Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) held a "Fight the Oligarchy" event in Folsom, California, on Tuesday.
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00:00I know Alexandria and I, a few days ago, were in L.A.
00:08L.A. is a city of some 4 million people,
00:13and we had some 36,000 people.
00:16We had a great turnout.
00:21Folsom is a city of 85,000,
00:24and we have almost as many people here as we had in L.A.
00:30I'm told we have close to 30,000 people here.
00:38Unbelievable.
00:43Let me thank Folsom Lake College,
00:49Aisha Shaw, Dogpatch, the Philharmonic, Jane Kim,
00:55Lorena Gonzalez, and Everett Kelly.
01:00And let me thank Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
01:06for not only being a great member of Congress,
01:15but for being an inspiration to millions of young people throughout this country.
01:19We are here this evening to say very loudly and clearly
01:30to Mr. Trump and people all over this country,
01:34we as Americans will not accept oligarchy.
01:39We will not accept authoritarianism.
01:47And we will not accept a rigged economy
01:53where working people struggle while billionaires become richer.
01:58We will not accept a situation where, if you can believe it,
02:10one man, Elon Musk,
02:13you've heard of Elon.
02:18Elon owns more wealth than the bottom 50% of households in America.
02:33That, brothers and sisters, is insane.
02:38We have got to together create an economy that works for working people,
02:47not just Mr. Musk and the billionaire class.
02:51And to make a bad situation even worse,
03:02at a time of unprecedented income and wealth inequality.
03:09Never had more inequality ever in America than we have today.
03:14Mr. Musk and the Republicans in Congress
03:17are working on a reconciliation bill.
03:21And this is legislation that would give $1.1 trillion in tax breaks
03:33to the top 1%.
03:36And they pay for that by cutting Medicaid by $880 billion.
03:48Cutting nutrition programs for hungry kids.
03:56And cutting affordable housing.
04:01Now, you've got a congressman here whose name is Kevin Kiley.
04:09So, I don't know if Mr. Kiley is watching the law.
04:18Live stream or not.
04:19Well, Mr. Kiley, I think some of your constituents have a message for you.
04:29Don't vote to give tax breaks to billionaires
04:39and cut programs that the working class of this country desperately needs.
04:48And by the way, Mr. Kiley, I have a feeling
04:52that some of your constituents would love to sit down
04:57and chat with you on that issue.
04:59Now, Alexandria comes from New York City.
05:05I come from Vermont.
05:07We've come a long way here.
05:08The least you could do is sit down with your constituents right here.
05:13You know, as I observe what's going on in D.C.,
05:25I think a little bit about American history.
05:28And I think about Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863.
05:36And I think you all know this.
05:38Lincoln was there a few days after that horrific battle
05:42where 20,000 Union soldiers were killed or wounded
05:47in the fight to end the nightmare of slavery.
05:51And Lincoln looked out on the field just a few days after that carnage.
05:58And he said, you know what?
06:00Our vision of America is a government of the people,
06:08by the people, for the people.
06:12And that's why Alexandria and I are here this evening.
06:25We believe in a government of the people, by the people,
06:29and for the people, not a government of the billionaires,
06:33by the billionaires, and for the billionaires.
06:40And when we talk about oligarchy,
06:44it's not just the incredible economic power
06:48that the billionaires have, which is unprecedented.
06:52And it's not just about the massive income
06:54and wealth inequality, which is also unprecedented.
06:59Today in America, as a result of that disastrous Supreme
07:04Court decision on Citizens United,
07:11billionaires like Musk can put unlimited amounts of money
07:16into both political parties.
07:22Mr. Musk himself put $270 million to elect Donald Trump as president.
07:37And that, for Musk, was a pretty good investment.
07:39Not a lot of money when you're worth $300, $400 billion.
07:43So it's a modest investment.
07:46And his reward was to become the most powerful person
07:51in the United States government.
07:52But I must tell you, it is not only Musk and the Republicans
08:01who are putting huge amounts of money to make sure they elect
08:05the candidates of their choice.
08:07It is Democrats as well.
08:11And there is a reason why Democrats, for so many of years,
08:17have not had the courage to stand up to the ruling class
08:21and represent working people.
08:23And that is because that party is dominated by corporate interests.
08:27So today we say loudly and clearly, and I think, in saying this,
08:37I speak for conservatives and progressives and moderates.
08:42The time is now to get rid of this disastrous
08:47Citizens United Supreme Court decision
08:56and move to public funding of elections.
09:03But brothers and sisters, it is not just oligarchy that we are fighting.
