“A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” a seven-minute film was launched Wednesday by The Intercept.
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Narrated by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and illustrated by Molly Crabapple, the film shows an Ocasio-Cortez of the future retracing the steps taken by people and politicians alike to tackle climate change as well provide everyone necessary services like Medicare for all.
Famous author, activist, and director of the film, Naomi Klein wrote, “This is a project unlike any we have done before, crossing boundaries between fact, fiction, and visual art, co-directed by Kim Boekbinder and Jim Batt and co-written by Ocasio-Cortez and Avi Lewis.”
The film starts with AOC, a couple of decades older, traveling from New York to Washington D.C. in a bullet train, remembering when she first started her commute in 2019 as a new congresswoman in the “most diverse Congress in history.”
This diverse Congress is being led by women like AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, etc., presently pushing for the Green New Deal as a way to stop the disastrous effects of climate due to irresponsible capitalist ventures.
The deal has been criticized by capitalist corporations and Republicans alike for being 'unattainable.'
“That’s the message we’ve been hearing from the 'serious' center for four months straight: that it’s too big, too ambitious, that our Twitter-addled brains are incapable of it and that we are destined to just watch walruses fall to their deaths on Netflix until it’s too late,” Naomi Klein wrote.
Hence the reason for the movie showing how the Green New Deal is not only achievable but sustainable. It also gives a small history lesson highlighting how, during the 1970s and 80s, research had been done on the harmful effects of oil and fossil fuel, but instead of changing course, they instead attempted to change the discourse.
Finally, when the world was at the brink of collapse due to climate change, a group of strong politicians with help of the local community and Indigenous people helped stop climate change while also making sure jobs and health care were available for everybody.
The film was inspired by an article by Kate Aronoff “that was set in the year 2043 after the Green New Deal had come to pass. It told the story of what life was like for a fictionalized 'Gina,' who grew up in the world that Green New Deal policies created,” recalled Klein.
The article broke from every dystopian science fiction movie or novel based on human extinction or apocalypse and “struck a nerve with readers” according to Klein.
The film has a similar idea but shows a world after the Green New Deal had become a reality.
“It’s about how, in the nick of time, a critical mass of humanity in the largest economy on earth came to believe that we were actually worth saving,” writes Klein with a hope that the project actually “plays some small part in inspiring an actual Green New Deal.”