Why AOC’s Indian-Origin Chief of Staff Has Been in the News Lately

Video Editor: Mohd Irshad Alam

Star US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s star chief of staff, Indian-origin Saikat Chakrabarti, has had a rough few weeks.

Known for co-founding the Justice Democrats that propelled AOC to Congress, and with an aggressive progressive agenda to unseat serving, moderate Democrats and shift the party Left, Chakrabarti burst onto the scene with AOC’s win. He had previously worked on Bernie Sanders’ campaign in 2015. So what’s got everyone hot and bothered about him now?

One Man’s Freedom Fighter...

Over the past couple of weeks, Republicans woke up to a t-shirt Chakrabarti was seen wearing in a NowThis video in December last year:

Notice it yet? Yes, that is none other than... Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

Republicans and some members of the US Jewish lobby took great exception to Chakrabarti wearing a shirt of this widely revered Indian freedom fighter, using Bose’s alliance with Germany during WWII to call him a ‘Nazi sympathiser’ – seemingly unaware or unconcerned with the fact that Bose was at the time engaged in a freedom struggle to throw off British colonial rule.

But who will go explain the history of India’s struggle for independence to the Americans?

Biting the Hand That Feeds?

As conservatives make hay with the Nazi angle, Chakrabarti’s fellow Democrats are irritated too, but for different reasons.

AOC is a social media phenomenon, and Chakrabarti is active there too... but his tendency to call out fellow Democrats for various policy stances has grated on the leadership’s nerves.

In a series of now-deleted tweets, Chakrabarti accused the Dem leadership and moderates of facilitating the ‘racist’ policies surrounding the US’ immigrant crisis. One of these moderates included Rep Sharice Davids, the first gay Native American Congresswoman. The House Democrats’ official Twitter account soon hit back in another now-deleted tweet, asking who Saikat Chakrabarti is (presumably a rhetorical question) and advising him to keep Sharice Davids’ name “out of [his] mouth”.

It is unusual for a Congressperson’s chief of staff to make such policy-related criticisms publicly on social media, which is why the Democratic leadership, in particular Nancy Pelosi, got their hackles up.

Politico reported,

“So, again, you got a complaint? You come and talk to me about it,” Pelosi told Democrats, according to a source in the room. “But do not tweet about our members and expect us to think that that is just OK.”

Politico report

Ouch.

AOC and her unusually outspoken chief of staff have successfully monopolised centrestage for the progressive Democrats – for better or worse.