A.O.C. Said ‘Woke 1.0 Was Crazy.’ But What Is It?

“Woke 1.0 was crazy,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said in a recent interview.

The congresswoman, speaking on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, seemed to distance herself from the positions of an era of Democratic politics around 2020, shortly after she rose to prominence. Some on the left now see the rhetoric of that time as ineffective and divisive. There has been a widespread retreat on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts among corporations. And some public officials, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York, have walked back their calls to defund the police.