Sen. Bernie Sanders Brings His Fighting Oligarchy Tour to Conservative Rural California Districts

FOLSOM, Calif.—On a warm, sunny afternoon in a conservative rural California district, thousands of people lined up in the town of Folsom looking for inspiration, leadership and hope from an unconventional politician who has dedicated his career to fighting for working people. 

Some lived in Folsom, a suburb of Sacramento made famous by Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” A number drove hours from small, conservative towns to find camaraderie with others worried about what they see as the Trump administration’s unchecked control over their lives.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and “special guest,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), have drawn massive crowds of enthusiastic supporters at every stop on the senator’s “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, which launched in the deep-red state of Nebraska in February.

The progressive politicians returned to California after hitting Utah and Idaho, two of the reddest states in the country, and holding a rousing rally in Los Angeles featuring Neil Young and Joan Baez on Saturday, followed by a surprise pitstop by Sanders at the Coachella music festival on Saturday. 

“When it comes to standing up to Trumpism there is no such thing as a red state,” Sanders said in Utah on Sunday. “Twenty-thousand people came out in Salt Lake City tonight to say no to oligarchy, no to authoritarianism and no to massive tax breaks for billionaires,” he added, striking the main themes of his tour.

“This is an old, tired talking point used by Bernie Sanders for over 30 years to fear-monger,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers in an email. “President Trump is doing just the opposite: taking power away from unelected bureaucrats and restoring accountability to the American people.”

But, in Sanders’ view, the country faces an unprecedented level of danger today from the concentration of wealth and power, telling CBS News recently, it’s beyond anything he’s seen in his lifetime. 

And Sanders’ message is clearly resonating. 

People rattled by the Trump administration’s cuts to government programs like Social Security and Medicaid, aided by the unelected billionaire Elon Musk, flocked to the California rallies as they have to others throughout the tour. 

The day Trump was sworn in for a second term, Sanders posted on X, Musk’s social media platform, that seeing billionaires who donated to Trump in seats of honor at his inauguration showed exactly what he meant by oligarchy. 

“When the 3 wealthiest men in America sit behind Trump at his inauguration, everyone understands that the billionaire class now controls our government,” Sanders wrote, referring to Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Musk, who has earned widespread condemnation for slashing government programs running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which operates without congressional authority as required by the Constitution. 

On Tuesday evening, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez spoke to tens of thousands of people in two conservative rural California districts represented by Republicans who have urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to deny a long-standing Clean Air Act waiver that allows California’s rules controlling greenhouse gas and air pollution from vehicles to be stronger than those at the federal level.

Folsom is represented by Congressman Kevin Kiley, a self-styled “anti-woke” Republican from Rocklin who has claimed to support clean energy while voting to undo measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions and authoring bills to overturn California’s plan to phase out gasoline-fueled vehicles. Kiley also voted in favor of the GOP budget that is critical to implementing President Donald Trump’s multi-trillion-dollar tax cuts by slashing government programs. 

As the sun started to dip overhead, Ocasio-Cortez took the stage to huge cheers. “I heard that someone started flying a plane with a banner that said, ‘This is Trump country,’” she said, triggering boos from attendees who’d been watching the plane circle overhead. “It sure don’t look like it today. I don’t think this is Trump country. I think this is our country,” the congresswoman said smiling, as thousands cheered. 

“We are all here together because we share in the frustration and the heartache that comes from watching those in power actively tear down or refuse to fight for everyday working Americans like us,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We are here together because an extreme concentration of power, greed and corruption is taking over our country like never before.”

Recent government figures showed that one percent of Americans own a third of the country’s wealth.

And that concentrated power did not come out of nowhere, she said. “The destruction of our rights and our democracy is directly tied to the growing and extreme wealth inequality that has been building in America for years,” she said, adding that billionaires like Musk have dumped billions into this election to buy policies that benefit their interests.

Every time a speaker mentioned Musk’s name, the crowd booed.

Republicans in Congress have been voting to advance cuts on hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid and veterans benefits, Ocasio-Cortez said, “so that they can take that money and give it to their donor class all in the form of paying for tax cuts for the rich and sweetheart government contracts for their companies.” 

And the man who represents you voted for that, she said, urging the estimated 26,000 gathered on a local track field to tell Kevin Kiley, “Hell no! Hands off our Medicare! Hands off our Medicaid! Hands off our Social Security!”

Kiley is not in Congress to serve working families, Ocasio-Cortez said, but to serve himself and the billionaire class that put him there.

When Kiley’s office was asked to respond to Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders’ comments that the congressman has failed to represent the interests of working families in his district, a spokesperson, Michael Rauber, responded, “lol.”

Looking for Camaraderie 

Sanders recently thanked the more than 100,000 people who have attended his rallies in the first six of the dozen states on the tour, and explained that he launched the tour so people throughout the country will “understand that they are not alone when they feel outraged by what Trump is doing to our country.”

