What AOC’s ‘Woke” Comments Say About Her and the Left

You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4S1YFDv9yIJZ_fo2PO8ieTl3O7bQm8V4" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">YouTube or https://newrepublic.substack.com/s/right-now-with-perry-bacon" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Substack.

You can read a transcript https://newrepublic.com/article/214434/transcript-aoc-woke-comments-say-left" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn’t the only prominent progressive distancing themselves from “Woke 1.0.” Senator Bernie Sanders and Mayor Zohran Mamdani have in recent days decried the idea of defunding police.

In the latest edition of Right Now, https://polisci.brown.edu/people/deva-woodly" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Deva Woodly, a scholar of social movements who has https://www.amazon.com/dp/0197603955?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">extensively studied Black Lives Matter, argues that progressives and liberals https://prospect.org/2026/08/13/hong-campaign-postmortem-socialism-woke-wisconsin-primary/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">who use the term woke and distance themselves from the activism of the early 2020s are making a mistake.

Woodly says that they are using the language of the right and attacking allies who helped these politicians get elected in the first place.

She also argued that the idea of ensuring public safety by spending money on policies other than policing is popular, even if the term defund is not.

Woodly is a political science professor at Brown University and a https://kettering.org/fellow/deva-woodly/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">fellow at the Kettering Foundation.