US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke on voting rights Sunday at the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, leading New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie to speculate she is positioning herself for a presidential run in 2028. “Maybe I’m wrong,” he said on Instagram. “But I think she’s running.”
Interesting take! Especially for a lifelong political junkie who considers himself an unintended beneficiary of the Civil Rights Movement. But if I’m reading the tea leaves correctly, AOC’s appearance on “hallowed ground” in Atlanta may have deeper significance than speculation about the next presidential horse race.
Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, was invited to speak by US Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., who is senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist. Both are rising stars in the Democratic Party firmament, and each is from a state that has considerable clout in the electoral college. That alone makes the event newsworthy, and I would happily vote for either in a Democratic primary. But I was most powerfully drawn not to a potential future horse race but to AOC’s overt message:
Like Dr. King, baptized in this Church on this hallowed ground, who believed in the audacious idea that maybe this country could maybe live up to the promises we made in our founding documents, I’m here today, brothers and sisters, with a simple message: We stand together, and we are not going back!
The moment was especially fraught, coming only a few days after the US Supreme Court effectively gutted what remains of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in Louisiana v. Callais, threatening the majority-Black legislative districts formerly encouraged by judicial interpretations of the law in time for this year’s Nov. 3 general elections. TheGriot, a Black news and lifestyle platform that covered AOC’s talk, estimates as many as two dozen Black members of Congress could lose their seats as a result. Said Ocasio-Cortez:
We are living in terrifying times, but we are people of faith, and our faith is the foundation that gives us the courage to fight in the face of overwhelming odds. like Deborah who rose as a judge in a time of cruel kings and said, “I will go.” Like Daniel, who stood firm in the court of a blasphemous king and declared, “There is a God in heaven.” And like Dr. King […]
Ocasio-Cortez, who credits her Catholic faith for her bedrock political principles, made it clear the damage done by white Republicans who benefit from Louisiana v. Callais, and who rushed to “crack,” or erase, the Black-majority district in Memphis (ably represented now by the first Jewish congressman from Tennessee) will not end there:
What happens to Georgia, happens to New York. What happens to Tennessee, happens to California. What happens to Louisiana, happens to all of us, Ebenezer, because this is America. We are not divided by state. We are united by our humanity and common citizenship. Because no man can grant us our humanity. No law can erase it, no king, no system, and no president can strip it away! Because it is not given by man — it is ordained by God!
It is that appeal to our common humanity and equality before God and the law, so important to Catholic social teaching — indeed, to foundational beliefs of the Judeo-Christian tradition, of Islam and most of the world’s faith traditions — that reached out and grabbed me. As Ocasio-Cortez returned to her seat in the congregation, Rev. Warnock stepped forward and sealed the deal with a response traditional in evangelical and African American spaces: “Let the church say: Amen.”
To which I can only add: Amen. And, borrowing from a call-and-response in my own mainline Protestant liturgical tradition: Thanks be to God.
Warnock hasn’t exactly been silent on the issues Ocasio-Cortez touched on in her brief remarks, and he speaks with the same kind of moral clarity, skillfully combining his roles as a US senator and senior pastor of Dr. King’s church in Atlanta. When Louisiana v. Callais was handed down, his Senate office cited the same foundational principles of equity and common humanity:
For decades, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has protected fair and equal representation in our democratic process. With this decision, coupled with the continued erosion of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court, the voice of the American people has never been squeezed further from our democratic discourse.
We are at a crossroads where politicians are picking their voters. Over the past year, we have seen Washington Republicans take health care away from millions, increase the prices of countless goods, and now the people they purport to represent have less power to fight back against the politicians costing them their jobs, their health, and their wealth.
Clearly, we are straying further from the core voting principles that helped create the diverse body that people see representing them today. We must restore the Voting Rights Act and ban gerrymandering. Our democracy is on the line.
Bouie, who has been editorializing on Instagram recently about the Voting Rights Act and partisan gerrymandering, posted a video clip of AOC’s talk at Ebenezer. “She’s doing this at a Black church, in Georgia,” he said, “knowing full well that the key to winning any kind of nomination is doing well with Black primary voters.” Leaning into the camera and smiling, he added, “I think she’s running. To me, that’s somebody who’s running for president.”
For her part, AOC said recently at the University of Chicago, she doesn’t aspire to a specific higher office. “Presidents come and go. Senate [and] House seats, elected officials come and go, but single-payer healthcare is forever,”she said, ticking off a series of public policy issues. “All of that,” she concluded. “When you aren’t attached. When you haven’t been like fantasizing about being this or that since the time you were seven years old, it is tremendously liberating.” A deft, and highly traditional, answer for aspiring presidential hopefuls (and one that was cited by theGriot in its writeup of AOC’s visit to Atlanta).
Warnock, for his part, is mentioned from time to time as presidential timber. Another ritual for elected officials of great promise. But that’s missing a larger point, one that AOC alluded to when she said she stood on “hallowed ground” at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
For several years now, as our inside-the-Beltway national politics has taken on the atmosphere into a semi-autocratic, proto-fascist crocodile pit, I have argued the only way to lift us out of the partisan fever swamps is a politically diverse, interracial mass movement of “We the People” that combines the moral clarity and organizational skill of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black church.
This renewal of belief in America’s founding principles, if it comes at all, won’t be accomplished in one election cycle. It will involve court reform at the highest levels, and it will involve a profound change in racial attitudes. For either to happen, a difficult and time-consuming process of public education, reconciliation and mutual acceptance of guiding principles will have to come first. But I’m hoping — and praying — AOC’s brief remarks Sunday at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta signal the beginnings of just such a movement.
[Uplinked May 14, 2026]
Ordinary Time 