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There is a huge storm building (and Trump should be scared) [1]

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Date: 2025-04-16

“The people have the power. All we have to do is awaken the power in the people.”

‘Fight Oligarchy’ Tour Comes to Northern California

Yesterday evening, I attended the ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ rally in Folsom, California. Or I should say, I attempted to participate in the rally. I arrived an hour before Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders were scheduled to speak. I had an inkling of what was to come when I was forced to park a mile and a half from the rally site. As I approached the Folsom Community College campus where the rally was being held, I was greeted by the sight of thousands of people waiting. I couldn’t discern exactly what was happening because the line was ridiculously long. How long? Officials had to open the venue at 2:30 pm, half an hour before they were scheduled to, and three and a half hours before Bernie and AOC took the stage, because there was nowhere left for the line to go without infringing on traffic! One police officer estimated that the queue was a mile and a half long at one point.

I heard (unofficially) the estimate was that 35,000 people attended. However, I imagine it was difficult to measure attendance because the huge crowd outside and the line of people were still filing in at 7:30 pm AFTER the speakers had finished.

Rally Observations

MAGA may say: “It doesn’t matter because California is communist anyway!” However, the reality is that California has some deep red areas, and El Dorado County voted for Trump by ten points in 2024. There were a few MAGA folks around, but fewer than a handful. An airplane pulling a banner that said “Folsom is Trump Country” circled above, but it felt like an empty boast; it sure as heck didn’t feel like Trump country in that huge crowd. AOC remarked to the crowd with words to that effect.

I’ve been to four protests/rallies since the election, and I’d like to share some of my observations:

The crowd sizes are increasing exponentially. The first one in Sacramento had perhaps two or three hundred people. This latest one blew away my expectations. Certainly, AOC and Sanders were a huge draw, but it was a Tuesday afternoon/evening in a red county.

The demographics of the crowds have changed. The early protests felt like I was attending a reunion of former hippie protestors from the 1960’s and 1970’s. No offense intended, because those people accomplished amazing things. However, the age range was much more evenly distributed at this event. For the first time, I saw a large number of Gen Z’ers. I also met a substantial number of people who had never been to a protest rally.

The message is more focused. At the first protest, I felt like I was at a pro-Palestinian protest with very little mention of Trump. Each subsequent protest has been less fragmented in its message and more unified. I love seeing all of the creative (and often humorous) new protest signs and shirts, but also seeing people stick to the themes that organizers identify.

Fighting the Oligarchs

“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”

— Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Both Representative Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Sanders often hit on the topic of corruption. They spoke of dark money and how it has insinuated itself into every corner of our government. They even acknowledged that this is a problem on the Democratic side as well. I would challenge that the Republicans have a far greater role in the current state of our double-dealing government, as they planned and executed a master plan over the past fifty years to allow the oligarchs to take control of our government through corruption. If you’d like proof, I HIGHLY encourage you to listen to the podcast series by David Sirota, ‘Master Plan’. Chasing the dark money back into the light is essential to preserving our democracy.

The “Fight Oligarchy’ tour is essential because it is helping people understand that all is not lost. Every government exists because the people it serves (or it should serve) consent to be governed. Every protest people attend, every petition we sign, and every action we take is a thumb in the eye of the fascist oligarchs trying to destroy what we and our forebears struggled, and even died, to build.

Aristotle warned that oligarchies are very unstable forms of government. When there is a concentration of so much wealth, the misery of the ruled eventually becomes unbearable, and the majority can topple that oligarchy by refusing to comply. In the case of our current regime, it would seem as though instability could work in our favor, and they seem hell bent on making all of our financial lives more miserable.

Why this matters and why Trump should be worried

"When Donald Trump looks out at this crowd—and they pay attention to this stuff, and Elon Musk does—you are scaring the hell out of them," Sanders said at a rally in Los Angeles earlier this week. And he’s correct. Trump has been lying about the size of the crowds, claiming they are drawing "two, three thousand people," and Musk is saying that the rallies are full of “paid protestors” (where’s my check, please?)

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have been journeying through deep red areas of this country, and in a non-election year, they are drawing huge crowds. Idaho: 12,000+ and Utah: 20,000+, for example. As much as our cosplay President wants to pretend he is a king and can bend the will of the people to his corrupt whims, the reality is that we, the people, still have the power. There is a growing discontent with the lawlessness and chaotic malfeasance that Trump and his cronies are inflicting upon the nation. As one clever sign I saw at a recent protest proclaimed:

“They wanted 1939 Germany, let’s give them 1789 France instead.”

I hope to see you out in the streets.

TThe line to get in went on forever, but nobody was complaining

Signs were prohibited at the rally, but this banner outside caught my attention

By some estimates, his line stretched for almost two miles!

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