36Views
Peep ‘Knock Down the House’ on Netflix to see how AOC became a boss
On May 1, Netflix released Knock Down the House, a documentary from Rachel Lears that follows the congressional campaigns of four democratic female candidates.
They include West Virginia’s Paula Jean Swearengin, Amy Vilela of Las Vegas, Cori Bush of St. Louis, Missouri, and– at the time a political unknown — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
These women were all longshots and political outsiders. Yet the film makes the argument that just being a women makes you a political outsider. There are infinitely stricter rules that apply to women, from the amount you smile to the makeup and clothes you wear.
The film shows AOC preparing for her bartending shift. Bush tells us she is a nurse and ordained pastor who did not expect to find herself in activism until the Black Lives Matter showed up at her doorstep. Vilela a single mother, tells a constituent she is “not a career politician.” And Swearengin describes herself to a crowd as a “coal miner’s daughter.”
Another thing the women have in common? They all mounted grassroots campaigns against entrenched Democrats. Bush’s opponent, Lacy Clay, along with his father, had represented the St. Louis district since 1969.
The film devotes the lion’s share to AOC’s race against her opponent, Joe Crowley, who had not been challenged in a primary for 14 years. Additionally, he was known as “The Boss” in Queens. He was also the fourth most-powerful Democrat in Congress.
At the beginning of the film, AOC says with a laugh,
“If I were a rational person, I would’ve dropped out of this race a long time ago.”
The film demonstrates how, at first, Crowley did not take AOC seriously. At a forum where the two were meant to debate, Crowley did not even bother to show up.
Instead, he sent an ill-prepared surrogate in his place. By the time they debated in person as the election neared, Lears showed Crowley nervously rolling up his sleeves as AOC delivered a rousing response. This is a woman — a person– to reckon with.
The women also share their heart-breaking backstories. AOC describes how her dad, who “knew [her] soul better than anybody in this world,” passed away while she was in college.
Vilela’s story especially struck a chord. She describes how she lost her daughter because the hospital would not provide her with potentially life-saving tests as she could not show proof of insurance.
Sitting with her other daughter, Vilela says, as her voice breaks,
“It’s not just us. It’s thirty thousand families a year.”
Vilela, a champion of Medicare for all, says she will never stop fighting. She also vows that her daughter’s death wasn’t in vain.
Out of the four women, only AOC is successful in her quest to unseat her opponent. Still, the film shows that amidst of the heart-breaking losses — we can hear Vilela’s sobs as the results roll in — change can happen. As AOC states, in an undeniably shocking moment after winning, we can meet the machine with a movement.
And even though I already knew how AOC’s primary election went, I shed a few tears, too.