June 1, 2019

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Walked Into a Bar…And Poured Scorn on the Minimum Wage

The ex-bartender serves up soundbites on low wages for restaurant workers.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) at the Queensboro Restaurant in QueensDrew Angerer/Getty

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When was the last time your bartender talked to you about the need for a fair wage or about the exploitation of tipped workers? Well, if you were at the Queensboro Restaurant in Jackson Heights last night, you sure would have gotten an earful from the 29-year-old behind the bar. 

Wearing a blue and gray apron, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) mixed drinks and served tables for an hour last night to show support for the Raise The Wage Act, which would gradually boost the federal minimum wage for tipped workers.

“The federal tipped minimum wage is $2.13 an hour—that is unacceptable!” Ocasio-Cortez, a former bartender, said. From behind the bar, she told patrons and supporters that any job that pays that rate is “indentured servitude.”

Ocasio-Cortez delivered pizzas to hungry customers and showed her skills with a shaker behind the bar, chatting about the need to raise the minimum wage for tipped workers to $15 an hour. The restaurant was packed with people taking selfies and posting videos of the congressional freshman and internet celebrity. 

And she wasn’t the only politician hanging out at a bar on a Friday evening. Former President Barack Obama met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a brewery in Ottawa, Canada. Let’s hope that they left a nice tip for their bartenders—who already get a minimum wage of about $10 an hour. 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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