When I learned last Friday evening that Bernie Sanders would be speaking at the Convocation Center of Eastern Michigan University, a location within walking distance from my house, I immediately made plans to attend. In this post, I’ll give you a little background about my city, Ypsilanti; about Eastern Michigan University; and then I’ll offer some impressions of the crowd and their reactions to Bernie’s speech. Along the way I’ll give you some details about the weather, the length of the line, and the demographics of the people who wanted to see one of the two remaining Democratic presidential candidates for the 2016 election.
The announcement said that doors would open at 12:30 PM. Anticipating a full house, I arrived to get a spot on line at 11:00 AM. I learned from other folks, once I was inside, that the earliest were in line at about 9:00 AM.
I happened to have occasion to go back out and drive by the end of the line at about 12:15 (a friend of mine was holding my place). The map here shows, by the purple line beginning with a circle and ending with a star at the Convocation Center, the line of attendees at close to its longest extent. I estimate that the line was about 2/3rds of a mile. With temperatures in the mid-20s, under damp and gray skies, that’s pretty impressive.
But let’s get a sense of what Ypsilanti is like before we assess what a crowd of 10,000 people on a Monday afternoon might indicate.
Ypsilanti is the second-largest city in Washtenaw County. Most everyone has heard of the largest city (and county seat), Ann Arbor, along with the university based there that tends to suck all the air out of the room. Ypsi and its own university, Eastern Michigan, have long labored in the shadows of their better-known and flashier neighbors to the west. There’s definitely a love-hate relationship between the two cities. Ann Arbor likes to think of itself as trendy, but of late the descriptor fits Ypsi better. A2 is coming to resemble a college-town-as-theme-park, while Ypsilanti is closer to its humbler, blue-collar roots, with an interesting and lively DIY culture. Further exploration would deserve a separate post; it’s sufficient here to note that while the population of Ypsi City is relatively small, with an official population of about 22,000, it’s in the middle of a reasonably-large county (population approximately 350,000), with at least a quarter of that number living within an easy 15-minute drive.
Does that make the turnout of 10,000 negligible? I don’t think so. Today is a federal holiday, but relatively few people have that day off from work. Eastern (22,000 students), U-M (45,000 students) and Washtenaw Community College (just across the street from Eastern, with another 12,000 students) are all in session too. Thus many people would have had to skip work and/or classes to attend. By no means were all of the attendees students, for that matter, as I’ll describe below, nor is there reason to assume that all people at the rally today came from nearby.
It’s a big time sink to go to a campaign rally like this, as anyone who has been to one can attest. Today, after however long a trip it might be for someone to travel there, it took at least an hour to stand in line outside in the cold and dank; a couple of hours—or more—waiting inside the arena for everyone to get in and get settled, given the security checkpoints that slow down entry; then an hour or more to hear the candidate’s speech, and then at least 30 minutes, maybe more, to get home.
So who seemed to be Feel the Bern enough to spend more than half a day at this event? These are impressions, not empirically validated, but FWIW: My read of the group is that it was probably about 50-50 male and female; about 80% white (maybe 12% black; 3-4% Arab-American; 3-4% other people of color); about 60% students, that is people in their late teens or early 20s, with the rest of the crowd significantly older. This is not too far off from the overall population of the county, which is about 75% white and about 13% African-American, though it is a little more white than the student body of Eastern, which is about 67% white, 20% African-American, and the balance comprised of other people of color.
Were they all genuinely enthusiastic about being there? Maybe, though that’s hard to tell. But he got plenty of applause, plenty of appreciation for his hardest-hitting lines.
For most of us, these are not going to be new. Some sounded different to me, however, so perhaps you can weigh in below as to whether they are tweaks given the audience, or simply material that I have missed until now. I’ll post below the jump many of the points that he made during his hour-long address, quoting directly as best as I can.
Bernie opened his speech by thanking the woman who introduced him, a leader of the Michigan Nurses Association—a union of 11,000 nurses in Michigan that has just endorsed him for president.
He continued by mentioning the meeting he had had earlier today with several families in Flint, saying how “ugly, horrible, and terrible” the situation is there. “In this day and age, it is beyond my comprehension that we are poisoning our children.” [Much applause and many calls for Snyder’s arrest and prosecution.] “If the local government can’t defend our children, if the state government can’t defend our children, then the federal government better get in there!”
He elaborated on the major problems resulting from the corruption of the democratic process in several different ways, and noted that divide-and-conquer is a tried-and-true method of demagogues. But, “our people are no longer gonna fall for that nonsense! When we stand together—despite their millions—when we stand together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish.
“Real change never takes place from the top on down. Real change never takes place when a president signs a bill. Real change happens when tens of millions of people look around and say—the status quo is no longer acceptable. When the people lead, leaders follow.”
