Bernie Sanders Isn’t Running… For President, or for Any Other Reason
Bernie Sanders brought his Oligarchy tour to Lincoln High School in Warren, Michigan on Saturday, March 8. Some news outlets report over 9,000 people were in attendance, others say over 10,000. There were 2 overflow rooms, and people in the parking lot waiting for the chance to see him leaving the building. With a megaphone in hand, Bernie addressed the crowd outside, visited the overflow rooms to say hello, and brought hope to a gymnasium of people who were in desperate need of a shining light in this shitstorm.
The interesting part about this whole scenario? This isn’t a campaign. Bernie isn’t running for anything… or from it.
Photo by Ami Nicole ACRONYM
In select locations around the country, Bernie Sanders has been popping out to show that he is still fighting for us — and by doing so, educating everyone on how he sees Donald Trump and the tyranny he has wrought with some of the richest men in the world including Elon Musk, who’s losing money by the day after the market has decided to boycott Tesla. Never mind the Influencer Marketing that Trump did outside the White House… We’ll get to that later.
Of course, the conservative base is wagging their finger at Bernie’s band bookings more so than sharing what his message was. The Armed took the stage a little before 3:30 PM, to some of the older crowd’s displeasure and ear-plugging.
Photos by Spencer Isberg
Photographer Spencer Isberg describes The Armed by saying that they can only really be classified as genreless punk. “Everything about the band seems to change and twist at the snap of the band’s finger, especially when taking into account the early history of the band. For their more formative years, the band technically was memberless as they kept their true identities hidden and would swap members for random local musicians during their early live appearances.” They’re not as unknown these days, being hailed as an exciting choice from music mags like Stereogum.
Back to those conservatives, though. Their outrage wasn’t nearly as loud for The Armed as their dislike for Wisconsin’s musical act, Laura Jane Grace, who’s now reposting their response to her new song “Your God (God’s Dick)” on Threads from outlets like Fox News, who summed it up (while exaggerating) saying ‘Social Media explodes at Sanders for hosting trans musician who sang ‘pure evil’ song at anti-Trump rally.’ It’ll always be interesting how these reports always fail to grasp the severity of actually important things going on around them, like, you know, fascism… But I digress.
“These are, you know, the scariest times in my lifetime.”
– Bernie Sanders, Pod Save America
These are, in fact, scary times. Sanders has been trekking around the country at 83 years of age, raising awareness. For what, exactly?
“We have an administration that is leading us to oligarchy, and an administration that is leading us to an authoritarian form of society, and an administration that is leading us toward kleptocracy,” Sanders starts. “What I see happening all over America, is people — not just democrats, or independents, but republicans as well, saying ‘we fought for too long and too many people died for democracy, we’re not going to oligarchy.'”
Sanders explains what everyone’s up against. He notes that the three wealthiest people in America were sitting behind Trump at the inauguration (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg), and that there were others behind those people who were being handed the keys to government agencies. “In other words, they weren’t hiding anything! They were telling the American people and the world 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, and by the billionaire class. That is what, brothers and sisters, we are taking on.”
“In other words, this is the Robin Hood proposal in reverse; Instead of taking from the rich, giving to the poor, they’re taking from the poor and giving them to the rich. We ain’t gonna let that happen.”
– Bernie Sanders, Warren, Michigan
Photos by Spencer Isberg
He spoke about Medicaid, quality of care, and the attacks at the top level toward programs such as these that are in danger of being cut so that billionaires can have that money. Sanders also calls out Michigan Republican John James and notes that he as a Democratic senator from Vermont is there essentially doing a town meeting, and that he believes James’ constituents would love to ask him questions, including “Why would any member of congress vote for massive tax breaks for billionaires, and then cut Medicaid, education, and nutrition?” James is but one of many who aren’t out in public. Shortly after Sanders’ success in Michigan, and growing frustration as Republicans are hiding out, Minnesota Governor and former VP nominee Tim Walz has announced he will also be hitting the road to do town halls in place of the Republicans who won’t show up for their constituents.
Sanders also spoke about Donald Trump and Elon Musk wanting to gut Social Security, and how it’s not acceptable, not only to him but to the American people. He stood firm and said that men and women who have put their lives on the line to fight for us deserve their benefits as veterans. “We are not going to balance the budget on the backs of our veterans or our seniors.”
“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 either have no basis in reality or in the great scheme of things, are nowhere near the most important concerns that the American people have.”
