The senator is building a movement, and he knows young voters are essential to making it work.
Bernie Sanders at the Coachella music festival.
(YouTube)
When Bernie Sanders saw that Democrats in Washington were failing to mount a sufficiently effective, let alone inspiring, opposition to Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the independent senator from Vermont decided to bet on the people of the United States. As a billionaire president and the richest man in the world were ripping apart the social safety net in order to fund massive tax cuts for themselves and their elite cabal of Mar-a-Lago visiting supplicants, Sanders made no secret in late January and early February of the fact that he was frustrated with the unfocused and often muted pushback from the congressional Democrats who repeatedly underestimated the threat posed by the new administration’s increasing authoritarianism—and by the all-too-obvious plan of Trump and Musk to consolidate wealth and power in the hands of their billionaire class. Yet he held out faith that grassroots Americans saw the threat and were ready to push back against it.
So Sanders launched the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, an initially modest initiative that targeted Republican-held congressional districts where, Sanders hoped, it might be possible to rally enough people to convince GOP representatives to push back against some of the worst, and most unpopular moves by Trump and Musk: threats to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; assaults on programs to fight hunger and aid veterans; the wholesale abandonment of efforts to combat the climate crisis; and tax schemes that would literally redistribute wealth upwards.
Sanders started on February 21 in Omaha, and thousands showed up. Thousands more came the next day in Iowa City. By the time he got to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in early March, the tour had moved from theaters to sports arenas. Then, the rallies moved outdoors, as tens of thousands of angry, frightened, and yet determined Americans showed up in Denver and Tucson and communities across the West.
The senator, who got well acquainted with big rallies during his 2016 and 2020 insurgent bids for the Democratic presidential nomination, was now drawing even bigger crowds for a campaign that was not about a candidate but rather about a cause—one he summed up at early rallies with a reflection on Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
“Lincoln was looking out on the fields of Gettysburg, where thousands and thousands of soldiers had died in a horribly bloody battle to end the horror of slavery,” he told the crowd that packed an overflow room in downtown Iowa City on a frigid day in February. “And he looks out on that battlefield, where so many people had died just a few days before, and this is what he said: ‘We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.’”
As Sanders spoke Lincoln’s words, the crowd began to echo them, with a chant rising from the back of the hall and surging throughout the room where students, young parents, public workers, and retirees had gathered to take back American politics, to take back their country, to take back their future.
“Of the people…”
“By the people…”
Current Issue
“For the people…”
Loud applause erupted as the senator declared, “That is what this struggle is about! One hundred fifty years later, it’s the same struggle.… We believe in a government of the people, by the people, for the people—not a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, for the billionaire class.”
Maybe it was that moment. Maybe it was a few weeks later, when US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez began to join Sanders on stage, amplifying and extending his message with a pitch-perfect critique of the how “an extreme concentration of power, greed and corruption is taking over this country like never before.” But at some point, the tour became more than an exercise in rallying the ideologically and politically faithful opponents of Trump and Musk. Suddenly, it became crystal clear that this was about movement building. Yes, a movement against Trump’s authoritarianism and Musk’s madness. But it was more than that. The Fighting Oligarchy tour moved beyond the desperation of Trump’s first 100 days toward something bigger: the hope that another politics, better than what Republicans or Democrats had offered, might really be possible.
That hope was on display on Saturday in Los Angeles, as 36,000 people—the largest crowd of Sanders’s decades-long political career— turned out to cheer the senator, AOC, former Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), California House members Ro Khanna and Jimmy Gomez, and Neil Young, Joan Baez, Maggie Rogers, and the Raise Gospel Choir. When thunderous roars of “Bernie! Bernie!” erupted from the crowd, Sanders said, “It’s not Bernie! It’s you!”
“Your presence here today is making Donald Trump and Elon Musk very nervous,” declared Sanders. What, undoubtedly, made the oligarchs even more nervous came next, when the tour turned out 20,000 at Salt Lake City in the ruby-red state of Utah on Sunday and 12,500 on Monday in an Idaho county that gave 72 percent of its vote to Trump just last year. And when Sanders and AOC returned to California on Tuesday and drew an estimated 30,000 at Folsom Lake Community College in a swing district that has a Republican congressman and backed Trump, the tour’s success was self-evident.
But it was not just the scheduled events that illustrated the audacious ambition of the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. It was a surprise stop at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Saturday night that illustrated Sanders’s striking determination to build the movement.
