State Representative Francesca Hong, the frontrunner in tomorrow’s Democratic Wisconsin gubernatorial Wisconsin primary, has been dogged by tweets she wrote back in 2020, most notably those calling for defunding and abolishing the police and no longer celebrating Thanksgiving. (She no longer holds those stances.) In an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was asked about Hong’s old positions. “I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke One was crazy,’” she said with a smile, leading to a laugh from anchor Jonathan Karl. The congresswoman then explained that many politicians and activists no longer use the rhetoric they did six years ago.
Actually, there is no such thing as Woke One, and it would be almost impossible to define such a time, era, or set of positions. And even if you try to define Woke One, much of what happened was crazy—crazy awesome. If Ocasio-Cortez wants to be elected president in 2028 (and it really seems like she’s running), perhaps she has to distance herself from whatever she thinks people understand Woke One to be. But her comments underscore an important duality: We need a strong progressive movement pushing progressive ideas, including some that are essential but not yet popular; and also progressive politicians focused largely on popular ideas so that they can win elections and power. And those are separate tasks not accomplished by the same people.
The origins of “woke” aren’t totally agreed upon, but the general consensus is some Black activists first used it in the twentieth century as a call for African-Americans to remain vigilant in the fight against racism. The term became more frequently invoked by both Black people and non-Black supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement during the early 2010s.
Then, conservatives and even some on the center-left and left in the early 2020s started using the word to mock what they felt were performative or over-the-top displays of race or gender politics. There is no universal definition of woke. That makes it a useful term for politicians (who are often trying to be cryptic and vague), but not for journalists, academics, and others (who are in theory attempting to offer clarity and precision.)
Unless you spend a lot of time on Twitter or Bluesky, you probably aren’t familiar with Woke 1.0 or Woke 2.0, the discourse Ocasio-Cortez is referring to. Generally, Woke 1.0 is used by left-leaning people who were wary of some of what happened from 2014-2020, particularly in 2020. But there are two different and somewhat contradictory critiques of Woke 1.0. One is that the activism from 2014-2020 was too incremental and focused on small-bore elite issues like making sure corporate boards had more women and people of color and capitalizing the word Black in text; and that it occasionally it veered into calling for firings of people if their views weren’t popular with the left. The other critique is that the activism in 2020 in particular, with the calls for abolishing prisons and police, was far too bold and transformative, offering ideas so controversial they undermined the entire movement.
“Crazy,” of course, might be an apt word for both of those kinds of wokeness. Canceling Thanksgiving wouldn’t matter 364 days a year but would still annoy people. Police abolition is big and sweeping. Hong was once for both, which is why some Democrats are so wary of her being the party’s candidate in Wisconsin.
But 2014-2020 wasn’t just about the changing language or super far-fetched proposals. That was the time when America finally started punishing powerful men who sexually abused their employees and police officers who killed citizens. The protests after the killings of George Floyd and other unarmed citizens and African Americans were entirely justified and long overdue. And they got millions of white people on the streets and deeply invested in the cause of racial justice. The Black Lives Matter and MeToo movements were much needed reckonings in how America dealt with issues of race and gender. And this activism resulted in economic policy change too. Governments and private foundations canceled medical and student debt in part because of the growing focus during that time on racial income and wealth gaps.
Also, while centrist Democrats often cast the movements and language of this era as some kind of electoral dead weight, the fact is that the party had some of its best electoral performances in recent memory in 2018 and 2020.
None of that was crazy. Much of it was great. Ocasio-Cortez diminishes those movements and positive changes by broadly casting 2020 as some fever dream. The congresswoman obviously didn’t oppose the George Floyd protests. But language like “Woke One was crazy” implies there is some Woke One defined by unhinged protests and demands. But being in Louisville in 2020, I can attest that the protests here were entirely about arresting the officers who shot Breonna Taylor and never about abolishing prisons. It’s disappointing that one of the most prominent left-wing politicians in the country is engaged in such an inaccurate version of history.
But I get why she’s doing it. Ocasio-Cortez, Hong, Abdul El-Sayed, Zohran Mamdani, and many leftist politicians have backed away from their comments and stances in 2020, particularly around policing and racism. That makes sense. Many of these politicians either weren’t in office or were representing very left-wing areas back then. Now, they are seeking to be mayor, governor, senator, and perhaps president. Much of what they said in 2020 won’t appeal to white swing voters (“police exist to uphold white supremacy,” said Hong) or much of anyone beyond super-progressives (abolishing police).
Broadly, the progressive left, inspired by Mamdani’s success, is running campaigns that emphasize economic issues such as lowering housing costs and stopping the expansion of data centers, while downplaying other issues. Even abortion and other causes where popular opinion is on their side have been sidelined for populist economics. That’s in part because the left has decided it will do better in both Democratic primaries and general elections if it wins more voters without college degrees, and the theory is that economic populism is the best way to do that. (Neither El-Sayed nor Mamdani won voters without degrees in their races against centrist Democrats, so this remains just a theory for now.) Woke 2.0 is generally this economic populism combined with strong opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza, which has in some ways supplanted police brutality as the social justice cause of the left.
The problem is that this strategy means that many of our leading progressive politicians aren’t talking much about immigration, policing, higher education, or other issues where conservatives are taking the country decidedly to the right. We need a balance here. Even if progressive politicians trying to woo swing voters concentrate on economic issues, the broader left can’t abandon these other causes. Progressive groups and people not running statewide or nationally must still address them.
And not just the popular ones. America would be better with more funding devoted to social services and less to police; more immigrants instead of fewer; the prison population gradually reduced. It’s vital that some progressive groups and politicians not just push popular progressive ideas but also make progressive ideas popular.
That’s not Ocasio-Cortez’s role though, particularly if she’s going to run for Senate or president. Her role in the progressive movement is principally to win votes. But she shouldn’t undermine progressive goals and movements by implying they are crazy. The congresswoman might want to remember the words of the civil rights leader Ella Baker, who purportedly said back then, “Martin didn’t make the movement, the movement made Martin.” It is hard to imagine a Mayor Mamdani, a Senate nominee El-Sayed, or a viable presidential candidate Ocasio-Cortez without the various movements of 2014-2020, akin to how Martin Luther King, Jr. is a historic figure only because tens of thousands of people marched in Washington and other places alongside him.
Woke 1.0 had its successes and failures, just as the congresswoman did in her earlier days on Capitol Hill. She wasn’t crazy then, and neither were the activists who were trying to change America, then and now.