09:10We are fighting a president who undermines our Constitution every single day
09:19and threatens our freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.
09:25We are fighting a president whose agents are rounding up innocent people off the streets,
09:37throwing them into unmarked vans and sending them to detention centers here in the United States,
09:48in El Salvador and elsewhere.
09:54That is not what happens in a democracy.
09:58That's what happens in a dictatorship.
10:02And together we are not going to allow Donald Trump to create an authoritarian society.
10:12You know, the founding fathers of our country were not dummies.
10:25They had just fought a war against the British Empire
10:30and defeated the most powerful person on earth at that time, the King of England.
10:36And they sat around and they said,
10:38You know what?
10:39As we develop our new country, this is in the 1790s,
10:43what they were saying is we do not want to give one person unlimited power.
10:49And they developed a separation of powers.
10:52We got an executive, a legislative branch and a judiciary to keep check on each other.
11:02And every single day you got a president who wants more and more power for himself.
11:14He is usurping the power of the Congress.
11:19He is now challenging in an unprecedented way the role of the judiciary in America.
11:31The Supreme Court recently ruled in a nine to nothing decision
11:36that a man who was illegally picked off the street and sent to El Salvador has got to be returned.
11:45A nine to nothing decision of the Supreme Court.
11:50Mr. President, obey the law.
11:55But it is not just Congress and the judiciary whose power he is trying to assume.
12:07It is the media as well.
12:09Apparently, he does not understand that in America we have freedom of speech.
12:16He has sued ABC, CBS, Meta, the Des Moines Register.
12:27His FCC is now investigating NPR and PBS.
12:33Just the other day, he said that CBS should lose its license.
12:42You know what they did?
12:44They ran a program which was critical of some of his policies.
12:49How terrible.
12:51And this is from a guy who has spent his entire political career attacking people,
12:58lying about people in the most vicious ways.
13:03So we say to Trump, if you can't take criticism, get out of politics.
13:18This is a democracy and criticism and freedom of speech is what it's all about.
13:30Brothers and sisters, our job is not just right now to defeat the very dangerous situation inherent in Trumpism.
13:43We've got to fight them every single day.
13:45But we have got to do more than that.
13:49We have got to create a vision of what a new America is about.
14:02Where we have a government and an economy that works for all of us, not just a few.
14:14This is the wealthiest country in the history of the world.
14:23We should not have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth.
14:30Zero through four are the most important years of human development.
14:39We should have the best child care system in the world, not a dysfunctional system.
14:49We should have the strongest public education system on earth.
14:58Do we have any teachers here?
15:02Thank you, teachers.
15:09And we want to make sure that our teachers are well paid and are respected.
15:18No teacher in America should start off at less than $60,000 a year.
15:30Unlike Trump, we understand the importance of education.
15:35Learning and growing intellectually is part of what being human is about.
15:43And in a competitive global economy, we need the best educated workforce in the world.
15:51We need more doctors.
15:56We need more nurses.
16:00We need more dentists.
16:03We need more electricians, plumbers, sheet metal workers.
16:10Young people should not have to go deeply in debt to get the education they need.
16:23You know, back in 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of the great presidents in our history, he said something that was enormously profound.
16:36It kind of got passed over because we were in the middle of World War II.
16:40But what he said at that point, he said, look, we have a great constitution, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, etc.
16:47But we're lacking something.
16:50And what we're lacking is the understanding that economic rights are human rights.
17:00Now, the establishment, the establishment doesn't want us to understand what that means.
17:08But what it means is that living in this country, the richest country on earth, a country where today we're seeing an explosion of technology, which is going to make us even wealthier.
17:20What we want is that technology to work for working people, not just the owners of the corporations.
17:34Brothers and sisters, it is not a radical idea.
17:38It really isn't.
17:39You know, the establishment and the money and interest will tell you, oh, this is a terrible idea.
17:44But in this country, every man, woman and child can and should have a decent standard of living.
17:53We should not have what a disgrace in L.A. here in Burlington, Vermont.
18:04We got together as a nation, 800,000 people sleeping out on the streets of America.
18:10We've got 20 million people who are spending half of their limited incomes on housing.
18:19Maybe instead of spending a trillion dollars a year on the military.
18:26What about building five million units of low income and affordable housing?
18:32If you can believe it, if you can believe it, and it's true, over the last 52 years,
18:44the average American worker today in inflation accounted for dollars is earning less than he or she did back then.
18:56You got that?
18:57Think about all of the increase in worker productivity.
19:01They didn't have computers back there.
