version. An example of this is the entire subsection of "Verbal Assault". It provides no substance to the article and would not be included in standard biography pages. Nothing WP:NOTEWORTHY becomes of this story. This section does not provide the reader with additional details and pretty much leaves it off at a cliff hanger. Just because something has been published in a reliable source does not require its inclusion in any given Wikipedia article. If we included everything ever published, it would become quickly become massively unbalanced and unwieldly. I call on WP:ONUS: While information must be verifiable to be included in an article, all verifiable information need not be included in an article. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article, and that it should be omitted or presented instead in a different article. The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is upon those seeking to include disputed content. This biography, in general, seems to be overly saturated with much of the information coming from the past few years. If we compare this biography to that of Abraham Lincoln we will find that it is of almost the same length. In addition, this page seems to be WP:PROMO or even WP:ADVOCACY with many section dedicated to campaigning and links to websites that directly contribute. Please let me know what you think. Yesornooridk (talk) 20:40, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

But hey, when I said this page wasn’t at all prepared for its Good Article nomination I was reverted. Trillfendi (talk) 20:56, 20 December 2020 (UTC)