If you’re wired into the Bernie Sanders movement, you just might have noticed that there is a Facebook event that may take place in Washington, D.C. on October 17.

Should things go right, 100,000 people or more would descend on Washington in a Bernie Sanders “Enough Is Enough” rally. The proposed rally is the brainchild of Charlie Ryan, a fellow from Wisconsin. At this point, this idea is on Facebook, has been written up in Blue Nation Review, and got a mention on the new Ed Shultz radio show. When the Blue Nation Review article was published on August 19, about 75,000 people had already said they wanted to attend the rally. As of right now, the numbers are over 83,000 – an increase of 8,000 in less than three days.

When the Blue Nation Review article was published on August 19, about 75,000 people had already said they wanted to attend the rally.

But there’s more going on, particularly for people in California, the Far West, and the Midwest. Another couple (Richard Franklin Morse and his wife, Nicole Gangloff) came up with the idea of having a “caravan” drive from Santa Monica to Washington, D.C. That way, people from Los Angeles could participate, too. Richard and Nicole are planning on having media events along the way to break through the media blackout on Bernie. Just a couple of people and a few cars along Route 66 to Chicago and then onwards to Washington, D.C. But they might have a surprise or two. Their idea could mushroom like crazy.

Of course, at this moment no one knows whether Bernie Sanders is planning on being in Washington, D.C. on October 17. So things are just a bit on hold. But all Bernie needs to do is say, “I’m available if you all come to Washington,” and it’s very likely that things will take off in a very big way. Just as they did in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.

Because the Bernie events aren’t really planned by the Sanders campaign. In a nutshell, Bernie announces that he is coming to a particular city and picks the place where he’ll be speaking. Emails go out from the campaign to all the people in the region who have volunteered, information gets plastered all over Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, and – boom! — thousands of people show up to hear Bernie.

This Washington rally is a bit different, because it wasn’t picked by the campaign but was rather “suggested” on Facebook by Charlie Ryan. Just as the caravan was “suggested” by Richard Franklin Morse and Nicole Gangloff. If the rally takes off, you can almost bet that there will be “caravans” coming from many, many places on the East Coast and maybe a whole lot from other places, too.

Just suppose you have a Bernie Facebook page in Delaware, like “Delaware for Bernie.” The Washington rally becomes a certainty. So won’t there be people from Delaware who want to drive together to the rally? Of course there will. And from Maryland and Virginia and…. So you’ll have a caravan, and so will the people in all those other states.

This is the magic of social media. It’s already made the Bernie campaign bigger than anything Barack Obama ever did in 2007. And it’s just getting started.

Michael T. Hertz