'People Are Dying:' Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Defends Green New Deal | NBC News

[0:00]People are more concerned about helping oil companies than helping their own families. I don't think so. I don't think so. This is about our lives. This is about American lives and it should not be partisan. One year ago, I was waitressing in a taco shop in downtown Manhattan. I just got health insurance for the first time a month ago. This is not an elitist issue. This is a quality of life issue. You want to tell people that their concern and their desire for clean air and clean water is elitist. Tell that to the kids in the South Bronx, which are suffering from the highest rates of childhood asthma in the country. Tell that to the families in Flint, whose kids have their blood is ascending in in lead levels, their brains are damaged for the rest of their lives. Call them elitist. You're telling them that those kids are trying to get on a plane to Davos. People are dying. This is serious. This should not be a partisan issue. This is about our constituents and all of our lives. Iowa, Nebraska, broad swats of the Midwest are drowning right now, underwater. Farms, towns that will never be recovered and never come back. Science should not be partisan. This we are facing a national crisis. And if we do not ascend to that crisis, if we do not ascend to the to to the levels in which we were threatened at the Great Depression, when we were threatened in World War II, if we do not ascend to those levels, if we tell the American public that we are more willing to invest and bail out big banks, then we are willing to invest in our farmers and our urban families, then I don't know what we're here doing. I don't know what we're here doing. Hey, NBC News viewers. Thanks for checking out our YouTube channel. Subscribe by clicking on that button down here and click on any of the videos over here to watch the latest interviews, show highlights and digital exclusives. Thanks for watching.