Thread by @jeffjarvis

At Riverside Church for #MLKNow. Packed.

Ta-Nehisi Coates interviews @aoc for #MLKNow now.

"I would see the difference between my school and their school, my air and their air." @aoc on the difference she saw in the 40-minute drive from her second Westchester home to her cousins' in the Bronx.

"Social movements are the moral compass for public office and people who hold public office." @aoc says public will is shaped and expressed by artists, activists and journalists. #MLKNow

Now Coates asks about marginal tax rates. "It's saying where do we draw the line on excess?"

Maybe "you too can be a billionaire and have more than millions of families is not an aspiration." @aoc cautions that not all billionaires are immoral. But a system that allows billionaires when people in Alabama have ringworm is wrong.

Talking about Amazon in NYC, @aoc calls it "a digital Walmart." She worries that "our best and brightest are making Angry Birds."

"Social media is not just a place to inject ideas. It is a place to get a more honest sense of the pulse," @AOC says. "I use social media to *listen* as much as I use it to speak."
Amen!! #MLKNow

"We don't have to compromise our values in order to find common ground." @aoc #MLKNow

Ta-Nehisi Coates says one of the things he admires about @aoc and social media and one of the things that has him scared is that "you clap back at these guys."

"When I clap back it is not just in reflexive self defense, it is to dismantle the frames of racism and misogyny." @aoc at #MLKNow 🙌

Coates worries that inhaling toxicity even if just to respond is damaging.
Whether we acknowledge the bad forces or not, that doesn't mean they're not there, @AOC says. "It doesn't matter what I inhale, it matters what I exhale...I feel the need for all of us to breath fire."

Ta-Nehisi Coates ends his interview with @aoc reminding us all that 2019 is the 400th anniversary of Africans in America, in bondage in 1619.