Last week, some 15,000 people gathered at ASU’s Mullet Arena for a rally with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
Wandering around the third deck of the arena, I met a woman named Shelly. Shelly’s been having a rough time.
"It feels like the air has been completely sucked out of everything, and it’s scary and it’s sad," Shelly said.
Shelly came to the rally with her friend Jen — but Jen didn’t want to talk on-mic.
"She is feeling so depressed she can’t even speak," Shelly said.
Ever since President Trump was re-elected, Shelly told me, she and Jen have been despondent. They came to the rally hoping it might lift their spirits.
"Trying to find some optimism in this ugly awful orange mess that we’re in. Just looking for other like-minded people," Shelly said.
Based on the conversations I had that night, Shelly and Jen were in the right place. In fact, I think it’s safe to say they were surrounded by about 14,998 like minded people…
"Donald Trump is driving a steamroller, it’s unbelievable what is going on now, and it feels vastly different, and almost at a tipping point where we may not recover!," Shelly said. "It’s overwhelming — it’s really hard to just soak in what’s happening to our country right now. Oh, it’s gotten scary. It’s gettin’ scary. That’s about it."
Some of these people were upset for very specific reasons — they were furious about President Trump’s attempt to get rid of the Department of Education. Or about Elon Musk’s cuts to government programs. A handful said they were hoping Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez would provide a detailed playbook to block Trump and Musk from carrying out their plans. But the vast majority of these people just wanted to feel something…anything, other than what they’ve been feeling.
"I want to feel relieved, I want to feel seen. Trump is such a crook, everybody with him is such a crook, he’s a narcissistic sociopath. And he just hurts everybody that he can and I’m so tired of it, just so incredibly tired of it. "I wanna everyone fired up - I just wanna see people get mad," Shelly said.
"When I was younger, I always expected the world to just get better and better as time passed by. And I’m just shocked by that it’s just not happening," Shelly said.
The rally began with a series of warm-up speakers. A pair of veterans from the Marine Corps and the Air Force railed against the Trump administration’s proposed cuts at the VA.
"We swore an oath to the Constitution, to each other, and to this country, and that oath doesn’t freakin’ expire! Trump wants us to sit down? We say “hell no!”
"HELL NO!," the crowd responded.
A public school teacher sounded the alarm about the privatization of education.
"Because our schools are not for sale, our kids are not for sale, and our communities are not for sale! It’s time, all of us, to stand up, and fight back!," Marisol Garcia said.
As each of them spoke, you could feel the anticipation building in the arena. And when the teacher finished her speech, she sent the place into orbit.
"They’re holding up a sign for me to do something I didn’t think I’d get to do, but everybody, ladies and gentlemen: Representative AOC!," Garcia said.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez walked on stage. She wore a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a pair of jeans. She stood at the podium, lifted her arms, and greeted the crowd.
"Are you all ready to rock? Are you all ready to take our country back? We gonna throw these bums out and fight for the nation we deserve?!," AOC said.
Even though it was clear that everyone in the room knew who she was, Ocasio-Cortez introduced herself. She was there, she told us, not just as a congresswoman.
"I come to you as a friend. As a friend. You know my home in New York, is a ways from here, but in truth, the distance —," AOC said.
"WE LOVE YOU," someone in the crowd yelled.
"I love you, too," AOC said.
Her speech didn’t offer much in the way of strategies to disarm the president’s agenda. Instead, she offered empathy.
"I understand what it feels like to watch all of this stack up. I understand how overwhelming it can feel. And it can make even the best of us want to give in to despair. To feel tired. To feel like there’s not much worth fighting for. It’s hard to feel like anything you do matters. It’s hard to feel like we matter!," AOC said.
She offered rage.
"And I don’t want us - I don’t want any of us to live like this anymore! We deserve better, Arizona! We deserve better than this!," AOC said.
She offered a vision.
"I don’t know about you, Arizona, but I want to live in an America that guarantees healthcare to every person! I want to live in an America that has a living wage for every person! I want to live in an America where you have free speech to express yourself," AOC said.
As Ocasio-Cortez spoke, I couldn’t help noticing how different the scene was from the last time I watched a Democrat address an arena full of supporters — which was the final days of the Kamala Harris presidential campaign. Those Harris events were so carefully stage-managed — so tightly scripted. And at this rally, there were no teleprompters. Ocasio-Cortez almost never used the word “you” - only “we” and “us.” There wasn’t a pantsuit or a necktie in sight.
"This movement is not about partisan labels or purity tests. But it’s about class solidarity!," AOC said.
And this is just my opinion, but the other thing I couldn’t help noticing is that if I were producing the Fighting Oligarchy tour, I would’ve had Bernie Sanders speak first, before Ocasio-Cortez. When Sanders finally came out to close the show, the applause was loud…at first. But the longer he spoke, the more it felt like he was basically playing the hits from his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.
"We will not accept a society today in which we have massive income and wealth inequalities, where the very rich have never done better, while working families are struggling to put food on the table," Sanders said.
At several points, Sanders decided to take suggestions from the audience, and you could feel the energy in the room drain as he tried to wrangle the crowd.
"How many people right here, in this arena, have high deductibles? What kinda deductibles do you have — ma’am? What do you got? How many — what? One at a time," Sanders said.
Now, no one would deny that many of the 15000 on hand at the Fighting Oligarchy rally were there because of the movement that Bernie Sanders started. But to my ear, the rally made it seem like the future of that movement belongs to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
After the speeches, I heard a smattering of complaints about the lack of a concrete plan to make Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez’s vision a reality. But most of the people I spoke to were ecstatic. They didn’t come to the rally looking for a message - they came looking for a messenger. And I want to play you one last moment from the event. It happened at the very end of Ocasio-Cortez’s speech. She was in the middle of a sentence, and an audience member shouts, “My queen!”
"But we share a lot of the same experiences —," AOC said.
"My queen!," an audience member yelled.
"Your representative!," AOC said.
