‘Woke’ by any other name: Stop erasing the terms of our survival

I have watched a word that once helped keep my people alive get turned into a punchline, then a slur, and now, this month, a punchline again, this time by people who are supposed to be on our side. On Aug.

11, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) sat across from Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week” and, asked about positions held by democratic socialists in 2020, repeated a phrase she attributed to a fellow politician: “Woke 1 was crazy.” She moved on quickly, arguing reasonably that candidates should be judged on where they stand today rather than where they stood five years ago. Since then, those four words have become part of a larger debate about what Democrats should leave behind from 2020.

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