Bernie Sanders to visit Pacific Northwest next week; will hold rallies in Seattle and Portland

Bernie Sanders, wide­ly con­sid­ered to be the most pro­gres­sive of the five Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates run­ning to suc­ceed Barack Oba­ma as Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, is bring­ing his peo­ple-pow­ered cam­paign to the Pacif­ic North­west next week. Orga­niz­ers work­ing for the dynam­ic, inspir­ing Ver­mont sen­a­tor have invit­ed Wash­ing­to­ni­ans and Ore­go­ni­ans who sup­port Bernie’s vision for the coun­try to ral­ly with him in Seat­tle and Port­land next weekend.

The Seat­tle ral­ly will take place at Hec Edmund­son Pavil­ion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton on August 8th, 2015. Doors will open at 6 PM; the pro­gram will begin around 7 PM and last till 8 PM. The cam­paign encour­ages atten­dees to car­pool or take pub­lic tran­sit. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Uni­ver­si­ty Link isn’t quite ready to car­ry the trav­el­ing pub­lic yet, or we’d rec­om­mend that any­one com­ing from the south take that. But the Uni­ver­si­ty Dis­trict does enjoy fre­quent bus ser­vice. Take advantage.

The cam­paign requests that sup­port­ers RSVP for the Seat­tle ral­ly here.

The Port­land ral­ly will take place the next day (Sun­day August 9th), also from 6 — 8 PM, at the Vet­er­ans Memo­r­i­al Col­i­se­um. As Port­landers know, the Col­i­se­um is locat­ed in the Rose Quar­ter and is read­i­ly acces­si­ble via TriMet’s MAX light rail.

The cam­paign requests that sup­port­ers RSVP for the Port­land ral­ly here.

There is no charge for admit­tance to either event.

At the ral­lies, Sanders will dis­cuss how we:

• Get big mon­ey out of politics
• Deal with obscene wealth and income inequality
• Com­bat cli­mate change
• Make col­lege edu­ca­tion affordable

Sanders has already drawn big crowds in Phoenix, Ari­zona (fol­low­ing an appear­ance at Net­roots Nation), Min­neapo­lis, Min­neso­ta, and numer­ous venues in Iowa and New Hamp­shire. Now he’s com­ing to the great Pacif­ic North­west to talk about his pro­gres­sive vision with the peo­ple of our region.

Hec Ed has a seat­ing capac­i­ty of 10,000 peo­ple, and the Col­i­se­um has a capac­i­ty of near­ly 13,000. Hec Ed was pre­vi­ous­ly the site of a big ral­ly for Pat­ty Mur­ray in 2010 head­lined by Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma that com­plete­ly filled the arena.

On Sat­ur­day, Sanders will also speak at an anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion for Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare, and Med­ic­aid, tak­ing place from 1 to 3 PM at West­lake Cen­ter in down­town Seat­tle. Oth­er speak­ers include labor lead­ers and local elect­ed offi­cials like Sen­a­tor Prami­la Jaya­pal and Seat­tle City Coun­cilmem­ber Kshama Sawant.

“We are very excit­ed to cel­e­brate the fifti­eth anniver­sary of Medicare and Med­ic­aid and the 80th anniver­sary of Social Secu­ri­ty,” said Rob­by Stern of PSARA and Social Secu­ri­ty Works – Wash­ing­ton. “We are par­tic­u­lar­ly hon­ored to wel­come Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders, one of the nation­al advo­ca­cy lead­ers for strength­en­ing and expand­ing these three crit­i­cal programs.”

Details on that cel­e­bra­tion are here.