He noted Michigan’s proud history of labor organizing, and segued from praising the insistence by labor activists a century or more ago that we are not beasts and that we must be treated with dignity, to honoring the movement led by African-Americans, with their refusal to accept that racism and segregation were what this country was supposed to be about. He acknowledged that he learned only recently that the city of Birmingham, Alabama—which we now associate with the murder of four young African-American girls on a Sunday morning at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church--was subject in that month of September, 1963 to 14 other bombings. It was a city subject to terrorist attacks, in his term, and the people of Birmingham, the people of Alabama, stood up against it.
“When you think that this struggle [is difficult], then think about the people of Birmingham, Alabama. If they could do it then, we can do it today.”
He covered several other major struggles for justice and civil rights—by women, by GLBT people, by workers seeking living wages—to say that while an idea might seem outlandish at one point in time, sooner than people think those once-radical ideas become commonly accepted.
“The point is—people want you to think small. I think it’s time for us to think big! [much applause and laughter] OK, you can think HUUUUGE! (Now I know the impact of Saturday Night Live.)” [more applause]
“Our campaign has come a very long way in the last nine months. … We were 50 points behind in the Iowa caucus...30 points behind in New Hampshire—and it didn’t quite turn out that way. We do well...when the turnout is large…. The media tell us, young people aren’t engaged, they might come out to a rally but they won’t vote. But you understand, YOU are the future of this country!” [much applause]
“We are treating the American people with respect and with intelligence. We are laying the real issues on the table. We cannot go forward unless we look at our problems and come up with real solutions.”
Our problems:
1. We have corruption undermining our democracy.
2. We have a rigged economy transferring all our income and wealth to the 0.1%.
3. We have a broken criminal justice system.
He recited many indicators of the gross discrepancies in income and wealth, referring in particular to the Walton family’s mistreatment and underpayment of Walmart employees: “I say to the Walton family, get off of welfare and pay your workers!”
He referenced the “tragedy of youth unemployment in this country” in which high school grads between 17 and 20 have serious unemployment: white teens 33%; Latino teens 36%; African-American teens, 51%. “Together, we are going to invest in education and jobs, not jails and incarceration.”
“We have Republican candidates deeply concerned about ‘family values’. I want Americans to understand that to Republicans, that means that NO WOMAN would have the right to control her own body… and that our LGBT brothers and sisters would not have the right to marry.”
He spoke about seeking 3 months PAID family leave, to bring us more in line with other countries of the world. He also noted the importance of rebuilding our national infrastructure, which would also lead to the creation of many millions of jobs.
Then he revisited the theme of Wall Street domination of our politics and economy to our collective disadvantage. “What galls the American people, is that a kid can be caught with marijuana and have a criminal record for his entire life. But an executive on Wall Street whose illegal behavior ruined millions...will get an increase in salary. [much applause] We are going to bring back justice to the criminal justice system.”
We are also going to “take on Republican governors who do not have the guts to maintain open elections, but instead present obstacles to poor people, people of color, older people. If you don’t have the guts to participate in free, open, fair elections—get another job!”
On the current controversy roiling the Senate: “ I say to my Republican colleagues in the U.S. Senate: You like to talk about the Constitution a whole lot. How about honoring the Constitution when President Obama nominates the next Supreme Court justice! Talk about cowardice, talk about obstructionism. The president nominates people to the Supreme Court. Republicans: Do not obstruct! Obey the Constitution!”
He spoke about the desirability of making college free, since a college degree now represents what a high school diploma did fifty years ago. And also about alleviating the crushing burden of student loan debt. “We bailed out Wall Street. Now it’s Wall Street’s time to help the middle class.”
On climate change: “Climate change is real” and we have very little time to do anything about it. “It is our moral responsibility to leave the planet in better shape for our children and grandchildren.”
“The short-term profits of the fossil-fuel industry are not worth the future of this planet!”
Considering the trillions that we squandered on war in Iraq, we can afford the programs we need to lift our people up.
“Together we have an opportunity in this campaign—not only to elect a president, but to transform our country.”
I’ve been to a number of presidential campaign rallies. This one was fun and high-spirited, though it didn’t have quite the intensity of Obama rallies in 2008. Still, the enthusiasm was real, and I was definitely motivated enough myself to stand during the entire event for the sake of getting close enough for a handshake. And sure enough, my friend and I squeezed onto the rail at just the right moment.
Who knows how many people in attendance today will indeed follow up? I didn’t hear many people express disappointment in the event or in the speaker, and volunteers were thick on the ground to get people’s contact information. The audience seemed generally willing to embrace “A Future to Believe In.” Time will tell whether that enthusiasm translates into action.
Meanwhile, Election Day in November is a mere 266 days away. What are you doing to help your local progressive Democratic candidates succeed?
PS—There IS a Bernie Sanders campaign office now open in Washtenaw County, at 4072 Packard Road (just east of Carpenter Road). Here’s coverage in MLive about the opening party on Saturday the 13th.