Eating the rich: America’s left protests against Donald Trump

SOME CALIFORNIANS spent much of the weekend stuck in traffic on the way to Coachella, a music festival in the desert. But near City Hall in downtown Los Angeles on April 12th, a very different kind of concert unfolded. Bernie Sanders, a senator for Vermont and two-time Democratic presidential candidate, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman for New York, headlined a “Fighting Oligarchy” rally, which seemed suspended somewhere between 1968 and 2025. A grey-haired Joan Baez told the crowd that she “ain’t gonna let those lousy billionaires turn me around”. Neil Young urged everyone to “take America back!” When they weren’t booing President Donald Trump or Elon Musk, attendees swayed to Maggie Rogers, a singer who best summed up the event. “Welcome to Berniechella,” she told the crowd of 36,000.

The rally in Los Angeles was the largest so far of the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. In their speeches, Mr Sanders and Ms Ocasio-Cortez suggest that the reasons for the rallies are two-fold. First, they hope to show Mr Trump and his allies that there are plenty of people unhappy with how his second term is unfolding. “Your presence here today is making Donald Trump and Elon Musk very nervous,” said Mr Sanders. Second, they are working to convince Democrats to adopt economic populism as their party’s driving force.

Since Mr Trump’s victory, Democrats have been grappling with what their party needs to change to woo back voters. The “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies offer one path forward. “We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us,” said Ms Ocasio-Cortez. “That means…choosing and voting for Democrats and elected officials who know how to stand for the working class.” They both decry corporate money in politics, wealth inequality and the very existence of billionaires. A stage filled with influencers (this is Los Angeles, after all) was on hand to help turn Mr Sanders’s greatest hits into viral videos. “There are no ethical billionaires” is written across one woman’s crop top. “Eat the rich” T-shirts are not in short supply.

Meanwhile in the crowd, several attendees said they were more concerned about making sure the government works than about sticking it to billionaires. Serina Milano and Sylvia Villa met on Bumble BFF, an app for making friends. The rally was their first time hanging out. “It’s great to see how many people are embarrassed of their Teslas,” says Ms Milano. But she isn’t sure that fighting oligarchy will resonate with enough Americans. Perhaps Mr Sanders isn’t, either: his speech veered into reproductive rights, climate change and housing too.

Mr Sanders and Ms Ocasio-Cortez are not the only ones trying to push the Democratic Party towards their point of view. There is a familiar contest of ideas going on here that pits the left against the centre. But while Mr Sanders and Ms Ocasio-Cortez have been saying the same thing for years, the centrists in the party have some new lines. Some local Democrats—mayors, governors, state lawmakers—reckon that fixing problems that vex their constituents in places the party already governs might convince voters that they deserve power at the national level, too. To this end, many Democratic politicians are embracing the “abundance agenda”, which involves cutting regulation in order to build housing and infrastructure more easily in places such as New York and California, rather than eating the rich.

Hours after Berniechella ended, the 83-year-old senator appeared on stage at the real thing. “We have an economy today that is working very well for the billionaire class,” he told screaming fans at Coachella. He is nothing if not consistent. ■