W.When maniac insurgents stormed the United States Capitol on January 6, Rep. Cori Bush, like many elected officials, is “in our office in a locked room,” afraid of what would come next. More than three weeks later, she says she is still not safe.
Bush, a Missouri-based black progressive Democrat, confronted the updated threat of white supremacy from her new position in Parliament and immediately introduced a resolution to expel members who may have been involved in planning or escalating the disastrous scene.
Since then, she has claimed the targets have not been taken – not even in the halls of Congress.
On Friday, Bush said that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – a controversial Republican newcomer from Georgia who has expressed fondness for the baseless QAnon conspiracy – “scoldedHer in the hallway on January 13, exactly a week after the deadly riot. Taylor Greene responded in a tweet with an accompanying video by Bush’s leader of a “terrorist crowd. “
“I walked with my staff to vote,” Bush said in a statement about the experience. “I was in the tunnel between the Cannon Office Building and the Capitol when Marjorie Taylor Greene came after me, ranting loudly into her phone without wearing a mask. This happened one day after several of my House colleagues announced they had tested positive for COVID-19 after being in a room with Taylor Greene during the white supremacist assault on the Capitol. “
“Concerned about the health of my staff, other members of Congress, and their convention staff, I repeatedly called for her to put on a mask. Taylor Greene and her staff responded by calling me names, with an employee yelling, “Stop inciting violence with Black Lives Matter.” ”
Bush soon relocated her office due to escalating security concerns.
Faced with a protracted period of intersecting racial, health and economic crises, Congressional progressives have identified Bush as an emerging leader to help the Democrats through a time of grave unrest and urgent legislation. Three members – Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Mondaire Jones (D-NY) – told The Daily Beast that Bush is uniquely poised to push through reform as a matter of practical necessity, citing to her activism, medical acumen, and lived experience as a black working-class woman as valuable in advancing a leftist agenda.
“Cori has been a fighter all her life,” said Jones, a freshman Democrat. “From literally saving lives as a nurse to leading protests for racial justice in Ferguson to raising children on her own, it comes as no surprise to me that she’s been on the run from day one.”
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Bush, 44, said her early days in Washington are intrinsically linked to her personal story, including a post-survival emergence domestic violence and economic hardship that led to homelessness. Bush said she plans to share some of those tougher realities on a regular basis to help members better understand the Americans’ day-to-day struggles, a mandate especially crucial given that President Joe Biden’s job was former President Donald. Trump takes over under difficult circumstances.
“That’s why I wanted to come to Congress,” Bush said on the phone Thursday afternoon. “Don’t just come in and fly under the radar to have a title.”
The Removal Resolution, Bush’s first move in office, received dozens of co-signers. And Greene wasn’t Bush’s only target. She spent a significant amount of time demanding accountability to Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from her home state, who chose to pursue a cowardly ploy to contest the results of the presidential election, even after the riot that took place. provoked by similar lies had broken through. the capital.
“[She] knows firsthand the challenges and struggles that working people in our country face every day, ”said Pressley, a fellow member of the“ Squad ”. “She understands the need for bold, systemic policies that are appropriate to the scale and magnitude of the crises ahead and deliver the long-awaited change that our communities need and deserve.”
Bush, along with allies like Pressley, are trying to push Biden significantly to the left during his first 100 days in office. The president’s decades-long resume shows a commitment to a centrist political model, and while he has pledged to evolve into an FDR-esque version of himself to address the ongoing national crises, some on the left have already shown willingness more to make efforts. pressure if he doesn’t adhere to what they consider basic requirements.
Based on that expectation, Bush said she has already seen some early successes. For example, the day Biden released his COVID-19 task force in early November, she recalled reviewing the list of names and seeing several qualified doctors, but a total lack of nurses. At the time, she said officials of the Biden transition wanted to provide her input and recommended, from a registered nurse’s perspective, that they add a number of nurses to the roster, explaining that they are the front-line workers who typically have the closest contact with patients. Soon after, Biden’s transition team added a first registered nurse to their ward.
