More than 100,000 members on the Democratic Socialists of America's rolls is the figure Pirate Wires Editor-in-Chief Mike Solana says should reframe how readers interpret Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's recent "Woke 1 was crazy" remark. Solana, speaking to Fox News Digital, argues the line is not a move toward the center but a rebrand that leaves the underlying policy agenda intact.
The comment surfaced on ABC's "This Week," where host Jonathan Karl pressed Ocasio-Cortez on Wisconsin state Rep. Francesca Hong's prior calls to defund police and abolish prisons. Rather than distance herself from those positions, the congresswoman quoted a local city councilman: "Woke 1 was crazy." Hong had already lost the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary on Aug. 11. The exchange turned not on Hong but on what, exactly, Ocasio-Cortez herself has stopped believing.
Solana's answer: nothing has been specified. Ocasio-Cortez has not explicitly walked back past support for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, defunding the police, or granting mass amnesty to undocumented immigrants, he argued. The phrase, in his reading, concedes that an era of "crazy left-wing views" existed without itemizing which ones are now off the table.
The DSA platform, read as a contract
The DSA describes capitalism as "a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit," per the group's own website. Its platform calls for abolishing the Senate, expanding the House, and establishing public ownership of the largest private companies. That last plank has a direct asset-side read: public ownership of major private enterprises is a structural transfer, not a messaging adjustment.
Solana's reframe on what follows "Woke 1": the organizing logic is shifting from identity to class. He characterized the move as one away from racial grievance toward economic redistribution, describing the new phase as "a lot more classist," with the wealthy as the common target.
DSA-backed candidates have unseated more moderate Democrats in New York and Colorado. Solana cited New York, Los Angeles, and Louisville, Kentucky as further evidence of the group's reach. Prominent democratic socialists in office include Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Centrist Democrats, Solana argued, face a binary: purge the DSA from the coalition or define their own moderation relative to where the party's new center of gravity sits. He did not predict which path they would take.
Fox News Digital contacted the DSA and Ocasio-Cortez's office. Neither responded before publication.