Why Ocasio-Cortez Is Endorsing Sanders

Weather: Watch out for the wind, which could gust up to 55 miles per hour. The high temperature might not reach 60.

Alternate-side parking: In effect until Monday (Shemini Atzereth).

One of the biggest pieces of political news on Tuesday night did not involve candidates sparring at the Democratic presidential debate in Ohio.

It was revealed that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the influential first-term Democrat from Queens and the Bronx, will give her coveted endorsement to a fellow progressive, Senator Bernie Sanders.

The two will hold a gathering for supporters in Queens on Saturday. It will be the second major campaign event in New York City recently, after Senator Elizabeth Warren’s rally in Washington Square Park last month, where she was endorsed by the Working Families Party.

Here are some reasons Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is endorsing Mr. Sanders:

They are both unabashed socialists: From his call for universal health care coverage to her campaign for a Green New Deal, both Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez have eagerly sought to push the Democratic Party further left than nearly any of their colleagues.

Leaders of their generations: Mr. Sanders is 78. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez just turned 30. They both have come to be seen as the progressive voice of their generations.

Our colleague Sydney Ember wrote that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement could give Mr. Sanders a much-needed boost following his recent heart attack. Her endorsement could also ease some concerns about his age and health.

They go back: In 2016, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was an organizer on Mr. Sanders’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was relatively little-known at the time, and Mr. Sander’s uphill battle was ultimately unsuccessful, but she was galvanized by him.

“For her, Bernie Sanders played a key role in why she got into politics in the first place,” Shane Goldmacher, a political reporter for The Times, said. “He was an inspiration for her. They share more than an ideological kinship. They share a whole activist-first approach to how politics should be pursued.”

Recent alliances: Over the summer. Mr. Sanders proposed legislation to eliminate student debt. The issue is a priority for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who has openly talked about her struggle to pay off her student loans. She gave him her full support.

“What a beautiful day to liberate ourselves from student debt,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said at the time. “It was literally easier for me to become the youngest woman in American history elected to Congress than it is to pay off my student loan debt,” she said. “That should tell you everything about the state of this.”

What about Ms. Warren? Mr. Goldmacher said that Ms. Warren had made efforts to court Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, including having lunch together in Washington in March.

But ultimately, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s deeper ties to Mr. Sanders won the day.

New Yorkers, show us your ‘it’ Halloween costumes

The pop-culture Halloween costume has been especially visible in recent years (Pizza Rat, anyone?), but it has been around for much longer.

The cartoonists Chris Ware and Lynda Barry introduce their new books at Murmrr in Brooklyn. 7:30 p.m. [$12]

The Night of 1,000 Jack O’Lanterns features more than 1,000 hand-carved pumpkins on Governors Island. Time slots begin at 6:30 p.m. [$26]

— Melissa Guerrero

Events are subject to change, so double-check before heading out. For more events, see the going-out guides from The Times’s culture pages.

And finally: When the Young Lords led a revolution in New York

Daniel José Older reports:

Fifty years ago, revolution was in the air.

Young people were organizing, using tactics that were militant and community-based. The Black Panthers were in California. The Young Lords were in Chicago. And after a car ride to the Midwest, a group from East Harlem formed a New York chapter of the Young Lords.

The first thing they did was hit the streets to ask their neighbors what was needed. Expecting lofty talk of revolution and systemic change, the Lords instead found that the community’s needs were very straightforward.

[Fifty years ago, the Young Lords evolved from a street gang to a political force.]

“This place is filthy, man. It stinks. There’s garbage all over,” was the complaint Hiram Maristany, a founding member of the group, recalled.

So, a small contingent of Young Lords — Puerto Rican youth in Spanish Harlem — went to the local Department of Sanitation office to ask for better service. “They threw us out!” Mr. Maristany recalled.

The Lords returned to the office and took supplies in order to do the job themselves. “We thought Sanitation would come take the trash away once we’d bagged it all up for them,” he said. Sanitation officials refused.

So, the Young Lords and a handful of community members began dragging rusted refrigerators, old cars, mattresses and broken furniture off the corners and strewing them across Third Avenue near 110th Street. The Garbage Offensive had begun.

“Then we set it ablaze, man,” Mr. Maristany told me, still laughing. He had grabbed his camera and begun documenting the scene.

It’s Thursday — make history.

Metropolitan Diary: Nails

Dear Diary:

It was a summer Saturday morning. I was riding my Vespa on the Upper East Side. I stopped at a red light at 95th Street and Park Avenue.

To my right, I saw a man in his 60s drilling holes into the hood of a beat-up car. He then pushed his weight down as he inserted nails into the car. He was trying to make sure that the hood stayed shut.

After a time, he stopped drilling. He looked up and noticed that I was watching him.

“Nails,” he shouted. “Never enough nails.”

He shut a toolbox that was sitting on the hood. Nails rained down on the ground.

The light changed, and I drove off slowly.

— Ramy Fakhr

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