By Maya Salam,

“Speak truth, sis!”

— Rashida Tlaib to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both newly elected congresswomen, in a message on Instagram

It was not terribly surprising this week when yet another one of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s tweets went viral, this time in response to an article about House Speaker Paul Ryan. Every word Ms. Ocasio-Cortez types on social media, it seems, is ripe for scrutiny.

What caught my eye, though, was not the criticism she regularly levels at conservatives, but the validation — a digital fist-bump, almost — she received from her soon-to-be fellow Democratic congresswoman. “Speak truth, sis!” proclaimed Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan, responding to her tweet.

Some might say it was “Shine Theory” in action — a term coined by the feminist podcasters Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow to describe women who make a concerted effort to support one another. (In Ms. Sow’s words: “I don’t shine if you don’t shine.”)

In fact, in an exchange of mutual admiration on Twitter on Wednesday, Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts’s first African-American congresswoman, thanked Ms. Ocasio-Cortez for “living #ShineTheory out loud.” (Ms. Ocasio-Cortez had tweeted that she was “so incredibly proud” of Ms. Pressley, pointing to a Buzzfeed article about her.)

It’s a camaraderie that’s been on full display among the Democratic newcomers since November’s election. Their message: We’re cool, we’re transparent and we’ve got each other’s backs.

Click here to read the full article published by The New York Times on 14 December 2018.