On Saturday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) made a surprise pit stop while on the road for his “fighting oligarchy” tour with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) across the West. He appeared at the Coachella annual music festival.
Sanders took the stage to introduce the singer Clairo, whom he praised for standing up for reproductive rights and speaking out against the war in Gaza. He then urged the crowd to get energized and fight back against President Donald Trump’s lawless, authoritarian agenda.
“The future of what happens to America is dependent upon your generation,” Sanders told the crowd. “Now you can turn away, and you can ignore what goes on, but if you do that, you do it at your own peril. We need you to stand up, to fight… for economic justice, social justice, and racial justice.”
Coming on the heels of Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-N.J.) recent marathon speech to Congress, Sanders’ music festival appearance is the latest high-profile attempt by a sitting member of Congress to rally opposition against Trump. The president had made significant gains among young voters in the November election compared to his 2020 race, and Coachella’s audience, which tends to be mostly Gen Z and millennials according to one survey, is a crucial demographic for the Democrats. Sanders was not the only lawmaker at Coachella: he was introduced by Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), the youngest member of Congress.
Sanders got a warm welcome; Trump, not so much. Each time Sanders mentioned him, the crowd roared with boos. “I agree!” he replied at one point. The 83-year-old Sanders warned, in a roughly three-minute speech, of the threats Trump and the GOP pose to tackling climate change and improving abortion rights, worker’s rights, and access to equitable healthcare.
“We have an economy today that is working very well for the billionaire class, but not for working families. We need you to help us to create an economy that works well for everybody, not just the one percent,” Sanders told the crowd. “We have a health care system that is broken. We are the only major country not to guarantee health care to all people. We need you to stand up to the insurance companies and the drug companies and understand that health care is a human right.”
A post shared by L.A. Times Entertainment (@latimes_entertainment)
As my colleague Tim Murphy wrote, Sanders has become something of a leader of the Trump resistance these past couple of months, seeking to gain the support of otherwise apolitical voters as other high-profile Democrats largely have remained silent. “I mean, Kamala [Harris] is not talking, Barack [Obama]’s not talking, [Joe] Biden’s not talking,” one longtime Democratsaid. “Right now, he’s the only one talking, and he’s the only one making sense.”
Sanders appears to be doing exactly what Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Democrats should be doing during an appearance on CNN Sunday morning. “I think our secret, super-duper strategy is, just tell the truth about what’s going on,” she noted. “The American people will see pretty clearly who’s fighting for the billionaires and who’s fighting for them.”
Meanwhile, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have been hitting the road. He delivered the Coachella speech after making a stop earlier in the day in Los Angeles with the New York lawmaker. In a post on X, Sanders said the LA turnout was about 36,000 people, making it “our biggest rally ever.”
From Mother Jones via this RSS feed
You must log in or register to comment.