For a more detailed description at a "Fighting Oligarchy" rally, see this coverage of the one in Los Angeles. The secondary speakers were Northern California organizers and union representatives, no City Council or County Supervisors attended the Folsom rally.
Here's a recording of the full Folsom rally:
Overhead was a small plane towing a "Folsom is Trump Country" banner. AOC's response: "You know, I heard that someone
started flying a plane with a banner that said 'Folsom is Trump Country,"
she said, with the audience voicing disapproval. "It sure don't look
like it today."
When they held such a rally in four-times-more-populous Los Angeles, they got a crowd roughly equal to the one in much-smaller Folsom.
Interesting note: Today's Sacramento Bee does not mention this event. The willingness of the press to entirely ignore popular movements like this is truly stunning.
Update: The Bee did cover the event...on the front page two days after it occurred. It mentioned 20,000 RSVP'ed, but 30,000 showed up (then revised that figure downward in another story). At one point during the event, the line to get in was three miles long.
The Bee reporter at the rally interviewed 65-year-old Carolyn Watkinson, who said, "The Republicans wouldn't come out and face their own constituents. So if they're leaving a vacuum, I'm glad the Democrats are trying to fill that."
News flash, Sacramento Bee: Bernie is an independent, not a Democrat.
The reporter also interviewed a 45-year-old Folsom resident ("Matthew," who declined to give a last name), who was given more column inches than Ms. Watkinson. Note that the interview of the Bernie supporter was elderly, despite lots of young attendees, and such interviews were not 30,000 times more numerous than interviews with the Trump supporters. Equal time! The media must be fair!
The Bee also took pains to publish another story observing that Folsom was not that favorable to Republican presidential candidates. It gave Kevin Kiley an extended chance to answer charges made by Sanders and AOC. Sanders was not allowed a rebuttal.
Kiley's point: Socialism has been tried in San Francisco and failed (why it couldn't have been sabotaged!) so it must never work. Please ignore the beggar-on-every-corner economy deregulated capitalism has given us!
For those of you wondering whether public ownership (Socialism) works, remember publicly-owned SMUD provides electricity for about 35% cheaper than privately-owned PG&E, and its executives, unlike PG&E's, are not consulting with criminal attorneys because they might be liable for negligent homicide because they skimped on maintenance. But hey, profit excuses all bad behavior, so everything's OK!
Update 2: The Sacramento News & Review provided better coverage (here). One encouraging note from their story: "One Trump supporter said he walked up to the rally “and I didn’t see one American flag!” Nevertheless, a Bernie supporter passing by thanked him for increasing the attendance numbers."
Just FYI, the stage for the speakers had American and California State flags.
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In India, in 2020, a quarter billion people took to the streets to protest the Modi agricultural policies. The Western media ignored it too.
Above are the 2020 protests in Paris where striking firefighters and police fought. Again, not covered by American media.
Here's a protest of millions in Chile so spontaneous they didn't have time to make signs:
The Chilean protests objected to government austerity.
And here is the landscape of recent protests in America
...and austerity (at the root of most such protests) has consequences:
The austerity line of talk is this: We must conserve money when it comes to the needs of poor people, but billionaires, Wall Street and the Dept. of Defense can have unlimited money.
Thanks Mark!
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