“My mother cleaned homes and drove school buses, and when my family was on the brink of foreclosure… I started bartending and waitressing.”

For me, democratic socialism is about – really, the value for me is that I believe that in a modern, moral, and wealthy society, no person in America should be too poor to live.

I see people like me, who thought someone like me couldn’t be in politics, now are saying, ‘Oh, wait, I don’t need to take money from corporations to run. Maybe I’ll run, too.’

I wake up every day, and I’m a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx. Every single day.

I don’t think most of Congress understands how economics works.

Capitalism has not always existed in the world and will not always exist in the world.

I wasn’t born to a wealthy or powerful family – mother from Puerto Rico, dad from the South Bronx.

I’m an educator. I’m an organizer.

The only time we create any kind of substantive change is when we reach out to a disaffected electorate and inspire and motivate them to vote.

Rather than think of it as somewhere to run from, the Bronx is somewhere to invest.

People try to identify who is the most likely person to turn out, and what we did is that we changed who turns out. And that changes the whole electorate.

I was born in a place where your ZIP code determines your destiny.

When people feel like they are being spoken directly to, I do feel like… they’ll do things like turn out in an off-year, mid-year primary.

Democrats should be getting high-fives from sanitation truck drivers – that is what should be happening in America.

I’m very hands-on about social media. That’s my voice.

Public schools in the late ’80s and early ’90s were a total mess… we felt that if I was going to have a good educational option in my life, I would have to go to a public school district that actually served its children.

I’m not running from the left; I’m running from the bottom. I’m running in fierce advocacy for working-class New Yorkers.

It is better to be part of a great whole than to be the whole of a small part.

I don’t believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility.

I think it’s really good for a family or children to have a dog, cat, bird or whatever to grow up with.

What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.

Billionaires are seeing tremendous growth in their wealth. But working families are living in more desperation than at any time since the Great Depression.

Not everybody wants the responsibility of being the pillar of the family because it requires caring for others more than you care for yourself.

Holidays are the best. I couldn’t imagine being from a small family.

I come from a middle class family, and my parents weren’t too supportive of my career choices.