Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

Sanders speaks to packed crowd at Cox Pavilion Saturday

Senator Bernie Sanders at Cox

L.E. Baskow

Senator Bernie Sanders arrives on stage to rally supporters and local grassroots activists around a progressive agenda, including quality, affordable health care for all Americans and the importance of access to reproductive health at the Cox Pavilion on Saturday, April 22, 2017.

Senator Bernie Sanders at Cox

Senator Bernie Sanders gets passionate about the subjects during a rally before supporters and local grassroots activists around a progressive agenda, including quality, affordable health care for all Americans and the importance of access to reproductive health at the Cox Pavilion on Saturday, April 22, 2017. Launch slideshow »

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders was a driving force in last year's presidential election cycle, giving eventual Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton all she could handle in a hard-fought Nevada primary.

On Saturday, the Vermont senator returned to Las Vegas, urging his supporters to fight back against the policies of President Donald Trump through grassroots campaigning, phone calls and knocking on doors

"Trump and the billionaire class have a lot of money and power," Sanders said to a crowd of about 1,000 cheering fans at UNLV's Cox Pavilion. "But what we have that they don’t is the people."

Sanders’ 25-minute speech, which also featured nearly an hour of remarks from Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez and Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards, focused on the importance of Planned Parenthood, health care, income equality and the struggles of the Democratic party. The rally, which was free and open to the public, was Sanders' eighth and final stop during this month's "Come Together and Fight Back" tour, which started last Tuesday in Portland, Maine.

Many of those on hand for the speech arrived as early as 9 a.m. for the chance to see Sanders and Perez. While it was the U.S. senator’s first return to the Las Vegas Valley since before the 2016 elections on Nov. 8, many of his statements echoed familiar lines from last year’s campaign that saw millions of young Democratic voters pack venues across the country.

“People will not come in unless we have a progressive agenda,” he said. “We cannot allow 24 million Americans to be thrown off of health insurance and will not allow Planned Parenthood to be defunded.”

Sanders lamented what he called a “disastrous” Trump budget, which the president himself has labeled the “skinny” budget for its cutbacks on federal spending. Sanders said defunding programs like “Meals on Wheels,” will do more harm than good, leaving the elderly Americans that count on these services “empty-handed.”

He added that the United States has “more income inequality than any country on Earth,” in advocating for a rise in the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. He praised fast food employees that have gone on strike in past years in support for such a raise, calling then “courageous.”

In addition to having “the final say on their own bodies,” Sanders said women in the United States should be paid the same as men for equal work, to which the crowd gave one of its loudest ovations of the speech.

He criticized the “shameful” U.S. criminal justice system, calling it “broken.” Sanders said money used to house inmates in federal prisons should instead be invested in education, especially math and science, and making it affordable for Americans.

“50 years ago it was possible to get a good job with just a high school degree,” he said. “Today when we talk about free public education, it’s not just kindergarten through 12, but community college and higher education as well.”

Sanders used the topic of education and science to blast Trump over climate change, urging the president to listen to scientists who say the planet is warming at “alarming rates,” instead of making environmental policy based on the advice of “the fossil fuel industry and lobbyists.”

Before Sanders, Perez, who became the DNC Chair on Feb. 25, spoke emphatically to the crowd, pledging the committee’s dedication to constituents after reports of corruption and preferential treatment toward Clinton during the 2016 election cycle resulted in the resignation of former chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and firing of acting chair Donna Brazile from CNN.

“We came out here to learn from you,” Perez said. “We’re out here listening because good leaders are good listeners."

"We need to articulate our values clearly,” he added, “because when we put our values in action, we succeed.”

Some attendees in Saturday’s pro-Sanders crowd held signs expressing their frustration with the DNC during Perez’ speech, including one man whose sign read “DNC owes America an apology.”

Las Vegans Sharice Lance and Aimee Romero were two such attendees anticipating the new committee chairman’s words on Friday. Wearing a royal blue t-shirt with “Resist” written in white across the middle and a Bernie Sanders campaign button pinned to her chest, Lance, 43, said she thought the DNC needed to do a better job getting grassroots voters more engaged.

Romero, also 43, echoed that message. She said the party was “disorganized,” and that energized people like herself were having trouble connecting with Democrat-affiliated organizations on the local, state and federal levels.

“We want nothing more to be on the phone and knocking on doors,” Romero said. “We need a candidate, we need an organization; here we are.”

All three speakers at Saturday’s speech criticized U.S. Senator Dean Heller, R.-Nev., urging attendees to “hold him to his word” on remarks he made in support of Planned Parenthood during a town hall event Wednesday in Reno.

Richards went as far as to read the phone number to one of Heller’s office lines, telling attendees to call “every day, or every hour.”

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