Before she was the rising star of the progressive left, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez worked shifts at the iconic Coffee Shop in Union Square, Manhattan.

That espresso-sized biographical nugget tells you a lot about Ocasio-Cortez. It grounds her as a real woman of the people, for one. She's held a low-paying service sector job. She had to commute from the working class, minority community of the Bronx to fill the coffee cups of well-off New Yorkers living in Manhattan. Union Square might not be the Upper East Side, but the contrast with Ocasio-Cortez' neighborhood is still pretty stark. READ MORE