19:03They didn't have cell phones.
19:04Workers are producing much more today than they did 52 years ago.
19:09And yet in real dollars, they're earning less.
19:16It is time to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.
19:28Brothers and sisters, it is the trade union movement in America that has developed and created the middle class.
19:38And millions of workers all over America want to join unions.
19:44We got some trade unionists here tonight?
19:49They want to join unions, but they're unable to do so because employers use illegal tactics to prevent them from organizing.
19:59And that is why we're going to pass what's called the PRO Act to make sure that every worker in America will be able to join a union.
20:12You may or may not know that in America today, we remain the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people as a human right.
20:31We have a health care system which is broken, which is dysfunctional, which is cruel.
20:46As a nation, we are spending almost twice as much.
20:50We spend over $14,000 for every man, woman and child for health care.
20:5614,000 bucks.
20:57And yet despite spending so much, 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured.
21:0560,000 Americans die each year because they cannot afford to go to a doctor when they should.
21:18I have talked to doctors in Vermont and all over this country who treat patients who walk in the door and they say,
21:26why didn't you come in here when you first felt your symptoms and the patient said, I'm uninsured or my deductible is too high.
21:35I just didn't have the money.
21:37That is outrageous.
21:39It is unacceptable.
21:41We must pass Medicare for all and guarantee health care to every man, woman and child.
21:56And when we talk about what oligarchy is about, and when we talk about what corporate greed is about,
22:09I want you to hear one fact that you won't see in the corporate media or hear in the halls of Congress.
22:15Right now, as a nation, our life expectancy, how long we live, is about four years less than other major countries.
22:24That's pretty bad.
22:26Do you know what's even worse?
22:28If you are working class in America, on average, you will live seven years shorter lives than if you are wealthy.
22:43And you know why that is?
22:44Why is that?
22:45You got it.
22:46Everybody knows.
22:47The word is stress.
22:49I grew up in a working class family.
22:53And I've been all over this country talking to working class people.
22:58Do you know what it's like to wake up in the morning and wonder about whether you're going to be able to feed your kids or not?
23:05Do you know what it's like to know when you get sick or your mother is ill, you may not have the money to get the medical care you need?
23:14You know what it's like that when your car breaks down, you don't have the thousand bucks you need to repair it?
23:21You can't get to work?
23:23All over this country, people are struggling every single day just to survive.
23:31Brothers and sisters, in the richest country in the history of the world, we can do a hell of a lot better than that.
23:40Bring in.
24:07Bring it.
24:08When are you?
24:09Thank you, but in truth, it is not Bernie, it is you, and that's not rhetoric.
24:28If we are going to defeat Trumpism, if we're going to create the kind of nation that we
24:35know we can become, it's going to take millions and millions of working people standing up
24:43together, educating, organizing, knocking on doors, forming unions.
24:56We can do it.
24:58Now what the ruling class of this country does, and they do it brilliantly, I must confess,
25:04what they do is essentially tell you, you are powerless.
25:10Ain't nothing you can do, because we the oligarchs, we got all the money, we got all the power,
25:18we own the media, we own the Congress, ain't nothing you can do about it.
25:27Well, we are here this evening to tell them, hey guys, you got it wrong.
25:41Because when we stand together, and not let Trump and his friends divide us up by the color
25:49of our skin, or where we were born, or our sexual orientation, or our religion, when we
25:58stand together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish.
26:03So in this pivotal moment in American history, what I have discovered, as Alexandria and I go
26:20all over this country, we are seeing unbelievable turnouts.
26:24We were in Idaho, Idaho.
26:28We had 12,000 people coming out in Idaho, most conservative state in the country.
26:33We have 20,000 people in Salt Lake City, a Republican state.
26:40And I think what the American people, Republicans, Independents, Democrats are saying, sorry,
26:49Mr. Trump, we don't want your oligarchy.
26:53Sorry, Mr. Trump, too many men and women have fought and died to defend democracy.
27:02You're not going to take us into authoritarianism.
27:07And sorry, Mr. Musk, we're going to create an economy that works for us, not just for you.
27:20So brothers and sisters, I recognize that the oligarchs have enormous power.
27:27They have unlimited amounts of money, and they are extraordinarily greedy.
27:33They want it all.
27:35But the last that I have heard, I'm not a mathematician, but I do know that 99% is a hell of a lot bigger
27:44number than 1%.
27:52So let us stand together.
27:55Let us defeat Trumpism.
27:58Let us create the kind of America we know we can become.
28:03Thank you very much.