Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave the closing speech at the Sept. 22 rally, remarking on the significance of young people in the 2024 election. Claire Thurston/ Junior Staffwriter
On Sunday, Sept. 22, the Harris-Walz campaign and the Pennsylvania Democratic Party co-hosted a “Students for Harris-Walz” rally in Carnegie Mellon’s Rangos Ballroom.
The event lasted an hour and consisted of remarks by Mayor Ed Gainey, County Executive Sara Innamorato, campus organizer Agatha Prairie, and Carnegie Mellon College Democrats President Avalon Sueiro. The event ended with longer speeches by featured guests Representative Summer Lee and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, all of whom focused on their support for the HarrisWalz campaign and their criticisms of Trump’s campaign.
Ed Gainey, the 61st mayor of Pittsburgh and the city’s first Black mayor, kicked off the event with a high-energy speech. Gainey gave impassioned remarks framed by the theme of preventing Trump’s return to the presidency and presenting a choice between anger and love.
“[Trump] puts anger before love, and anger is one letter removed from danger,” Gainey said. He contrasted the candidates with a dual plea to “send the orange man back to Florida where he can no longer bother us” and the unyielding message, “We can’t allow nothing to stop the progress that we are making right now with Kamala Harris.”
Gainey mostly focused on his dread of a Trump presidency, only lowering his vocal volume (but not his intensity) once to solemnly condemn Trump’s remark about immigrants eating cats and dogs at the Ocasio-Cortez-hosted presidential debate.
Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato followed up with a speech about what “all of yinz” need to do to elect Kamala Harris this November. Innamorato is a Pittsburgh native and University of Pittsburgh graduate who previously served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.
As Allegheny County Executive, Innamorato serves on several boards and initiatives, focusing on what she said are her core issues, including the opioid epidemic, housing insecurity, environmentalism, and creating jobs. She emphasized how excited she was to elect Kamala Harris, calling her “exactly the leader we need today.”
Innamorato also advertised Pittsburgh’s satellite voting location, which will be located just off campus at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall on October 15, 16, and 17, 8 a.m. – 4 p.m., offering a wide range of voting registration services and even early voting. Innamorato asserted that this concrete voting resource is a way to help bring about the “new way forward” she spoke about.
Agatha Prairie acts as Campus Organizer for the Harris-Walz campaign on not only Carnegie Mellon’s campus, but also on the campuses of the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University, Chatham University, and the Community College of Allegheny County. In her remarks, Prairie cited that in 2020, the Democrats “won Pennsylvania by less than 5 votes per precinct” and presented a call to action for students, saying, “I guarantee that you can think of five friends off the top of your head that you can convince to make their voices heard this November.”
Avalon Sueiro is both the founder and president of Carnegie Mellon’s College Democrats and a Campus Fellow for the Harris-Walz Campaign. Sueiro spoke about the importance of Carnegie Mellon’s position and encouraged students to “have those tough conversations” with classmates. She also introduced Representative Summer Lee, calling her “a fighter for Western Pennsylvania.”
Summer Lee was the first of the featured speakers to take the stage. Born in Allegheny County, Lee was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives before being elected to represent Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district in the US House of Representatives in 2022.
Lee said she understands the weight of this position nationally, “because we’re in Western Pennsylvania … and the road to the White House, the road to the Senate, and the road to the House all lead right here to y’all’s campuses,” because of Pennsylvania’s role as a swing state.
Lee was especially connected with her audience, both in her intimate yet professional manner of speech and her knowledge of her young audience, “the voices of right now,” as just as passionate about “[getting] your straight As” as about “[deciding] who’s going to shape society.”
She framed the key issues that the candidates represent in personal terms: “I’m going to the poll place for my family. I’m going to the poll place for the most marginalized person in my life.” Like the others, she ended on the matter of fact that, “We have a choice, and we would be foolish if we did not take this opportunity.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was the headliner of the rally. Ocasio-Cortez was the only politician at the event not representing Pittsburgh. The youngest woman to be elected to Congress at 29, she represents part of the Bronx, the borough she calls home, along with part of Queens in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Her progressive politics include the Green New Deal, maintaining Medicare, abolishing ICE, and access to reproductive care. Her core value as a young representative is, “We’re going to have to live in the world that they leave us … I’m here to make the world.”
Ocasio-Cortez claims that the fiery energy behind young people’s interest in the result of the election comes from specific policy needs. “We’re going to have some expectations on our policy, aren’t we?” of which she named access to reproductive care and action on climate change. More than anything, she emphasized the impact that young people’s votes will have on the result of the presidential election.
Lee and Ocasio-Cortez were deeply united in their message on the significance of the youth vote, especially in Pittsburgh. They both stated its importance in no uncertain terms. Summer Lee opened her speech with the conviction, “We are all in the most powerful room in the country” due to the intersection of the youth vote and the Pennsylvania vote.
Ocasio-Cortez asserted that, “It will be young people in the state of Pennsylvania that will make Kamala Harris president of the United States.” According to Pew Research Center, 77 percent of Gen Z are Democrats. The CIRCLE (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) at Tufts University focuses its research heavily on the youth vote. According to CIRCLE, 40.8 million members of Gen Z will be eligible to vote in 2024, 8.3 million of whom will be first-time voters.
But Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t take these numbers to signify an easy Democratic victory. She said, “It’s not just that we exist as a population, it’s that we’re voting as a population,” emphasizing that it’s not enough for Gen Z to simply have Democratic numbers, but that it requires active participation, actually registering and going out to vote, to see the impact of those numbers: “They can win, but it’s going to take all of us in order to deliver it.”
The refrain throughout all the speeches was full support for the Harris-Walz campaign, as Summer Lee proudly declared, “Let me be clear about where I’ll be. I’ll be at the polls voting for Harris and Walz.”