In addition to advocating for more coronavirus control, Bush’s early policy priorities are most centered around criminal justice and police reform, having endured a trio of police brutality, partner violence, and sexual assault. “It was pretty awful going through everything,” Bush said. “The fact that I could get through it and I lived to tell the story and then do something about it, it’s an honor.”
‘That voice must be represented. And not just by one person, ”she said.
Bush first took to the streets in 2014 with the Black Lives Matter movement to demand justice after the deadly shooting of Michael Brown by police. Her mission to get that message across to the Hill began two years later, first with an unsuccessful Senate nomination in 2016, followed by a bid for the House that also fell short in the 2018 midterm elections.
Lost twice and against a legacy in Missouri politics, Bush’s third attempt to be elected was the most challenging. She launched a bid against Rep. Lacy Clay, who took over the chair from his father, former Rep. Bill Clay. Laboriously rivaled with the well-funded youngster Clay, she rallied her own sizable fundraising campaign from grassroots backers in 2020 and eventually worked her way through the party stockpile to be sworn in as the state’s first black congressman on January 3 the following year.
“What she represents and why she resonates so quickly with so many is that we are all at some point trying to figure out how to get active,” said Kara Turrentine, a state director of Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) presidential campaign. . “At what point can we no longer be just Twitter warriors?”
“The way I saw it and many others saw that I was going to Congress was that people would not like me, I would be on my own. That has not been the case at all.“
– Representative Cori Bush
As the summer of global protests raged between multiracial coalitions seeking justice and solidarity for George Floyd, another black man murdered by police, Bush found himself at the center of an intense battle between parties over messaging and optics. While Biden and those in the Democratic caucus condemned the murder of Floyd by a white police officer, most didn’t use the slogan “ defund the police, ” and cautiously avoided what they perceived to be an activist-led phrase with an evolving definition.
The phrase became particularly controversial in the aftermath of the election, when some Democrats blamed the “defund” framework for losses in suburban districts. Two prominent Biden allies, former Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA), who is now a senior White House official, and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) tried to justify the defeats or near-defeats of their colleagues on the use of the term by Republicans, drawing a clear line between their position and that of Bush.
Bush, on the other hand, embraced the term during its emergence, giving a more nuanced meaning of what giving less resources to police departments might look like in practice. In the most basic interpretation of her view, it is simply a “mandate” to ensure that black and brown people are not murdered in vain. In one notable case, Bush went against party orthodoxy by publicly criticizing former President Barack Obama after saying that using “quicklySlogans like “defund” were a way to lose “a large audience.” She responded by naming individuals killed by excessive police forces, including Brown and Breonna Taylor, whose names were depicted on the mask she wore at the orientation. for new members.
“[She] knows what it means to be unhoused and uninsured, to survive domestic violence and police brutality, ”said Omar, a second-term congressman who is himself no stranger to the controversy between parties. “She was on the street fighting for change in Ferguson, and now she’s in the halls of power to change the story of what’s possible.”
Together with Omar, Bush immediately insisted that Trump be accused for the second time after the uprising. Democrats rallied around that position, eventually led by three senior Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, making the former president the only one in history to suffer that particular fate twice. During the impeachment process, she unabashedly called Trump the “ white supremist in chief, ” which drew further brag from Republican members.
Bush entered politics from a working-class background, attributing her early traction to a willingness to be “vulnerable” in difficult conversations. Asked what surprised her most at first, she said she was shocked at how fully embraced by members of her caucus.
“The way I saw it and many others saw that I was going to Congress was that people wouldn’t like me, I would be on my own,” Bush said. “That has not been the case at all.”
Her colleagues’ desire to collaborate was further confirmed on Thursday, when she, along with Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), introduced a new piece of environmental law that aims to go beyond traditional thinking on the matter by including a provision for police brutality. .
On a practical level, progressive activists and strategists point to the importance of someone from outside who now works effectively within the system to translate national concerns. Members are often criticized for being aloof from the needs of those for whom they have been chosen. There is hope that Bush and this new wave of progressives will be different.
“There is an urgency if you live it,” said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, which backed Bush’s bid. “She ran like a rebel, she wasn’t running to get insider support and get important donors, so when she returns to her district or when she’s on the hill, she’s not bothered by the interests of those people that make her in is able to say her opinion. “