‘For me, it’s about the mission’: why Cori Bush is just getting started in Congress

Missouri congresswoman says she was sent to Washington to disrupt the political order that had long stopped working for people like herself

If the American political status quo was working, Congresswoman Cori Bush might not have slept on the steps of the US Capitol to demand an extension of a coronavirus-era eviction moratorium. She might not have testified about her decision to have an abortion, consigning the details of her experience to the official congressional record. Perhaps she might not have run for Congress at all.

But as the St Louis congresswoman sees it, she was sent to Washington to disrupt a political order that had long ago stopped working for people like herself - a nurse, pastor and activist who has worked for minimum wage, once lived out of a car and raised two children as a single mother. And she says she is only just getting started.