Rally signs for Bernie Sanders
Rally signs for Bernie Sanders (Photo: Gage Skidmore, reproduced under a Creative Commons license)

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.

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

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3 replies on “Bernie Sanders to visit Pacific Northwest next week; will hold rallies in Seattle and Portland”

  1. Bernie Sanders on Social Security:

    “Before the cre­ation of Social Secu­ri­ty, about half of our nation’s seniors lived in pover­ty,” he said. “In oth­er words, Social Secu­ri­ty has had a pro­found impact on low­er income ben­e­fits for seniors. Yet despite this enor­mous suc­cess, the Repub­li­cans in the House made a rules change that will make it easy for them to make huge cuts to this enor­mous­ly impor­tant and suc­cess­ful program.”

    “We’ve got to send a very clear and loud mes­sage. To the Repub­li­can lead­er­ship in the Sen­ate and the House: stop man­u­fac­tur­ing a cri­sis that does not exist in the Social Secu­ri­ty Dis­abil­i­ty Insur­ance Program.”

    “Stop try­ing to pit senior cit­i­zens on fixed incomes against the dis­abled. Stop rig­ging the rules for mak­ing it eas­i­er to cut Social Secu­ri­ty — ben­e­fits for the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in this coun­try, while pro­vid­ing even more tax breaks for mil­lion­aires, bil­lion­aires and the most prof­itable cor­po­ra­tions in this coun­try,” he added.

    “Does any­body in Amer­i­ca sup­port that?” the sen­a­tor asked. “Not real­ly, but they get away with that, because many Amer­i­cans don’t know what’s going on. The sky­rock­et­ing increase in wealth and income inequal­i­ty over the past three decades has not only hurt mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, it caused the mid­dle class to shrink, but it is also hurt­ing Social Security.”

    “One thing I do know damn well is that you don’t cut those ben­e­fits. You expand those ben­e­fits,” said Sanders.

  2. When I hear Bernie speak, I feel hope. Haven’t felt this excit­ed since the 2008 Oba­ma campaign! 

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