By disparaging 2020 protests as ‘Woke 1’, liberals are following the rightwing’s lead

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s co-opting of conservative language to discuss a movement against state-sanctioned killings of Black people is damningAugust has brought us a referendum on “Woke 1” – a term that reductively brands 2020’s social justice movement – as prominent liberal voices reflect on that time period with disappointing hindsight. During a recent appearance on ABC’s This Week, when asked about 2020-era demands to abolish prisons and police, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the US congresswoman from New York, abandoned her previous support of the “defund the police” movement, and instead joked: “Woke 1 was crazyyyyy.”Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist, implied that the still-resounding calls for municipalities to reduce police budgets and to divert aid to poor communities were worth a