Ms. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 1510 Castle Hill Avenue, #311 Bronx, NY 10462
Dear Ms. Ocasio-Cortez,
My sincerest compliments and congratulations on your stunning and important election victory last week. Like you, I am a child of The Bronx, from up north in Woodlawn. My parents were “southerners” from Mott Haven, specifically Wales Avenue and 149th Street. A century ago, my German-born great grandfather owned a junkyard on the northeast corner of St. Mary’s Park. My Irish-born grandfather worked in the streets as a pick-man for the Consolidated Edison Company. I was born a Bronx-Irish-German mutt!
I think the great Mexican poet, Octavio Paz, said it best for you: “Beyond myself, somewhere, I wait for my arrival.”
You need wait no more. Your arrival came like a long swelling tsunami and shook the moribund Democratic Party to its geriatric roots. Your bright future has arrived. So listen to your mother. Only six more years and you can gently dethrone JFK as the youngest elected president. Why not?
I have enclosed a novel I wrote about the immigration experience in the Bronx a century ago. Then it was the Irish and the Germans. Today is the same except for the labels. I wrote:
These people stand for all the subsequent generations of races, colors and creeds who still come from distant lands to make new lives in America. They stand for all of us. We are their children. They live in our marrow. We are one with all distant lands, all of us Americans, all of us from someplace else, all of us foreigners.
I have also enclosed a monetary contribution toward your continued success.