HOUSTON, Texas – Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY – 14) made this Saturday a call for national solidarity from Houston (Texas) where he arrived to deliver $ 3.2 million dollars raised by his legislative team for the victims of the winter storm.
“A disaster like this should be taken as a matter of national emergency, considering that not everyone is equally impacted,” said Ocasio Cortez at a press conference from the headquarters of the Banco de Houston Food .
Ocasio-Cortez arrived as a guest of Senator Sylvia Garcia (TX – 29), also a Democrat, to participate in several events to distribute food to the victims of the winter storm that left several million without electricity and drinking water.
“The tragedy that affects the inhabitants of Texas is not temporary, it is not a few days. In many cases it means an economic, social and mental delay that will last for several years ”, he pointed out.
The country’s president, Joe Biden , declared today a “major disaster” in Texas, one of the states hardest hit by the storm that has caused at least 59 deaths, and decided to allocate federal assistance to support state efforts and locals to recover the affected areas.
AOC, as the congresswoman of Latino origin is also known, indicated that the 3.2 million raised until Friday night will be distributed among various non-profit organizations for profit throughout the state.
Message to the undocumented
He also exhorted immigrants who fear to apply for social assistance to that they approach the food banks of their respective communities without fear of being asked for identification.
“Documented or undocumented, you can have assistance and help here,” said Ocasio-Cortez in Spanish .
For her part, Senator García highlighted the current importance that Ocasio-Cortez has for the future of the Democratic Party and praised her popularity and effort to raise a significant sum of money in so a short time.
“In the first four hours it had already exceeded a million dollars and 24 hours later it already reached the two million, “Garcia said.
The senator also indicated that there is already an action plan by the Democratic caucus for Congress to approve an emergency package that will serve” the full recovery ”of the state.
He also said that he will support the state Democratic caucus to carry out an investigation of what happened to the electricity system and analyze the options so that the massive blackouts and continuous “they will not happen again.”
They accuse Texas Republicans of negligence
Sheila Jackson Lee, also a congresswoman Democrat for Texas, ta The Republican political class in the state was negligent for not having prevented the collapse of the electricity supply network system.
“Those who are suffering the most from this catastrophe are those with low resources, they have less. It’s unnecessary for them to be hurting, ”said Jackson Lee, whose neighborhoods within her constituency, like Garcia’s, had no power for several days.
Ocasio-Cortez was praised this week on social networks for that charitable response to the victims of Texas while criticizing and calling for the resignation of Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for having traveled with his family on vacation to Mexico at an important time
“If Senator Cruz had resigned from his post last January after having promoted a violent insurrection in which there were fatalities, his vacations would have been in peace,” Ocasio-Cortez stressed on the network social twitter this Wednesday.
Cruz moved to Cancun while millions of families in the state remained without electricity, tens of thousands without water due to the winter storm and several million had received instructions from local agencies to boil it for your consumption, since the plants for processing have not worked in recent days due to the lack of electricity.
The controversy forced the Republican senator to anticipate his return to Houston one day after his trip to Mexico.
The water and electricity supply cuts in homes, hospitals and businesses in Texas have caused millions of people to evacuate and move to the homes of neighbors, friends or family members.
The storm has made it impossible for the means of transporting cargo to move food in the supermarkets in the area that have experienced a shortage of basic food.
Until Friday, more than 1, 220 municipal drinking water systems that supply service to 14, 6 million residents had reported some type of service interruption.
Of the 254 counties in Texas, 161 had issued orders to boil the a drinking water before consumption.