Bernie Sanders and Pramila Jayapal to hold Presidents Day rally at the Tacoma Dome

Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Bernie Sanders is return­ing to the Pacif­ic North­west after a long absence from the region, his cam­paign announced yesterday.

Sanders will make his first appear­ance in Cas­ca­dia this cycle on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 17th, at the Taco­ma Dome with Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Prami­la Jaya­pal, who is the cam­paign’s Wash­ing­ton State Chair and a top nation­al surrogate.

The ral­ly is open to the pub­lic and there is no cost to attend.

Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 17th (Pres­i­dents Day)
7 PM Pacif­ic Time
Ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton with Bernie Sanders and Prami­la Jayapal 
Taco­ma Dome
2727 East D Street
Taco­ma, WA 98421

Doors will open at 5 PM. The speak­ing pro­gram will begin two hours lat­er, at 7 PM, and con­clude at around 9 PM, the cam­paign says.

Entrance will be pro­vid­ed on a first-come, first-served basis. The Taco­ma Dome is ADA acces­si­ble and is able to accom­mo­date dif­fer­ent­ly abled persons.

No tick­et is need­ed, but the cam­paign asks that you RSVP if at all possible.

You may RSVP using this link.

In its dens­est con­fig­u­ra­tion, the Taco­ma Dome has the capac­i­ty to hold about 23,000 peo­ple, which is more than the now-gut­ted KeyAre­na or the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton’s Hec Edmund­son Pavil­ion, which host­ed Sanders ral­lies in 2015 and 2016. Sanders sup­port­ers packed both of those venues for ral­lies last cycle, and also filled a large num­ber of seats at Safe­co Field at a third ral­ly held short­ly before the 2016 Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial precinct caucuses.

Sound Tran­sit has announced that Taco­ma Link street­car ser­vice hours will be extend­ed in order to accom­mo­date peo­ple attend­ing the rally.

Sound Tran­sit advis­es that the last north­bound Taco­ma Link street­car will depart Taco­ma Dome Sta­tion at 9:48 PM, almost fifty min­utes after the speak­ing pro­gram is sched­uled to end. The last south­bound Taco­ma Link street­car will leave The­ater Dis­trict Sta­tion at 10 PM. Reg­u­lar ST Express ser­vice will be avail­able after the event ends, as well. There will be no spe­cial evening Sounder ser­vice, but Sounder will oper­ate on its nor­mal week­day sched­ule for the Pres­i­dents Day holiday.

So if you’d like to take Sounder down to Taco­ma in the after­noon or ear­ly evening from Seat­tle, you can. Just be aware you’ll have to take the bus to get back.

The streets around the Taco­ma Dome tend to be extreme­ly con­gest­ed before and after con­certs or spe­cial events, so we strong­ly rec­om­mend tak­ing tran­sit to get to the event if you wish to go. Taco­ma Dome Sta­tion is thank­ful­ly a major mul­ti­modal hub with fre­quent con­nec­tions to Seat­tle and oth­er destinations.

Take advan­tage so that you don’t have to sit in an idling car watch­ing pedes­tri­ans walk in front of you while try­ing to get to or from the rally.

NPI plans to cov­er the ral­ly, so if you can­not go, you are wel­come to join us here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate on Fri­day evening for spe­cial live coverage.

Last autumn, I penned an open let­ter ask­ing Sanders to pri­or­i­tize a vis­it to the Pacif­ic North­west; you can read that open let­ter here.

UPDATE, SATURDAY 15TH, 2020, 12:25 PM: Bernie 2020 has informed NPI of sev­er­al addi­tions to the line­up for Mon­day’s rally:

Bernie 2020 announced today that musi­cal act, Por­tu­gal. The Man will join Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Prami­la Jaya­pal at their ral­ly in Taco­ma on Mon­day night. Actor Tim Rob­bins will also be speak­ing at the ral­ly. Por­tu­gal. The Man will take the stage at 6 PM and the speak­ing pro­gram will start at 7 PM.

Por­tu­gal. The Man acquired world­wide fame for their smash hit, “Feel It Still”. The music video for the sin­gle has been viewed over 275 mil­lion times on YouTube.

Actor Tim Rob­bins is beloved for his por­tray­al of Andy Dufresne in the clas­sic film The Shaw­shank Redemp­tion, in which Mor­gan Free­man co-starred.