“Your presence here today is making Donald Trump and Elon Musk very nervous,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told Angelenos on April 12 as he took the stage to a thunderous ovation at Gloria Molina Grand Park in Downtown L.A. “There are some 36,000 of you—the biggest rally yet,” stated the Independent socialist from Vermont who, along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), is spearheading the “Fighting Oligarchy” national tour to mobilize the masses to resist the Trump-Musk regime. The crowd was later estimated by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to be 60,000.
The enormous event included union leaders, left-leaning politicians, and musicians— “Why music?” Sanders asked. “Because we’re going to make our revolution with joy!” he said from the podium following a live rendition of his theme song, John Lennon’s “Power to the People,” performed by Raise Gospel Choir. The entire five-hour event was later dubbed Bernie-chella as a reference to the popular annual Coachella weekend happening in Southern California.
At about 9:30 a.m., Raise Gospel Choir kicked the rally off with, appropriately, Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher.” Newly elected Council member Ysabel Jurado was the first officeholder to speak. The Filipina, who identified herself as being queer and the daughter of undocumented immigrants, quoted Bernie’s insightful comment about the tragic result of the 2024 presidential race: “The Democratic Party that had abandoned the working class found that the working class abandoned the Democratic Party.” Jurado’s comments set the tone for a recurring theme of the anti-Oligarchy rally that critiqued the corporate, establishment wing that controlled the Democrats, as well as the MAGA Republicans.
Citing her race for City Hall that unseated an incumbent, Jurado urged office seekers and campaigners to “lean into grassroots organizing. We knocked on 120,000 doors,” mailed thousands of handwritten postcards, etc., to win her Council seat.
Jurado lauded Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) staffers that recently refused to allow ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents entry to elementary schools, proclaiming: “When they come after one of us, they’re coming after all of us… Fuck that!” thundered the Councilmember adorned in a red T-shirt emblazoned with the word “SOLIDARITY.”
The rally’s first union speaker, Unite HERE Local 11 Co-President Ada Briceno, struck a note of defiance, lauding “the biggest hotel strike of 2024… which beat the hell out of the billionaires.” Briceno thanked Bernie for joining the strikers a year ago at Downtown L.A.’s Hotel Figueroa. The union leader led the audience in a call and response: “When we strike!” with the crowd shouting back: “We win!”
The Red Pears performed, followed by the Congress’s youngest Representative, Maxwell Frost, who rose to office after a school shooting as part of what the 28-year-old Floridian called the largest youth movement against gun violence in American history.
Exuding a fighting spirit, Frost told the throng packing the park, “I can see here you have lots of people power,” which, he noted, “the billionaires don’t have… It’s not about Democrats or Republicans, it’s about the people. You have to take to the streets and be loud about it.”
Frost described those resisting the Trump regime as “freedom fighters” and quoted American Marxist and feminist political activist, Angela Davis: “I’m not accepting what I can’t change, I’m changing what I can’t accept.” Frost ended with another call and response, shouting out “People” with the crowd roaring back: “POWER!”
Alex Aguilar, Business Manager of the Motion Picture & Television Fund, Local 724, and other production assistants spoke out about working conditions in the entertainment industry. One compared “organizing a union” to “making a film,” and another, urging show biz proletarians to sign up to join a union, repeated famed labor slogans: “An injury to one is an injury to all” and that other oldie but goodie: “Solidarity forever!”
Brandi Good, Longshoreman, Vice President of Local 13, International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), repeated “an injury to one is an injury to all,” adding, “That’s the power of the labor movement.”
She spoke about the fabled history of the ILWU, including what is known as “Bloody Thursday” of the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike. Two longshoremen were killed in San Francisco on that tragic day. Good went on to denounce automation, advocating a “fight for future technology that serves us, not replaces us,” and praised the role AOC and Sanders play in the cause.
The musician Jeff Rosenstock played for the political Woodstock, then Aidan Cullen of Pair and Care and others spoke about providing relief to victims of L.A.’s wildfires.
City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez delivered one of the happening’s best speeches, denouncing “our country [descending] into a fascist oligarchy [which is] a product of policies over [the] years.” She said it was “bullshit” that “Trump blames immigrants and trans people, not billionaires, corporations and special interests” for America’s problems. “They want us to fight each other so we don’t fight back” against an economic system where “three individuals own more wealth than half the country combined.”
Hernandez decried the fact that “seven [unhoused] people die on the streets every day” in L.A. and called for “building collective power and a new system.” She condemned the current system’s priorities where there’s “always money to bomb kids in Gaza, not money for kids to have a safe place to sleep… The rent is too damn high… We deserve a city where nobody sleeps on the streets, while luxury towers lie empty.”
She insisted, “Do not give up. Healthcare is a human right, not a business model.”
Guitarist Indigo de Souza played, then Sandy Reding, President of the California Nurses Association, spoke: “We’re in the fight of a lifetime against corporations taking over Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.” Reding made an “O” with her hands, symbolizing her support for no cuts to these vital programs, adding: “We know who’s hoarding the wealth, it’s the billionaires, corporations.”
Reding went on to say: “They want to take the virus of capitalism–yeah, it’s a virus—and unleash it on us. The billionaires made their money on the backs of the [masses], never forget those billions don’t belong to them.”
Nick Nunez of the National Union of Health Workers spoke about “six fucking months on strike” against Kaiser, denouncing: “They put profits over people by delaying healthcare, give CEOs benefits and perks, instead of their employees and patients.” Licensed clinical social worker Cassandra Thompson called the industrial action “the longest mental health strike in U.S. history.”
