Galindez writes: "Bernie Sanders drew crowds of over 11,000, 8,000 and 5,000 over the weekend. He must have been in blue states, with large, progressive populations, right? Wrong. He was in Arizona and Texas."



Bernie Sanders. (photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Why Bernie Sanders' Message Resonates in Red States Too

By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News

ernie Sanders drew crowds of over 11,000, 8,000 and 5,000 over the weekend. He must have been in blue states, with large, progressive populations, right? Wrong. He was in Arizona and Texas – and no, he wasn’t in Tucson or Austin. On Saturday in Phoenix Sanders drew the largest crowd of the campaign to date, packing over 11,500 people into the convention center there. Organizers had to change the venue twice because RSVPs for the event exceeded the capacity of the original venues. The crowd was over twice the size Donald Trump drew a week earlier in a smaller room in the same building.

On Sunday in Dallas, the heart of Red State Texas, 8,000 people packed into a hotel convention center. Later that day, over 5,000 mostly young people attended a rally at the University of Houston.

One of the amazing things about these crowds Sanders is drawing throughout the country is that he has no staff or campaign organization on the ground. The campaign decides they want to have an event in a city, they reach out to a contact in that city who arranges a venue, they announce the venue and send emails to anyone who has signed up on their website from that area, and within hours they are looking for a larger venue.

The phenomenon started within days of Bernie’s official campaign launch. They booked a union hall in Minneapolis, announced the rally, and the RSVPs started pouring in. With no staff in Minnesota and only two staff members in Iowa who both had their plates full organizing a three-day swing through the Hawkeye State, the campaign reached out to a progressive congressman in Minnesota and asked if he knew of a good large-event organizer, which led to the hire of their first national advance staffer. Since then, Andrew Virden has been traveling the country pulling together volunteers to facilitate the largest events organized by any 2016 presidential hopeful.

Andrew told me he has put together a core team of volunteer team leaders who travel on their own dime to help out at these large events. Five of them travelled to Phoenix and helped Andrew recruit and organize over 200 volunteers. So who are these super volunteers who are willing to travel around the country working for Bernie Sanders?



Brenna Cain with Andrew Virden in Denver. (photo provided by Brenna Cain)

Brenna Cain lives in Casper, Wyoming, where she serves as an operating room scrub nurse. In June, Brenna drove 11 hours overnight to hear Sanders speak in Des Moines, Iowa. As she drove home that same weekend, she learned he would be in Denver, a mere four and a half hours away, the next weekend. She got in touch with Andrew Virden by pure enthusiasm and luck, got to Denver at noon the day of the speech, and just started helping. Soon she was Andrew’s assistant and also met Senator Sanders and his wife, Jane. She was already enthusiastic, but once she met them, she was … without words. Now she has a deeply solid commitment to doing whatever she can to help this “awesome movement.”

Brenna told me, “I believe Bernie. Not just because his campaign message is solid, but also because he has decades of time already put into working for the people.

“I left a very patriarchal, oppressive religion when I was 22. Five years later, I am now in graduate school, learning how to be a nurse practitioner. My life has changed because I was able to go to college. I recognize that I had so much help along the way, yet it was still very difficult. I moved to Wyoming because it had a cheaper tuition rate. I boarded with my grandparents for the first two years. I received Pell grants and scholarships. But I still worked night shifts and double shifts as a CNA. And I still left with $5,000 in debt. I am angry because my story is still one of the ‘easy’ stories about gaining a degree in the United States. We need to be able to bathe in our education, not merely get a degree by the skin of our teeth. We need to have higher wages so we can spare the time to study. I can’t stress enough how college changed my life. I want everyone else to have the opportunity for their lives to change.

“I think of the time and money I happily spend to volunteer for the Sanders campaign as an investment, not an expense.”

Brenna went on to say, “I love the caliber of people I’ve been meeting through the campaign events. My fellow volunteer team leaders are ‘my people.’ I’m very much an introvert, but not around these events or these people. I think people realize how special this campaign is. The people have a shot at voting for a candidate they trust and believe. It’s not, well, gotta pick the lesser of two evils. This is someone who gets us and who works FOR us. He literally stands with union workers during strikes. He’s not a corporate lackey, he’s here for US. I think people get that.

