“Welcome to Berniechella,” Maggie Rogers says to the crowd. It’s Saturday afternoon and tens of thousands of people— 36,000 we’re later told— packed into Gloria Molina Grand Park to fight oligarchy alongside Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Rogers, the Grammy-winning recording artist, is there to perform, as are Dirty Projectors, Joan Baez and Neil Young. To be honest, the downtown Los Angeles stop on Sanders’ Fighting Oligarchy tour isn’t all that different from a music festival, although it did not cost half-a-month’s rent to attend. 

Outside the event gates, people hustle for causes and cash. Sign this petition! Buy this shirt! On Hill Street, near the Grand Park Metro stop, vendors hawk merch to the beat of the old school funk jams pulsing across the sidewalk. Badges with some variation of “Fuck Trump” are common. The AOC shirts in Lakers colors provide a nice, local touch.

Around the corner, on 1st Street, a young woman waves papers, the headline reading something about “Class War,” while bouncing along to Dolly Parton’s proletariat anthem “9 to 5.” A few steps away, another vendor preaches that if we aren’t wearing social justice tees, we need to change them. “Your body is a billboard,” he says with the cadence of an Influencer who insists you need to be slathering yourself in beef tallow. I’m wearing a Depeche Mode t-shirt, one that I bought from a street vendor when the band appeared at City Hall, just down the street from us. IYKYK, but if you don’t, Depeche Mode has songs about racism and greed and environmental destruction. I think I’m good in the social justice shirt department. 

The cacophony continues for the 10 minutes or so that it takes to get through the line. This is a free event, so there are no tickets to scan, but there are bags to be checked. No protest signs. No bottles. It actually moves faster than most of the lines I waited in during my festival phase. 

Inside, as I wander around looking for a friend, I notice all the hallmarks of the outdoor concert experience. There’s a merch booth, a first aid stand and a jumbo screen projecting whatever is happening on a stage I can’t see. There are lines for the porta potties and the food trucks. I run into two people I’ve known since college. We catch up and talk about the size of the crowd and the lines. I say, “It definitely beats Coachella.” 

Later on that night, Sanders would turn up at Coachella and maybe that appearance got more hype, but I still contend this was better. 

There’s this myth that journalists are supposed to be neutral, but neutrality is a luxury afforded to people whose world is not burning. Ours is. We can’t both-sides the news when the billionaire class is sucking the blood from the planet and from us, just like we can’t both-sides a president who pisses on the First Amendment. Doing that just makes a mockery of our chosen career path. The question isn’t, “Are we entering an oligarchy?” The question is, “we live in an oligarchy, what are we going to do about it?”

So, that’s why I’m here. And, one can gather from the cheers in the crowd, that’s why a lot of people are here. When you hear the roars of approval whenever someone mentions unions or universal healthcare, you know these aren’t radical ideas. 

I keep track of the band t-shirts around me. Bikini Kill. Dinosaur Jr. Daft Punk. Does the Bernie shirt that says Rage Against the Machine count?

The equivalent of opening bands at a political rally are the opening speakers. There are a lot of those today. Some are politicians. Some are labor leaders. Like the support bands, the early afternoon speakers are there to prep the crowd for the headliner and the best ones are also introducing us to something new. For example, did you know that mental health workers for Kaiser in Southern California have been on strike for six months and a few of them just finished a hunger strike? I didn’t until I heard the speakers from the National Union of Healthcare Workers on Saturday.  

Even if you spend far too much time scrolling, which I do, it’s really easy to miss news. There’s just too much content and too much that’s simply regurgitating other content that’s trending. So, a lot of these more localized stories get buried even when they point to a much broader one, like America’s shit healthcare system and how it’s breaking everyone from the patients to the workers. 

It’s not just the healthcare system that’s broken. It’s everything, including media and our communication tools. And it’s hard not to think that this is all intentional. The less we know, the less we can do to respond. Sometimes, you have to go outside and see what’s happening for yourself. 

Because I did walk through the crowd, I can tell you that Sanders’ message resonates across generations. The crowd is young and old everything in between. There are boomers wearing tie-dye t-shirts and at least one, much younger person wearing a big green Luigi cap. When Joan Baez sings “Imagine,” the crowd joins her. It sounds like everyone knows the words to the John Lennon song. When Neil Young drops shouts of “Take America back!” into “Rockin’ in the Free World,” it turns into a call-and-response with the audience. Online, we’re divided by generational timelines, but, in person, we have more in common than we might think. That Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have been fighting oligarchy together should be proof of that. 

I said that this rally wasn’t all that different from a music festival, but there is one key distinction, aside from the cost of attendance. Concerts, particularly superstar-studded mega music festivals, are about the spectacle on the stage. Even DJs have had to change the way they perform and promote to keep all eyes on them. Here, it’s about the people, not just those of us in the audience at Grand Park, but everyone who will watch the videos after the fact. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are just the ones with the ability to express what we’re all feeling, which, by the way, is literally their job as elected officials.

Ocasio-Cortez references the recent incident where ICE tried and failed to enter LAUSD schools. “It will never be just institutions and officials alone that uphold our democracy. It will always be the people, the masses, who refuse to comply with authoritarian regimes, who are the last and strongest defense of our country and our freedom,” she says.

Later, when Sanders takes to the stage, the crowd began chanting “Bernie.” 

“No, it’s not Bernie,” he responds, “it is you.”

There were some good digs at Trump in his speech, but, really Sanders was talking about something much bigger. The problem in the U.S. isn’t just Trump, he’s little more than the snake oil salesman willing to do the job. Sanders reminds us of the Gettysburg Address, specifically, the part of Abraham Lincoln’s speech about government of, by and for the people. 

“That is precisely we are here today, to make sure that government of, by and for the people does not perish,” he says, “and that we do not become a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class and for the billionaire class.” 

Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Read her recently published work and check out her upcoming gigs or listen to the latest Beatique Mix. Follow on Instagram for more updates.

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