Representative Pramila Jayapal urged listeners to “fight against unelected billionaires and petty grifters who want to steal from you to buy another yacht. We’re not just fighting back, we’re fighting forward… Bernie and I are introducing a Medicare for All bill again. Take the hand of the person next to you and lift it into the air. Our love is greater than their greed, and our power will eclipse their cruelty.”
Accompanied by an acoustic (but of course!) guitar player, the legendary Joan Baez sang “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around”; “There But for Fortune”; and Lennon’s “Imagine.” Joined by guitar-strumming Maggie Rogers, she and Joan performed a duet of “America the Beautiful.” Perhaps in reference to the recent Bob Dylan biopic wherein she’s depicted, Joan went on to sing Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” Baez commented that at this rally, a sort of political mini-Yasgur’s Farm, that “it’s a much more meaningful goal than we did at Woodstock.”
April Verrett, President of SEIU, spoke about her recent trip to Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday at Edmond Pettis Bridge: “It was really clear to me that we’re still fighting that fight. Different tactics, same old oppression. The shit show is still happening in our country. Divide us by race to control us by class… When three Americans have more wealth than more than half the country, it’s time to change the rules… We can’t just protest, we gotta disrupt. We are stronger than their greed,” Verrett insisted, harkening back to the sit-down strikes at auto factories in Flint, Michigan, during the Depression.
Blowing his harmonica and strumming his guitar like an avenging wraith, Neil Young rocked the free world and the City of Angels, belting out “Take America Back” and “Rainbow of Colors,” with Baez and Rogers accompanying him. They were a tough act to follow, but if anybody could, it was Congresswoman AOC.
After wishing everyone a “Happy Passover,” Ocasio-Cortez demanded the release of disappeared Columbia University pro-Palestinian protest leader Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University’s Rumeysa Ozturk, whose “thought crime” was writing a Gaza-related op-ed in the campus newspaper.
The congresswoman noted there was no evidence that they broke any laws, and lauded “the everyday people who refused to let ICE enter two LAUSD schools. It can’t be officials alone who uphold democracy, it’s the people, the masses.”
Ocasio-Cortez asserted that “Donald Trump is a criminal found guilty of 34 charges [of business fraud]. Of course, he’s manipulating the stock market” to enrich his cohorts. She denounced “the everyday corruption and dark money,” and members of Congress who invest in and trade stocks, including in pharmaceutical and military-related industries, for having a clear conflict of interest and possible insider trading. “How can they make objective choices?” she asked, adding, “It must end… I don’t care what party you are… I don’t take a dime in corporate money, and you have me to stand up for you.”
Criticizing Democrats who voted for the GOP’s recent budget, she went on to say, “We can’t turn in our neighbors. Reject division—the only way we can win is with solidarity.”
After “Power to the People” was performed, Sen. Sanders came on stage. He thanked the union and other speakers and performers, and turning to the crowd, said, “Mostly thanks to all of you.” Amidst resounding chants of Bernie, the lifelong socialist replied: “No–it’s not ‘Bernie’—it’s you,” meaning the vast sea of humanity who had turned out to attend the rally.
Sanders said that the “President [Donald Trump] has no understanding or respect for the Constitution. They’re moving us to an authoritarian society—we ain’t going there!” The senator recalled the stage at Trump’s inaugural address, with “the three richest men in America behind Trump. Thirteen other billionaires were also there—that’s what oligarchy is all about,” he said, referring to the Greek word that is defined as “a form of government in which power rests with a small number of people,” a system which Sanders pointed out, is opposed to “the separation of powers” crafted by America’s founders. “They never wanted to see a country under one person with unlimited power.”
The Independent Senator from Vermont went on to cite Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which he said was delivered to honor the thousands of Union soldiers “fight[ing] the evil of slavery,” quoting the Great Emancipator’s immortal words about: “‘Government of the people, by the people, and for the people… shall not perish from the Earth.’ Not to become a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, and for the billionaire class.”
Sanders also referred to a State of the Union address by then-President Franklin Roosevelt, which called for expanding America’s notion of rights to include economic rights. Sanders lampooned the “corrupt campaign system” that allowed Musk to give “$270 million to elect Donald Trump” and called for “overturning Citizens United. They are very religious, but their religion is not based on love or justice; it’s based on greed, greed, and more greed. Addiction is a big problem, and the addiction of the oligarchy is for greed.”
Wrapping up, Sanders quoted Frederick Douglass: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will…” he concluded: “They’re the 1%, we’re the 99%… They own congress and the media but they don’t own us,” which sparked an eruption of applause.
The Fighting Oligarchy tour, after L.A., went on to the Coachella music festival, Salt Lake City, Idaho, and beyond.
The backdrop for the rally at Gloria Molina Grand Park was L.A. City Hall. During the 1950s, in the Adventures of Superman TV series, the City Hall doubled as the Daily Planet Building, where “mild-mannered reporter” Clark Kent would secretly change into Superman and fly out of a window to fight for “truth, justice, and the American way.” The vast, enthusiastic turnout at the Fighting Oligarchy demo showed that the real superheroes can be in the form of ordinary people when they are organized, united, and determined to fight for their rights against the privileges of the few.
Further information on the Fighting Oligarchy tour can be found here.
Ed Rampell’s novel about the Native Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement for Indigenous rights, The Disinherited: Blood Blalahs, will be published this Spring.
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