Assuming the owners of said building do not want you there, occupying a building is at best trespassing and at worst breaking and entering.
Civil disobedience is explicitly breaking a law because you believe it to be unjust, with the full expectation that you will be arrested and possibly punished for your actions.
When most people talk about "protesting", I don't think that's what they're talking about.
i imagine the person relating this kind of action, practiced en masse since the 60s across civil rights, nuclear nonproliferation, environmental, LGBT movements with storming barricades, dragging police from windows and beating them to death, and literally threatening the seat of government did not actually intend to conflate the two sorts of events.
I think you're talking about privately owned buildings.
Always a rather arrogant phrase, but especially absurd now.
There was a point in time when the US was seen as having some degree of leadership, mostly because it's military power. These days I think it's seen by many as being a bit of a bully boy only useful in keeping some degree of balance with the other bully boys.
This is "what about"-ism. It deflects responsibility and puts the focus on other's behavior. In this philosophy for one side to accept that what they did was bad, it requires every single other person in the world to be perfect, which is obviously impossible and therefor insulates the person from criticism.
But, I'll indulge anyway.
Occupying a building is a form of civil disobedience, which in the US is a respected form of protest. I don't know what incident you're talking about with Bernie, but the results matter. Did he schedule the occupation of a government building that threatened the lives of elected officials and killed a police officer? Or was it a peaceful protest?
For AOC, was she praising the mass of peaceful protestors and what they stood for or was she praising an attempt to breach the White House? There's a big difference, so I want to be clear. If it was the later, then that is definitely dangerous.
But praising or bragging is a far cry from planning, persuading and instigating. Plus, Bernie and AOC aren't the leader of the free world. The President has a responsibility to serve the entire US, all 330M, regardless of who voted for him or against him. Bernie has a responsibility to Vermont and AOC to the Bronx. It's apples and oranges. If you want the highest public office in the country, you need to be held to the highest standards and not complain about how those with far less power might have acted.