Democratic-Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, as Breitbart News reported, was born in the Bronx and raised in the affluent suburb of Westchester, told Hawaii Democrats on Thursday evening that her life has been shaped by “an unaddressed history of imperialism and poverty.”

Ocasio-Cortez was campaigning for Hawaii Democratic congressional candidate Kaniela Ing ahead of this weekend’s primary election and argued that Hawaii felt like a “kindred home” because she also comes “from a place of colonized people.”

Ocasio-Cortez said that she and Ing had similar life experiences even though they grew up worlds apart because they both lost their fathers when they were young and had to work multiple jobs to help their families make ends meet. And, she added, “We come from a family and a place that had been colonized.”

She told the crowd that her mother was from Puerto Rico and many of her family members still live there before claiming that she and Ing were “shaped by the exact same forces” like “runaway income inequality, an unaddressed history of imperialism, and poverty.”

She added that Puerto Ricans and Hawaiians still have to deal “with the consequences of those struggles.”

“While the entire country wants to forget that history, we’re not allowed to,” she said. “We are not afforded the privilege to forget about the colonial history of our island, and neither is Hawaii.”

Ocasio-Cortez has been campaigning for likeminded candidates across the country to build a bench of left-wing Democratic-socialist candidates. She implied on CNN earlier in the week that even though some of her candidates, like Michigan gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed, lost to establishment Democrats earlier in the week, they beat the spread and helped “move the needle forward in the fight for social and economic dignity in the United States.”