More than 34,000 people filled Denver's Civic Center Park for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rally Friday evening. The speeches were the largest, in a week that saw Democrats host various events and town halls across the state.
Earlier Friday, more than 11,000 people flocked to the Bank of Colorado Arena in Greeley. The appearances are part of a string of visits to western states by the popular political figures as well as a national "Fight the Oligarchy" tour by Sanders.
"The American people are saying loud and clear, we will not accept an oligarchic form of society," Sanders told the crowd on the University of Northern Colorado campus. "We will not accept the richest guy in the world running all over Washington, making cuts to the Social Security administration, cuts to the Veterans Administration, almost destroying the Department of Education all so that they could give over a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1 percent."
Sanders, an independent from Vermont and a two-time former Democratic presidential candidate, started his “coast to coast” tour, aimed at creating a populist resistance against President Donald Trump, billionaire Elon Musk and the current Administration's policies.
On Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez took aim at a media ecosystem and politics she says are meant to divide voters.
"If you don't know your neighbor, it's easier to turn on them," she said. "That's why they want to keep us separated, alone and apart. Scrolling on our phones thinking that the person next to us is some kind of enemy, but they're not."
The rally in Greeley matched a trend of large crowd sizes in currently red districts, with about 4,000 packed inside the arena and 8,000 outside. Both parties consider Colorado's 8th Congressional District as one of the most competitive in the country. Current GOP Rep. Gabe Evans beat former Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo by a slim margin last fall. The tour has focused on congressional swing districts currently held by Republicans, such as Kenosha and Altoona in Wisconsin.
"I'm extremely worried," Greeley resident Helene Hooprich, a long-time Sanders supporter, said. "We can't let the wealthy people take away our funding for government... Anything I can do to support."
The crowd included fans of Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders as well as Democratic voters looking for answers in the face of electoral losses and aggressive policies from the Trump Administration. It mirrored sentiment heard at Democratic town halls across Colorado this week. In speaking to voters in Greeley, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez seemed to represent something beyond what the Democratic party is currently offering.
"I'm really concerned about poor people in the United States, working class," Bonnie Auslander of Lyons said. "I'm really disappointed that the Democrats in some sense seem to have abandoned working class people. And this is something I really admire about Bernie and AOC."
"I'm not interested in this centrist, Democratic message of staying the course," she said.
Some voters said they came out to find a sense of comradery. "I'm so happy to see something happening against everything that's going on with the administration," Cathy Leon of Fort Collins said. "It's just really nice to be out here and be with people of mind." A message both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez touched on.
"Our task here is to build community. That's the deeper, deeper, deeper mission that we have," Ocasio-Cortez said in Greeley. "Elections, they come and go. We do our work, we set the board, but in the meantime we need to build our bonds with each other as communities, building community—block associations, neighborhood groups, volunteer groups, church organizations, PTAs. Because community is the most powerful building block we have against fascism to defeat authoritarianism and to root out corruption."
Rallies in the Midwest attracted tens of thousands of people–exceeding the senator's own team’s expectations. At those events, he likened the current political moment to historical movements like the American Revolution and the Abolitionist Movement.
Friday afternoon's rally had similar environment with thousands of people watching from outside the arena; many sitting in lawn chairs or on picnic blankets; kids watching from parents shoulders and people climbing trees just to peak at a jumbotron. The crowd included many older voters as well as younger parents with their children, with a strong proportion of women.
While the rallies have the energy of a presidential campaign, Sanders says he's not running for president again. “This is like presidential campaign rallies, isn’t it? But I’m not running for president, and this is not a campaign,” Sanders told The Associated Press earlier this month. “You gotta do what you gotta do. The country’s in trouble and I want to play my role.”
Watch the rallies
- Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to hold rally in Denver on March 21
- Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez expect 20,000 at Denver rally
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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