He hopes, he said, “when they stand there amidst thousands and thousands of their neighbors in opposition to oligarchy, opposition to authoritarianism and xenophobia and attacks on the working class, they very quickly understand that they are not part of some fringe minority who are opposing Trump, but that they belong to a strong majority of Americans who want this country to move in a very different direction than where Trump is taking us.”

That’s why Leily Ghods, a children’s health program analyst for the California State Treasurer’s Office, drove from Sacramento to attend the Folsom rally. “Being out here gives you a semblance of community and unity at a time when the government is making you feel isolated and targeting people to feel alone, and targeting people to feel helpless,” said Ghods, who was born and raised in Folsom. 

Ghods recognized that others may feel it’s not a safe environment for them to speak out, and wanted to use her privilege to speak out on their behalf. As a state grantmaker, she’s particularly upset about the Trump administration’s massive cuts to federally funded programs. 

“A lot of these grants go to help people and for them to be targeted and used as justification for terrible behavior and for bullying and for isolation is heartbreaking,” Ghods said. 

Jeremy Barker, who used to prepare taxes for H&R Block, drove south to Folsom from a small conservative town because he’s concerned about people who are not citizens.

“I’ve always told my clients that they’re protected, that their information is supposed to be segregated from prosecution,” he said. “Their address, their name, their phone number is only supposed to go to the IRS, and that’s why they would file taxes, because they knew they were safe.”

But now, he said, they’re most likely going to be tracked down through their Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers and the address they’ve given, referring to the ITINs noncitizens use when they don’t have a Social Security number.

Trump supporters showed up to protest both California events. Several trucks with Trump banners and American flags repeatedly drove by yelling at people waiting to enter the event in Folsom. In Bakersfield, a Trump supporter told ABC30 news he thought it was ironic that Sanders was talking about fighting the oligarchy when he’s a millionaire, as if that made one of the Senate’s least wealthy members an oligarch. 

A Country for Working People

Earlier in the day, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez spoke to a standing-room-only crowd in Bakersfield, in the heart of the state’s powerhouse agricultural center. Bakersfield is represented by David Valadao (R-Hanford), who told the Sacramento Bee that personal matters kept him from voting on the GOP budget. Like Kiley, he pushed the EPA to reject a long-standing Clean Air Act waiver for California.

“We must start working right now to give David Valadao the boot and replace him with a brawling Democrat who will stand up for the working people of this community,” Ocasio-Cortez said to cheers.

Defeating authoritarianism and the backers of corruption is the path to guaranteeing health care for all, establishing a living minimum wage, tackling the climate crisis and creating a country where the American dream is actually possible, Ocasio-Cortez said.

Valadao’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

United Farm Workers president Teresa Romero spoke on behalf of workers, “whether in the fields or in factories or in warehouses.” One thing the boss always tries to do, she said, “is to divide us by race, by language, by where we come from. But we in the United Farm Workers know one simple fact: that when you make it easier to exploit any worker, that makes it easier to exploit every worker.”

“Donald Trump’s attacks on immigrants are an attack on the entire working class,” she said.

Romero recounted that one of the “largest and most chaotic” raids by immigration authorities ever seen in the Central Valley had occurred a few months earlier. “Hundreds of our community members were stopped, interrogated, detained and even deported,” she said. Someone in the crowd yelled out “and illegally detained!”

Yes, Romero said. The authorities weren’t looking for criminals, she added, “They were stopping people who look like farmworkers,” she added, who left behind wives and children who have to figure out a way to fend for themselves. 

But the United Farm Workers is fighting back, she said, suing both the Border Patrol and the Trump administration, for unlawful requirements and practices targeting immigrants. 

Romero introduced a farmworker named Carolina who in 2016 organized a three-day strike that won her coworkers their first union contract, which secured better wages, benefits and “most of all,” Romero said, “respect on the job.”

Carolina has been picking grapes, blueberries and pistachios for more than 20 years, she said in Spanish while holding up her hands. 

Romero translated for the crowd. “Her hands, they are worn and tired from so much hard work. But these are the hands that feed America,” she said, to cheers. 

“From the cities to the fields we will build a country that works for working people,” Romero continued. “Where the workers who feed us all every day can afford to put food on their own family’s tables. Where everyone can get to see a doctor when they need one, and where no family has to live in fear of being separated.”

Back in Folsom, Kelly Manning was buoyed to see so many people turn out at Sanders’ rallies. “I’m really excited to hear the numbers of people that are beginning to stand up for our Constitution, which is freedom for everybody,” said Manning, who works in a conservative town 20 miles away helping seniors recover from injuries and illnesses. “Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to be who you are and stand up against this, this oligarch wanna-be that is trying to destroy it.”

As the gathering darkness cooled the warmth of the day, Sanders tried to leave the crowd with a ray of hope. “I’m not a mathematician, but I do know that 99 percent is a hell of a lot bigger number than 1 percent. So let us stand together, let us defeat Trumpism, let us create the kind of America we know we can become,” he said.