Avoiding any tactical retreat is suicide (and it's also a very fascist ethic, read Umberto Eco on how). Any politics involves working with people you disagree with to achieve your goals, there are enough alliances to make to achieve policies goals of decarceration, against the drug war, labor rights, etc. Policies that empower the working class. Without coordinating with outside pressure from said labor groups and other organizations, such aims within the system are indeed impossible, but she has the potential to do far more than just symbolic gestures.
every group you named is happily incorporated within the system. the pressure I'm talking about is like the week of insurrection prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act or what we saw earlier this year. there's a reason every reformist policy since the CRA has failed to pass: the pols aren't the people who get it done, the revolutionary segment of the class are. the most AOC can hope to accomplish are tepid reforms that challenge no one and help very few people.
you'd have more of a point if congress were capable of passing anything more contentious than symbolic gestures right now but the only way they can do that is on matters of importance to the whole of a very divided bourgeoisie. as few items make that list - fewer every day as gulf between them grows - the NPIC, "labor" groups (really another part of the NPIC at best, entrenched business interests at worst), etc are no more capable of getting bills passed than AOC is - indeed, they've been failing to do so since the 90s.
Avoiding any tactical retreat is suicide (and it's also a very fascist ethic, read Umberto Eco on how). Any politics involves working with people you disagree with to achieve your goals, there are enough alliances to make to achieve policies goals of decarceration, against the drug war, labor rights, etc. Policies that empower the working class. Without coordinating with outside pressure from said labor groups and other organizations, such aims within the system are indeed impossible, but she has the potential to do far more than just symbolic gestures.
every group you named is happily incorporated within the system. the pressure I'm talking about is like the week of insurrection prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act or what we saw earlier this year. there's a reason every reformist policy since the CRA has failed to pass: the pols aren't the people who get it done, the revolutionary segment of the class are. the most AOC can hope to accomplish are tepid reforms that challenge no one and help very few people.
you'd have more of a point if congress were capable of passing anything more contentious than symbolic gestures right now but the only way they can do that is on matters of importance to the whole of a very divided bourgeoisie. as few items make that list - fewer every day as gulf between them grows - the NPIC, "labor" groups (really another part of the NPIC at best, entrenched business interests at worst), etc are no more capable of getting bills passed than AOC is - indeed, they've been failing to do so since the 90s.