– Bernie Sanders, Warren, Michigan
He drives home that Musk, Trump, and their administration truthfully are hoping that the more that they “uncover” atrocities in the government structure that we’ve relied on for years, that we will “give up” on our government. The result if they win that: The privatization of everything — it goes to the large corporations.
Sanders says 60% of our people live from paycheck to paycheck, and asks the crowd what that means for the American people. People shared things like “exhaustion,” “fear,” “survival,” “lack of medical care,” “no money for emergencies,” “stress,” and more.
“Here is the reality, and I think you have all said it in a few minutes: millions of Americans today are wondering how they are going to be able to pay their rent, and what happens if the landlord raises their rent. What do they do? Rents are going up all over. What do you do if your landlord raises your rent? You gotta move? Where you gonna move to? You gotta take your kid out of school? Where’s he gonna go? She gonna go?”
“People are worried that your child or your parent becomes sick. You can’t afford to take that person to a doctor, or you cannot afford the prescription drugs that your mom or your kid may need. What’s going on today in America is people are worried just something as simple, as basic: your car breaks down, you got an old car, right? Your car breaks down and the guy at the repair shop says it’s going to cost you $1,000 bucks to get it fixed. Now what happens if you don’t have the $1,000 bucks? You can’t get your car fixed. If you can’t get your car fixed, you can’t get to work. If you can’t get to work, you’re gonna lose your job. If you lose your job, how you gonna survive? That’s because millions of people don’t have $1,000 in the bank!”
Photo by Ami Nicole ACRONYM
“In America today, and this is a remarkable, remarkable fact: It is not just that our life expectancy, how long we live, it’s about 4 years shorter than people in other wealthy countries. And we should wonder why that is so. But here’s something that is never talked about, and I want to throw that out to you, I want you to digest it: if you are working class in this country, your life expectancy on average will be 7 years shorter than if you are wealthy. Do you all understand what this is about? That means that being working class in this country in many respects is like a death sentence. If you’re rich, you’re gonna live a long life, if you’re working class, 7 years shorter.”
“Why is that? Stress! Alright, what stress is about, stress is not some concept, ‘oh we’re stressed out,’ stress is a physiological reaction, and doctors frame it as the disease of poor people who have to struggle every single day. Stress wrecks your body, and it has a terrible impact on your mind. If you have to worry every single day how you’re gonna survive, how do I feed the kids, how do I pay the rent, what happens if I get a call that I have to be at work at midnight for the midnight shift? If you add that all together, people are living on pins and needles day after day, year after year. Stress kills. And in the richest country in the history of the world, millions of people should not have shorter lives than they otherwise should because of the economy that we have.”
SEE BERNIE’S FULL SPEECH HERE:
Now you may be wondering, sure, Bernie is a great talker, but what action can truly be taken?
With Trump already being impeached previously, what would articles of impeachment do? We’re not entirely sure. As of now, boycotting, protests, and the like are some of the only ways that the American people can fight back. As mentioned earlier, Tesla is bleeding money by the day, Target is losing billions after bending the knee to Trump regarding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. But aside from a full government shutdown, protests in the streets, and getting mass media to quit ignoring the already robust protests that are occurring all over the U.S., we’ve yet to see anyone truly give us a game plan as leadership.
There are a chunk of individuals who believe the only way to get out of this is through aggressive protests, violence, and forgetting about the Democrats and Republicans, while others are calling their representatives in the government and begging to be heard. It feels like a lot of people are trying to do things all at once, and while that’s great, there needs to probably be a more united front. However, many Democrats and those who reject the two-party system are refusing to collaborate, acting as if their way is the only way. Some Republicans are currently “waking up” from the spell that is Trump, and are slowly coming back to reality only to find that they contributed to this, and now are facing the consequences. Either way, we need to find common ground.
“It’s not good enough to be on the defense, we have to be on the offense as well,” says Sanders.
Naysayers question why Sanders is doing these tour stops in the first place. Our theory is that Bernie isn’t running for anything here. He’s using his privilege and funding to draw attention to the fact that people still want to fight. Now the question is, who’s ready to do the hard work?
“At this moment in history, this very difficult moment… Despair is not an option. Giving up is not acceptable. That is what the oligarchs want you to do! So let us never forget: real change, the change that we have experienced over the hundreds of years of our nationhood, only occurs, when ordinary people stand up against oppression and injustice and fight back.”
– Bernie Sanders, Warren, Michigan
SEE MORE: Abdul Al-Saed kicked off the speaking engagement and pointed out that he is the “proud son of immigrants.” This was followed by Shawn Fain of UAW, who spoke to the audience while wearing an “Eat The Rich” Run DMC-parody shirt.
