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Eighth graders from Zeta Charter Schools in the Bronx were scheduled to tour the U.S. Capitol building Wednesday morning when the federal government shut down, placing their tour guide on furlough and leaving the disappointed students with no way to get inside the building.
But the group soon got an unforgettable civics lesson when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offered to step in as a replacement tour guide.
Ocasio-Cortez, who represents swaths of Queens and the Bronx where some Zeta students live, had already planned to greet the group on their tour. When she found out the tour was canceled, she decided to get the students into the building the only way she could: by personally escorting them.
“It was a totally different direction than we thought the day would go,” said Dan Rojas, the school manager and one of the chaperones. “We knew that what we had planned was not going to happen in the way that we had planned it many months ago. It turned very, very quickly into, actually, a much better experience.”
The adult chaperones were immediately star-struck when Ocasio-Cortez, a 35-year-old Democrat representing Queens and the Bronx who has shot to national prominence as a vocal leader of the party’s progressive wing, strolled up to the group outside the Capitol, Rojas said.
But few of the 12- and 13-year-old students recognized her.
“Before we actually met her, I had no idea who she was,” said 13-year-old Jordan Allen.
But Allen was excited to learn about Ocasio-Cortez’s backstory of growing up in the Bronx and Westchester County and working as an organizer and bartender before unseating a powerful incumbent, Joe Crowley, at age 28 in the Democratic primary.
The impromptu tour hit many of the major spots in the Capitol building, including the Rotunda and Senate chambers, where lawmakers just hours earlier had reached an impasse over health care funding and sent the government into a shutdown.
Seeing the Capitol, eerily empty without its normal tours, in the immediate aftermath of the shutdown — the first in seven years — made the Zeta students feel like they were witnessing history.
“It was like seeing America change in live,” said Allen. “It was amazing.”
The tour led by Ocasio-Cortez, often referred to as AOC, also included some stops that aren’t on the normal visitor agenda.
The tour focused on the long history of discrimination facing female lawmakers — and their creativity in overcoming it. Ocasio-Cortez took the students to a reading room only accessible to members of Congress that serves as a gathering place for the women.
She told them about Patsy Mink, the first woman of color elected to the House of Representatives, and Shirley Chisholm, the Brooklyn native and first Black woman in Congress whose portrait now hangs in the Capitol.
For 12-year-old Maia Gilliam, it was seeing Ocasio-Cortez in action that made the biggest impression.
“It was inspiring to see such a powerful woman,” she said.
“She made the tour a lot more interesting,” added 13-year-old Zachary Martinez.
Ocasio-Cortez wanted the students to leave the tour feeling like they were welcome at the Capitol — a building she reminded them is called “the people’s house” — said Karla Santillan, a spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez who joined the tour.
Some Zeta students left feeling hopeful they can make a positive change at a moment when political divisions have never felt sharper and the federal government has ground to a halt.
“I feel like all these old people are often not making good decisions, and it’s really affecting us a lot,” said Martinez. “But as time goes on, people of our generation, or even people coming close to our generation, they’re making big changes. They’re changing the world. They’re making it better for everyone.”
Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.
