Cori Bush, the two-term U.S. representative from Missouri who emerged from justice movements and the Ferguson uprising, was ousted from office in 2024 in one of the most expensive House primaries in history. Bush was one of two members of the Squad (along with Jamaal Bowman) unseated by pro-Israel groups. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee alone spent nearly $10 million against Bush’s campaign, and a crypto-backed PAC spent another $1.4 million. Other members of the Squad, like Summer Lee, fended off similar attacks.
In These Times Executive Editor Ari Bloomekatz sat down with Bush at the Jewish Voice for Peace National Member Meeting in Baltimore in early summer. Their focus was on how the Left might strategically push forward. This interview has been significantly edited for length, order and clarity.
How does storytelling intersect with action in this moment?
CORI BUSH: I think, first, we have to be truthtellers ourselves. For those willing to speak up, for those willing to stand up, we have to be everywhere. We have to be at the school board meeting, at the city council meeting. We have to do the direct action.
So everybody should take stock of who they are: “What do I have? What do I bring to the table? What privilege do I have?” And then use it, right now, in this moment. Because the thing is, this moment is only this moment. In five years, we are going to look back and say, “Oh, I should have. I could have.” We have no clue the level of destruction that we will see at the end of this term, because so much has happened over these last few months. And we have heard the Trump administration and Elon Musk say, “Oh yeah, we’ve made mistakes. And, you know, it happens.” Well, how many people will be devastated by those mistakes over the next several years?
We might not be able to stop this train, but can we mitigate the harm on our communities? Community has to take care of community right now, because we cannot rely on what the federal government will do.
Can you say a bit more about this phrase you use: “Be brilliant in your area.”
CORI BUSH: Yes, be brilliant. Be brilliant in your area.
It’s like the Trump administration wants us to just be devastated by fatigue — because so much is happening — to just be so disillusioned, and caught up in the chaos, that we’re incapacitated. But no, what we do is we pull on whatever that thing is that we know makes us move.
We pull on what we know we’re great at, what we’re brilliant at, and we decide: “I’m going to show up my best in this thing.” I’m not going to try to do all these other things. So now I’m getting ready to push hard in this thing so that Terry can push hard in this other thing. Let Terry do that thing he’s brilliant at, because that way we’ll get farther, faster.
Your messengers — call them messengers, call them your communicators — have them out in the front. Have them doing all the television, the radio, all of that. Have them out everywhere, pushing the message. The people who are good at analyzing data, have those folks analyzing the data. Everybody just doing their thing. Your folks who are your frontline fighters that will go do that direct action, push them up to the front to do the direct action.
We have to be building right now and mitigating harm. And so the only way that we do that is having the people who have expertise in the area, have them show up in that way, so that every seat is taken, so that everybody is doing something, and they’re doing it in a great way.
My sense is that you’re getting at various ways we can build a popular front.
CORI BUSH: Absolutely. Because, right now, it’s the only way. You can’t have everybody doing the same thing and think that we’re going to bring about a change.
Be true to who you are, because when people see you being true and genuine, being authentic, then they can believe you. They can trust you. You shine, but you shine brighter. More will happen. More will get done. Because the other thing is, so many people, especially with the Democrats, don’t trust the party anymore. They see the hypocrisy. And it goes way back, but they see the hypocrisy of, “Oh, Trump is a fascist. Trump is a white supremacist. Trump is this wannabe dictator.” But those same people take money from these PACs that are primarily funded by Republicans, that supported Donald Trump. People see that.
We’re not ignorant. We are shocked. We are surprised at the audacity.
How are you thinking about how the Democratic Party moves forward?
CORI BUSH: The Democratic Party is such a machine. And so for as many people that fall away from the party — that make the decision “I’m no longer a Democrat” or just stop voting — it’s still “the opposition party,” even if it’s not enough to meet the moment. The party still has so much power to stop really awful things from coming down the pike.
We have to have people on the inside that are still willing to push the party and say, “Hey, it’s not OK for us to keep allowing people to sleep on the street. Hundreds of thousands of people each night sleeping on the streets in our country, while we send all of this money for weapons to the Israeli military.” People have to push back. We need a Medicare for All. Who wants to speak up for Medicare for All if we all walk away at the same time? Who’s going to speak?
Then you can look at, well, people want other options, and there have been other options for years. But what does that look like? How do we build that? So the people that feel that they need to go and build that should go and build that, but we can’t all.
I know when I stood up and protested the ending of the eviction moratorium back in summer 2021 as a freshman in Congress, there were members of Congress who said, “Oh, it’s so undignified. And it’s unprecedented. You don’t protest on the steps of the Capitol as a congressmember.” But what’s undignified was the idea that you have the power to do something and you didn’t, and so 11 million people are going to be at risk for evictions. To me, that’s the thing; we were able to win that, even though it was some weeks later, but we were able to win that. So many people were able to stay in their homes because we pushed. Had we not been there, it wouldn’t have happened.
What’s the role now of electoral politics?
CORI BUSH: We cannot abandon electoral politics. You can’t just leave the wolves just hanging around with all of these sheep. Not saying that everyone is a wolf that’s in politics; my point is that you have people who are vulnerable, and even for those that aren’t, every person deserves to have freedom and dignity and quality of life — and to not have to worry about the people who are supposed to be representing me being the ones who harm me. On top of that, those who are our most vulnerable deserve to be prioritized and have those needs met. Our social safety net should be built up, not torn down.
You don’t have to care about electoral politics, but it’s going to impact everything about you.
I was speaking with some youth and they were like, “Oh, well, we’re high schoolers, we don’t care about what happens in politics and it doesn’t matter who’s in office.” And I said to them, “Hey, you know that in another part of this state, students go to school four days a week. You go to school five days a week, all of you in public school.” And they were like, “What?”
And I talked to them about school lunches. I was like, “You know what happens with your school? You know why you have a card and you have to put money on it?” I talked to them about that, and they were like, “What?” And I said, “Yeah, there are people who make these decisions.” So I absolutely do believe in electoral politics. It’s not going away.
I’m curious how you are thinking about moving people and the role of media.
CORI BUSH: One thing I know is that so many people are looking for trusted sources of information. So when we speak about the role of media and journalists, showing up in a way that is very authentic to who that media platform says that they are is critical.
We need trusted sources. So if you’re telling us about how horrible this administration is and all of these things — these executive orders and just all of these things, these attacks on law firms, disappearing students and others, undocumented people and citizens — but you had nothing to say about all of the journalists who lost their lives in Gaza? People want to know who you are as a journalist.
Ari Bloomekatz is Executive Editor at In These Times. He was previously the Managing Editor of Rethinking Schools and Tikkun magazines, and spent several years as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. Follow him @bloomekatz.
