 So last year on the show, we talked about how Sherry Bustos, who's the new head of the DCCC, has decided to blacklist organizations and vendors who choose to work with progressive primary campaigns that are challenging corporate Democrats. Now, this is incredibly bad, obviously, because we need to make sure that we're not discouraging primary campaigns against corporate Democrats who are bringing down the aggregate party and their name. But regardless, Sherry Bustos was refusing to listen or back down. In fact, she doubled down and she's not going to reverse this policy. She's going to continue blacklisting progressive primary challengers. And that's incredibly disgusting, but it's predictable because the DNC and the DCCC, these organizations are corrupt and rotten to the core and they don't want to do anything that would offend their corporate donors. Now a number of progressives like AOC and Rokana have spoken out about this to their credit and they've condemned the DCCC. But what they've also been doing is protesting this move by not paying their dues into the DCCC. So when a candidate raises money and gets donations, usually a percentage of their overall fundraising is supposed to go towards the DCCC. But AOC has not been paying her dues. In fact, there's been reports now that she's pissing off a lot of Democrats because she is withholding her dues. In fact, she has withheld $250,000 from the DCCC. And there's been reports about this, how it's actually making people in the Democratic Party angry that they're paying their dues. But she isn't, but she's doing something that's principled. She's taking a stand against a corrupt organization. But on top of that, she's not doing this to try to hurt other Democrats because in fact, she still is raising money for other Democrats. And she tweeted about this and responded saying, I give quite a bit to fellow Democrats, we've raised over $300,000 for others, more than my dues, with over 50% going to swing states. The DCCC made clear that they will blacklist any organization that helps progressive candidates like me. I can choose not to fund that kind of exclusion. So this move here is incredibly bold because she is basically tapping a beehive. She's pissing off Democratic Party institutions that could try to hurt her in some way, shape, or form, right? They could deny money to her since she's not paying in her dues. I don't think she needs it since she even raised more than Nancy Pelosi. But on top of that, they can leak these types of articles to the press, which is what I think probably happened where they talk about how AOC, maybe she's selfish, nudge, nudge, wink, wink for not paying her dues. But what AOC did in return after the story kind of started to proliferate is she created her own organization to compete with the DCCC so she can still help Democrats while not simultaneously helping corrupt organizations like the DCCC. And as Daniel Moranz of HuffPost reports, New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's new political action committee raised over $69,000 on Saturday, its first day of public fund raising, showcasing her influence amid a feud with senior House Democrats. Ocasio-Cortez's campaign was shared in the proceeds from email and Twitter fundraising appeals for the PAC, also raked in about $100,000 on Saturday, according to official data that Ocasio-Cortez's campaign shared with HuffPost. On its own, the PAC, Courage to Change, received over 4,600 donations as of late Saturday night and amounts that averaged under $15. It's a very exciting launch, Ocasio-Cortez campaign spokesman Corbyn Trent said, when I see so many people stand up and say they are ready to change not just DC, but the country, it fills me with hope. We're paving a different path, her campaign wrote in the first fund raising email. The DCCC has been an entrenched tool in a system that blocks working class candidates from running for office and protects out of touch incumbents. So this is what I'd like to call a boss move because she is not playing their games. She's not going to do it. They're accusing her of not paying dues. And I think the reason why this story got out is, one, they wanted to shame her. But two, they were hoping that maybe she would pay dues because when we see these reports about AOC, even out raising individuals like Nancy Pelosi while not having to make a single call to a big donor. Well, they think that's a lot of money. And since we're all self-interested members of Congress and we also want to get elected, we would like her to pay her dues because we like that she is, you know, a prolific fundraiser and we want some of that money. But it didn't go the way that corporate Democrats had hoped because what did she do? Well, she created her own pack courage to change so that way she doesn't have to worry about taking money from the DCCC. She can raise money with grassroots small donors averaging $15. And that's how she's going to help other Democrats get elected, not by relying on the corrupt DCCC and corporate Democrats, not by helping other corporate Democrats who then smear her and fight against her agenda. No, she's doing it her own way, and it is already proving to be successful. This feels really good because it actually gives me hope. It gives my cynical heart just a little bit of hope because she is remaining principled and she knows like she's told us about the pressure to conform in D.C. And here she is not only fighting against that pressure, but she is spitting in its face and telling it to go fuck itself. And I love that. I love that we can really rely on her to fight against the corrupt machine that is the DCCC because it tries to crush any primary challengers to corporate Democrats, and they are the ones that have to go if we truly want to change the country and beat Republicans for once. So I absolutely applaud her. This is a bold move, and I'm glad that it's paying off literally because we want to help Democrats get elected, but not the shitty corporate ones who aren't actually going to represent us. And by donating to this pack, I'm glad to know that my money won't be helping to fund individuals who I believe are antithetical to the progressive movement who are just bad for the country, who should join the Republican Party. So great move. Kudos to AOC. I love this.