After the LA rally, the indefatigable 83-year-old senator traveled into the arid California desert to take the stage before thousands of fans who had gathered to hear singer-songwriter Claire Elizabeth Cottrill, who performs as Clairo. Speaking on a Saturday night, before one of the most anticipated performances at one of the biggest music festivals in the world, is not a typical move for a political figure. But it is what movement builders do. And that’s what Sanders and the youngest member of the US House, 28-year-old Florida Democrat Maxwell Frost, did at Coachella. The crowd hadn’t turned up for a political event—even though Clairo has long been engaged with political and humanitarian causes—but they gave Sanders and Frost a wildly enthusiastic response all the same.
Popular
“swipe left below to view more authors”Swipe →
Sanders came to Coachella with counsel for young people, whom polls show are increasingly opposed to Trump but who are also justifiably frustrated with a Democratic Party that has failed to function as an effective opposition. “This country faces some very difficult challenges,” the senator said. “And the future of what happens to America is dependent upon your generation. And you can turn away and ignore what goes on, but if you do that, you do that at your own peril.”
That’s a message that Sanders will take to more young people in more venues, including rallies in urban centers with free music, events on university and community college campuses, and, closest to his heart, mobilizations at workplaces where workers are organizing unions. The stop at Coachella was important primarily because it showed just how far the Fighting Oligarchy tour can and will go to break the boundaries of contemporary politics.
Speaking for only a few minutes from the concert stage, Sanders quickly did what too many Democrats fail to do: He sincerely asked young Americans to be a part of a movement to beat Trump and Musk—and to shape the future that rejects oligarchy and authoritarianism.
“We need you to fight for justice, to fight for economic justice, social justice, and racial justice,” he said as cheers rose from the thousands of concertgoers. “We’ve got a president of the United States…” As the senator referenced Trump, the crowd erupted with boos and worse. Unfazed, Sanders shouted, “I agree!” Then he ripped into Trump, saying, “He thinks that climate change is a hoax. He is dangerously wrong. And you and I are going to have to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and tell them to stop destroying this planet.”
In particular, Sanders invited young voters to embrace the fight against oligarchy, telling the concertgoers, “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 1 percent. We have a healthcare system that is broken. We are the only major country not to guarantee healthcare to all people. We need you to stand up to the insurance companies and the drug companies and understand that healthcare is a human right.”
But the senator did not stop there. He specifically referenced the Israeli assault on Gaza, a huge issue with young voters but one that too many Democrats avoid addressing. Referencing Clairo’s political advocacy, he said, “I’m here because Clairo has used her prominence to fight for women’s rights, to try to end the terrible, brutal war in Gaza, where thousands of women and children are being killed.”
The mention of Gaza, where more than 48,000 Palestinian men, women, and children have died during an ongoing Israeli assault on the enclave, spoke to the crowd—and to the great mass of young voters who will be essential to blocking Trump and Musk electorally in 2025 and 2026. Sanders recognized that fact with his stop at Coachella, and with the respect he showed for the issues and the ideals that must underpin the movement he and AOC and so many others are building, in red states and blue states, at mass rallies in congressional swing districts, and on Saturday nights at music festivals in the deserts of Southern California.
The chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration reaches new lows each week.
Trump’s catastrophic “Liberation Day” has wreaked havoc on the world economy and set up yet another constitutional crisis at home. Plainclothes officers continue to abduct university students off the streets. So-called “enemy aliens” are flown abroad to a mega prison against the orders of the courts. And Signalgate promises to be the first of many incompetence scandals that expose the brutal violence at the core of the American empire.
At a time when elite universities, powerful law firms, and influential media outlets are capitulating to Trump’s intimidation, The Nation is more determined than ever before to hold the powerful to account.
In just the last month, we’ve published reporting on how Trump outsources his mass deportation agenda to other countries, exposed the administration’s appeal to obscure laws to carry out its repressive agenda, and amplified the voices of brave student activists targeted by universities.
We also continue to tell the stories of those who fight back against Trump and Musk, whether on the streets in growing protest movements, in town halls across the country, or in critical state elections—like Wisconsin’s recent state Supreme Court race—that provide a model for resisting Trumpism and prove that Musk can’t buy our democracy.
This is the journalism that matters in 2025. But we can’t do this without you. As a reader-supported publication, we rely on the support of generous donors. Please, help make our essential independent journalism possible with a donation today.
In solidarity,
The Editors
The Nation
More from The Nation
As much as Donald Trump wants the public to believe this is in the hands of “the world’s coolest dictator,” he is holding all the cards.
And Democrats need to stop buying into that message—it’s how bullies like Trump and Cuomo elbow their way into power.
