The Democratic Party may have twice stymied Sen. Bernie Sanders' White House ambitions, but the National Tour to Fight Oligarchy
launched last month by the democratic socialist has been drawing crowds that would be the envy of any presidential campaign.
On Saturday, more than 10,000 people turned out to see Sanders (I-Vt.) speak in Warren, Michigan. Not only did they pack the main event space—the gymnasium at Lincoln High School—literally to the rafters, they filled two overflow rooms, with hundreds turned away outside,
according toMichigan Advance.
"We have an administration that is leading us to oligarchy, an administration that is leading us to an authoritarian form of society, an administration that is leading us towards kleptocracy," Sanders said at the beginning of his speech.
Noting that three of the world's richest men—Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—sat in the front row of President Donald Trump's inauguration, Sander said that "instead of a government of the people, by the people and for the people, we have now become a government of the billionaire class, for the billionaire class."
Sanders also took aim at Trump's false election claims and the wider "post-truth" trend on the right, telling the crowd: "We're up against a phenomenon that we have never seen, and that is the Big Lie. The Big Lie is not just stretching the truth; the Big Lie is not just fibbing. The Big Lie is creating a parallel universe, a set of ideas that have no basis in reality."
The senator also linked past struggles against injustice with the current crisis, arguing that "the change that we have experienced over hundreds of years of our nationhood only occurs when ordinary people stand up against oppression and injustice and fight back."
Sanders was joined on stage by United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain, who wore a T-shirt reading "Eat the Rich" and told the audience that "billionaires don't have a right to exist."
Wayne County Health Director Abdul El-Sayed, who ran for Michigan governor in 2018 and is considering a Senate run, pointed to the size of Saturday's crowd in Warren as proof of the enduring power of progressivism.
"They want us to step back, and today, all of you have said that we are not stepping back, we are stepping forward," El-Sayed told
Michigan Advance. "We are recognizing that in one another, we have all we need to build that government for the people and by the people."
In a dig at the unofficial motto of some Silicon Valley startups, El-Sayed said that the Trump administration wants "to move fast and break things."
"But what they're breaking is the government that our hard-earned tax dollars have been funding," he said. "And we're here to say that that is our money, that is our government, take your damn billionaire hands off of it."
The Warren rally was the latest on a tour that's seen overflow crowds at almost every stop. Thousands also turned out in
Altoona, Wisconsin on Saturday and Kenosha, Wisconsin on Friday to see Sanders speak.
There's more to Sanders' tour than just raging against Trump and the oligarchy. He chose to visit districts where Republicans narrowly won congressional races, hoping to pressure GOP lawmakers to vote against proposed cuts to programs upon which working-class people rely, in order to pay for the $4.5 trillion cost of extending Trump's first-term "tax scam" that overwhelmingly benefited the ultra-wealthy and corporations.
"Today, the oligarchs and the billionaire class are getting richer and richer and have more and more power," Sanders said in a statement Friday. "Meanwhile, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and most of our people are struggling to pay for healthcare, childcare, and housing. This country belongs to all of us, not just the few. We must fight back."
Correction: This article originally said Sanders held a rally in Altoona, Pennsylvania. The rally was in Altoona, Wisconsin.