“As the senator keeps reminding us all, this campaign is not about him. It’s about the people and the issues. I think that inspires people as well, that we have to own this campaign and this movement. We can be the change we need. And we desperately need change. People are realizing they have a voice again. I am realizing I have a voice again. And I’m sure as heck not about to surrender that to the 1% anymore.”



Billie, Brenna, Electra, Angie, Tyson and Andrew with other volunteers in Phoenix.

(photo provided by Billie McFadden)

Billie McFadden, a self described “Jill-of-all-trades” from Las Vegas whose favorite job is to team up with her dad coaching kids on his climbing wall and bungee jumping, told me, “Bernie’s values mirror my own. I have been driven by a lifelong passion to help people, especially those in need. I contribute by working for selfish reasons: it makes ME feel good, knowing he will do right by all. When Bernie speaks, it feels genuine. His legacy, actions, consistent themes, and voting record prove that to be true. People are seeing this. I believe we all find him to be a spark in this political cascade of deplorable deceit, corruption, and greed – a rare spark, which is igniting a fire in us that we have not felt in decades. His messages and actions resonate with the vast majority of people in this country and around the world. I believe this is why we are so motivated. TRUE hope. I was overcome by emotion thinking about the fact that over 230 volunteers showed up to help, almost all of whom were called two to three days prior. If this is not inspirational, then I don’t know what is.”

McFadden also had praise for Andrew Virden: “He is another inspirational force. His kind, calm, humorous, and patient interactions with everyone I witnessed approach him are to be revered. No one could know or tell that he had a tremendous workload and very little time in which to accomplish it. His genuine appreciation for us all is apparent.”

“As I stood upstairs pointing the final hurried people in the right direction, far above the massive convention hall, Bernie was introduced. The thunderous roar and applause vibrating under my feet sent chills throughout my body. This is worth every ounce of effort and dollar that I can’t afford to spend,” said McFadden.



Electra Skrzydlewski with Bernie speaking in the background. (photo provided by Electra Skrzydlewski)

Electra Skrzydlewski is 31 years old and a literacy coordinator at an education non-profit in Nevada. She has been a community organizer since 2007.

Electra told us that “while many of my friends and peers eagerly joined the Hillary campaign, I hesitated to align myself with Secretary Clinton’s race, because I wanted to support a progressive candidate who would come out against establishment politics and the Beltway business-as-usual that deliberately dismisses the realities that the people in this country experience in their daily lives. When Senator Sanders announced that he was running, I felt confident that, regardless of the outcome of the race, the issues that previous administrations have failed to adequately confront had a greater likelihood of being part of a national conversation that would begin to build transpartisan coalitions and to negotiate from a place where political divisions were narrowed, because he would work to earn respect for an attempt to redistribute power and balance the playing field. I want to see the political landscape undergo a transformation and I think that Bernie Sanders is a key actor in that change.

“I am willing to dedicate myself to supporting this campaign because I trust that Senator Sanders is motivated to run for Executive office for the reasons he so vigorously champions – this bid is about the interests of the people and restoring the integrity of the democratic process. From my perspective, the country will continue to suffer economic, environmental, racial, social, and military injustice if we neglect to hold our government accountable to majority-supported issues and the movements that are fighting for representation, protection, and dignity. I believe that he has been called to run for the Presidency because he recognizes that we are on an unsustainable path and that an intervention capable of addressing the structural and systemic issues this nation ignores is long overdue.

“This campaign will be informed and influenced by those Sanders seeks to represent, and there is nothing I want to see more than the concerns of our nation’s impoverished and working class shift the dominant paradigm in Washington. I want to help elect a President who understands that deliberative democracy is the basis by which government is legitimized. I want democracy to rule the White House, and I think that many Sanders supporters share that belief and see this candidate as someone who will work to enact policies reflective of the progressive positions a growing majority of Americans are adopting.

