AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We end today’s show in New Jersey, where we’re joined by Analilia Mejía. Last week, she won the Democratic primary to fill the House seat left vacant by New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill. If Mejía wins the special election on April 16th, she’ll become the first Latina to represent New Jersey’s 11th District. Mejía is the daughter of a Colombian garment worker and a Dominican laborer. She’s a longtime labor organizer, who served as 2020 national political director for Bernie Sanders. She also served as deputy director of the Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau under President Joe Biden. This is Analilia Mejía speaking at a Sanders rally last month.

ANALILIA MEJÍA: Renee Good and Keith Porter and all the Americans and all the human beings who have suffered under this rising tyranny deserve justice. And I say abolish ICE now!

AMY GOODMAN: In an unexpected twist, AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, may have inadvertently helped Analilia Mejía win last week, even though she described Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide. A super PAC linked to AIPAC spent at least $2.3 million targeting her opponent, former Congressman Tom Malinowski, who’s described himself as pro-Israel but also said he would be open to placing some conditions on U.S. aid to Israel.

Analilia Mejía joins us now.

So, you have two elections in front of you. You have the April 16th election for Congress, which you are favored to win. But then you have to go right into a primary again, because that election is the special election to fill now-Governor Mikie Sherrill’s seat when she was congressmember, and now you have to run for the seat that you might win. Is that right, Analilia Mejía?

ANALILIA MEJÍA: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And what are your plans?

ANALILIA MEJÍA: Yes, and then I have to do it again in November. So, by the time that I’m done, it will be four races in, what, nine months. But as an organizer, as someone that is deeply connected to community, I know that it’s an opportunity to engage voters in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District. I ran this primary thinking and acting like an organizer, so I knew that I had to both introduce myself to my potential future constituents, but I also made a point to run trainings in the district to engage people so that they understood, not only had a better insight on how they could address and meet rising authoritarianism, but how to protect themselves from the rising violence of ICE that’s happening across our country and starting to happen in New Jersey’s 11th District, as well.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Analilia, could you talk a little bit about how you managed to win despite being outspent by several of your opponents in this race?

ANALILIA MEJÍA: So, you know, races are — we know the biggest problem that we have in our nation is the outsize power of big money. We know that big money floods our electoral system. It then shapes or takes precedent in our policymaking. And it is a serious problem, obviously exacerbated after the Citizens United decision.

As organizers across the country understand, you know, it’s either people power or money power. And in this instance, what we focused on was how to connect with people, how to engage across the district and talk about the outsize power that big money has. So, by the time that AIPAC is making its big money spend, we had spent some serious time talking to voters about how that kind of action would end up corrupting our political system, our policymaking system. And I think it worked. It is — you know, from day one, I rejected the — I shared that I would not take corporate PAC dollars, that I wouldn’t take AIPAC money, simply because I think that the only thing that should be — that a representative should be focused on is representing their constituents, not trying to appease big money spends.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk a little bit about your own background and how that informed your vision, and especially your firm stand against ICE and the immigration raids?

ANALILIA MEJÍA: Look, so, like many Americans, I’m watching this chaos with disgust and horror. Like, anyone who has studied American history understands, every time across our nation’s history we keep having these cycles of when regular, everyday Americans grab those words of freedom and try to pull them to cover as many of us as possible, we have kind of a reaction in this nation, whether it was after Reconstruction or after the civil rights movement or after the election of Barack Obama. It’s almost as if we have this snap back, this clap back to expansive freedom.

So, after Reconstruction, you have Jim Crow, where the capture of Supreme Courts, state-sanctioned violence, where political machinations to limit people’s voting rights ends up ushering in a hundred years of oppression towards the Black community. You see the same thing after the civil rights movement. It’s almost as if the “war on drugs” was a response to that, that seeking of expansive power or expansive democracy. And I contend that after the election of Barack Obama, across this country you had forces who were very angry at the idea of a just and free United States.

It feels like we are caught in this cycle. But the thing that breaks it is organizing. It’s having communities speaking with each other. It is training each other, engaging each other, understanding our history, so that we can protect our democratic institutions and we could preserve the kind of self-governance that we strive for in the United States. I think we are at a critical moment in our country, and it requires sending organizers across the country, including Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much, Analilia Mejía, for joining us, Democratic nominee for New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District.

That does it for our show. On Monday, February 23rd, we will be celebrating our 30th anniversary, Democracy Now!, at Riverside Church in New York. Juan will be flying in from Chicago. Nermeen Shaikh will be here. I’ll be joining with Angela Davis, Naomi Klein, Maria Ressa, Michael Stipe, Wynton Marsalis, Mosab Abu Toha, V., Hurray for the Riff Raff and more. See democracynow.org for details. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.