NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Monday, February 17th, 2020

LIVE from Tacoma: Bernie Sanders supporters stream into the Tacoma Dome for rally

Good evening from the City of Destiny!

NPI is cov­er­ing Bernie Sanders’ first major 2020 Wash­ing­ton State cam­paign ral­ly live from the Taco­ma Dome. As the sta­di­um (which can hold almost 23,000 peo­ple in its max­i­mum con­fig­u­ra­tion) slow­ly starts to fill up, local artists have been keep­ing the stage warm – and get­ting the crowd that way too.

The evening’s enter­tain­ment was kicked off by rap­per, and Burien-native, Travis Thomp­son. After him, the voice of Stephanie Ann John­son and the Blues-Rock music of her band, the HiDogs echoed through the stadium.

We’ve been watch­ing as the stands slow­ly fill with atten­dees, and the age range of the crowd might come as a sur­prise to some pun­dits and observers.

While many sup­port­ers are in Sanders’ typ­i­cal demo­graph­ic – mil­len­ni­als – there are a good num­ber of seniors (as well as sev­er­al par­ents with small chil­dren) who have braved the cool Feb­ru­ary weath­er to be here on Pres­i­dents Day.

The excite­ment is slow­ly build­ing as we move clos­er to Por­tu­gal. The Man’s per­for­mance – there is a ris­ing hub­bub of con­ver­sa­tion, and the low­er stands on two sides of the sta­di­um have filled almost completely.

Moments ago, the Chair of the Puyallup Trib­al Coun­cil, David Bean, walked on stage, the first speak­er of the night, to enthu­si­as­tic applause from the crowd.

As he praised Sen­a­tor Sanders’ approach to the threat of cli­mate dam­age, the crowd engaged enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. Joined by rep­re­sen­ta­tives from tribes around the Pacif­ic North­west, Bean denounced Puget Sound Ener­gy’s local LNG facil­i­ty and invit­ed Bernie sup­port­ers to stand for a prayer spo­ken in Lushootseed.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Pacif­ic North­west tribes next plan to per­form a song in hon­or of miss­ing and mur­dered indige­nous women.

Stay with us as we bring you live cov­er­age of Bernie Sanders’ first major cam­paign event in Wash­ing­ton State dur­ing the 2020 cam­paign cycle.

Written by Ruairi Vaughan :: 5:45 PM

Categories: Elections, Live Coverage

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2 Comments

  1. Hi, my name is Jonathan. I was there at the ral­ly last night. I’m won­der­ing if you could give me a list of who spoke that night. Thanks

    # by Jonathan M :: February 18th, 2020 at 7:30 AM

  2. I found what I was look­ing for. The speak­ers that night includ­ed Kshama Sawant, Tere­sa Mosque­da, Jamie Mar­golin, and Tim Robbins.

    # by Jonathan M :: February 18th, 2020 at 7:54 AM

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