“I believe that this campaign is garnering historical levels of support because Senator Sanders is a candidate who can activate and awaken a person’s political consciousness with his message of revolution and people-powered government. Essentially, I think voters want to be stakeholders in what happens in the future and want a seat at the table to decide how that future will be written. I think Bernie Sanders’ candidacy represents that for many people in a way unrivaled by his opponents. He doesn’t need Super PACs, a huge staff, or permission to challenge the rules of engagement. He is clear about that. He is running a sincere and authentic campaign, and I think that is an underappreciated political strategy today. And fortunately for Bernie, there are exhausted segments of the population who are energized by this approach. They are showing up to demonstrate gratitude as much as they are waxing optimistic.”



Angie Morelli displaying a Bernie T-shirt. (photo provided by Electra Skrzydlewski)

Angie Morelli is a recovering conservative, a Jewish combat Marine veteran, and a small business owner who survived the recession and was brought up by a mother obsessed with Ayn Rand.

Angie told RSN: “After getting my business on its feet, diving into politics, and realizing I was wrong on a lot of things I previously supported, I switched gears. I am now an activist. I have done trainings with everyone, including Greenpeace, The Ruckus Society, and Backbone Campaigns. While my passion is for food sovereignty and anti-war work, I have worked on or consulted with grassroots organizing for everything from supporting the Constitution, the TPP, and Black Lives Matter to planning a vigil in front of Harry Reid’s office to honor those who died in Gaza (and Israel) in the last major conflict.

“When I read that Bernie had not only announced he was running, but had also essentially stated that corporations should not bother donating to him because he didn’t want their money and he was not supporting a Super PAC, I stopped what I was doing and spent two weeks researching him like I was cramming for a final. I changed my voter registration from Republican to Democrat because I read about the caucus. I read his book, I learned about him being in a folk rock band, I read about him marching with MLK, I read about him doing community organizing when he was a full time student, I read about him protesting the wars, and I read the letters he would send to the editor of his local papers. I read about how he’s spoken out against Monsanto, the TPP, racial inequality, Netanyahu (while his father was the lone survivor of the holocaust), and everything else you already know. Then I read his 8.5 hour filibuster on corporate greed and watched a few videos, and I knew I needed to stop most of my other organizing and work on this. I read that a revolution was needed and that activism tactics would be necessary, so I figured I could help. Bernie Sanders has been fighting for the same things I’ve been fighting for, only he’s been doing it for decades. He’s held elected positions in the executive and legislative branch and he has a track record of keeping his word and speaking his mind.

“We held meetings locally to start supporting Bernie, and I really liked the people who came to them. That told me a lot. When I met his team when they came to Las Vegas, I was even more impressed. I saw how little they had to work with and how amazingly they pulled off that event with a bunch of strangers who were just volunteering. I was motivated by the 70 volunteers who showed up at 6:30 a.m. (in VEGAS) to come help. I saw how the staff handled difficult situations and knew these were not typical political staffers. These were actual people who just wanted to be involved the same way I did, for the same reasons.

“I informed the campaign I would be in Arizona for Netroots, and said I wanted to help with the event, not having any idea how massive it was considering it was in a red state, and Arizona no less. When we realized how many people had RSVP’d, we knew we needed to devote as much energy to that rally as possible. We blew off convention classes, we stayed up late at night, we recruited volunteers in the hallways and in bar and did everything we could to get as much help as possible. I knew it was one thing for the team to request, and it was another for regular volunteers who were sacrificing themselves to ask someone to do the same.

“The reasons I support him are selfish. I know that if we can get him elected, that will solve many of the problems I currently organize about. I know that he will make it easier to get the things done in my community and on a large scale that I’ve been working on for a long time. I know that he is the first step to fixing everything that is broken in our country. I trust him. The people I idolize trust him. I can’t find anything about him or his past that makes me concerned (except maybe that I can’t find anything about him or his past that makes me concerned). I know that the right people are working on it and I know that he will win. And I know if I didn’t try and he didn’t win, I would never forgive myself. I fault my parents and grandparents for allowing our country to get to the point that it’s at now, and I couldn’t live with myself if I had to tell my children that I didn’t do what I could to fix things when I had the chance. That is why I support Bernie Sanders.”



