Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez streamed 'Among Us' on Twitch and raised $200,000 for food pantries and other groups

• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York once again livestreamed a game of Among Us, this time in an effort to raise money for charity.
• Just hours after posting a link to her Twitch livestream, Ocasio-Cortez announced she had raised $200,000 to go toward food pantry assistance, eviction defense legal funds, and community organizations.
• Among Us is an online game that has become a Twitch mainstay in recent months.
• Ocasio-Cortez has previously leveraged the platform to engage voters. Her last Twitch livestream had an audience of almost 440,000 people who watched her play.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York on Friday once again invited people to watch her play Among Us on Twitch, and this time used the platform to raise $200,000 for charities.

"Today I'm using the stream to fundraise for local food pantries, eviction defense legal aid, & community support organizations," she said on Twitter, adding a link that directed people to a donor page. "So many people are having a hard time in this crisis."

—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 28, 2020

Ocasio-Cortez is no stranger to using social media to engage voters, having previously leveraged her pages as a way to talk directly to constituents about relevant issues.

She's previously used Instagram to demystify and humanize her experience as a lawmaker in Washington, DC, and Twitter to issue candid responses to insults and criticism from her Democratic and Republican colleagues.

In October, weeks before the 2020 election, she used her Twitch channel to get out the vote. Her livestream brought out almost 440,000 viewers and the lawmaker has over 815,000 Twitch followers.

Among Us is a deductive reasoning game that involves anywhere between four and 10 players, whose objective is to identify the "imposter" of the group. There can be multiple imposters, and each is tasked with killing off crewmembers to win the game.

Crewmembers complete tasks like running medical scans or fixing wires. Once a crewmember has been killed, a meeting is called to discuss which player could have done it. Players then have a chance to explain themselves and convince others they're not the imposter.

Among Us has become one of the most popular games of 2020, rising to the top of Twitch in September.

Just hours after posting a link to her livestream, Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter that Twitch viewers had donated $200,000.

"We did it," she wrote. "$200k raised in one livestream (on a whim!) for eviction defense, food pantries, and more. This is going to make such a difference for those who need it most right now."

—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 28, 2020