Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Tells Washington Redskins to ‘Change Your Name’ After Their ‘Blackout Tuesday’ Post

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a request for the Washington Redskins, and it’s something they have previously heard among thousands of Americans. This week, the New York congresswoman, who also goes by AOC, took to Twitter to react to the team’s “Blackout Tuesday” post, urging them to change their name as she feels it’s racists towards Native Americans.

Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet sparked a plethora of comments from social media users. One fan agreed with her by writing, “I love you AOC. Please clone yourself and send one of you to the UK to be prime minister. Thanks!” Another social media user did not like what Ocasio-Cortez had to say about the Redskins, writing: “With all due respect, and from a full-blood Native American, mind your own damn business!”

The 30-year-old congresswoman isn’t the only person to call out the Redskins to change their name. Once the tweet was published, there were several other social media users requesting the Redskins to get a new nickname in response to the racial and social issues going on in the country.

In 2013, former President Barack Obama weighed in on the controversy and said the team should consider making the big move. “If I were the owner of the team and I knew that there was a name of my team — even if it had a storied history — that was offending a sizeable group of people, I’d think about changing it,” Obama said in an interview with the Associated Press at the time. Around that same time, Redskins owner Daniel Snyder told USA Today, changing the name will not happen anytime soon.

“We will never change the name of the team,” he said. Snyder went on to explain why the Redskins will remain the Redskins. “As a lifelong Redskins fan, and I think that the Redskins fans understand the great tradition and what it’s all about and what it means, so we feel pretty fortunate to be just working on next season.”

The Redskins began playing in 1932 and were called the Boston Braves at the time. They were called the Boston Redskins from 1933-36 and have been the Washington Redskins since 1937. It has been said the reason the team is named Redskins was for the real Indians on the team, according to a 1933 article via the Washington Post.