Tyson Manker with Bernie Sanders. (photo provided by Tyson Manker)

Tyson Manker is an attorney and former US Marine who served in combat during the first gulf war and still has $250,000 in student debt. I have seen Tyson at events throughout Iowa and I knew that he drove down from Illinois just to see Bernie. Most recently, I interviewed Tyson at a press conference of veterans supporting Bernie Sanders in Cedar Rapids. Little did I know that Tyson would be boarding a plane later that day to volunteer in Phoenix.

According to Tyson, “For democracy to truly work, people have to get involved. I’m not content with sitting on the sidelines anymore while lobbyists and purchased politicians collaborate in secret to decide my fate for me. The Citizens United Supreme Court decision paved the way for millionaires and billionaires to exert total control over Congress, and effectively silenced millions of Americans like me who can’t afford to pay for representation. If money equals speech, as the Court ruled, then speech isn’t free. Besides, why should I have to pay for representation?

“We veterans did not fight in countries abroad so that multinational corporations could fleece our fellow Americans. We did not sacrifice for Wall Street to swindle our treasury. We do not serve at the pleasure of the 1%, and neither does Bernie Sanders.

“I’m a combat veteran with $250,000 in college debt. I can barely afford to pay my bills, let alone fork over what little cash I have, in the hopes that a politician might listen to my needs and concerns.

“However, what I can’t contribute in money I can contribute in energy and enthusiasm to a cause greater than myself (like I did when I enlisted in the Marine Corps)

“I am determined to spend every waking moment outside of work mobilizing for Bernie Sanders. I’m willing to temporarily suspend my personal interests so that I can dedicate myself to this campaign. I know that unless Bernie is elected, nothing will change. Until Bernie Sanders is President, I and millions of other Americans will remain trapped in the quagmire we’re currently in. I know that no establishment candidate has the guts or gumption to take on Wall Street and the monied elite who are responsible for America’s rapid demise.

“It doesn’t require a single dime to speak out, get involved, or mobilize friends, family, and neighbors. Like Bernie has repeatedly said, ‘They have the money, but we have the people.’ I’m one of those people.

“How inspiring is it to see these events rise without an army of staff?

“The crowds at Bernie’s rallies are incredibly diverse. They are a snapshot of what America actually looks like. People from all walks of life travel long distances to hear Bernie speak, with good reason. Never in my lifetime have I seen or heard someone as honest or on point as Bernie Sanders. Bernie is the only candidate who hasn’t spent his time in politics enriching himself. He works for the American people, not multinational corporations.

“People want to get involved in their Democracy, and for the first time in their lives, Bernie Sanders is giving them a voice. Bernie gives people who aren’t wealthy the opportunity to be heard. It is no surprise at all that at every Town Hall meeting, hundreds of citizens clamor for the opportunity to volunteer. Bernie is a once-in-a-lifetime leader, and he couldn’t have come at a better time. He will be the President America deserves.

“People are fed up with establishment candidates who don’t represent their interests. People see Hillary Clinton’s corporate sponsors, and they see more of the same. More Wall Street cronyism. More insider deals. More of us citizens being crowded out by the same big money interests that created our current economic crisis. Bernie Sanders is the antithesis of establishment politics. He’s exactly what this nation needs.

“Bernie Sanders inspires me like no other. He speaks to me and millions of other disenfranchised Americans. That is why he will win the Presidency in 2016.”

Bernie Sanders always says the campaign is not about him, it is about the people rising up and saying enough is enough and taking power from the billionaire class. Listening to these five volunteers, it sounds like Sanders’ message is resonating. It’s only July. With hundreds of thousands of people like Andrew, Brenna, Billie, Angie, Electra and Tyson on Bernie’s side, the billionaires should be worried.

Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering thepresidential election from Iowa.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.