MISSOULA, MT – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders pulled whistles and cheers out of a crowd of Montanans and fans from out of state on Wednesday at the University of Montana as part of his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour with U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“But it’s not just oligarchy and the power of the rich that we are fighting right now,” said Sanders, of Vermont. “We are taking on a president who undermines our constitution every day.”
The full-capacity crowd descended on the Adams Center at UM, some 7,500 people sitting in the bleachers and standing on the floor, with an estimated 1,500 more spilling far outside the doors.
“Brothers and sisters, we are tired of being oppressed,” Sanders said in a more than 30 minute speech that brought the crowd to its feet repeatedly. “We believe in democracy, not authoritarianism. We believe in an economy that works for all, not just for Musk and his fellow billionaires.”
Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats but stings them with criticism as well, said billionaire Elon Musk poured $270 million into the campaign of Republican U.S. President Donald Trump.
“His reward for that $270 million was to be made the most important person in the United States government,” Sanders said.
But he said Democratic billionaires are a problem as well.
“There is a reason why, over the years, the Democratic Party has not been as strong as it should be in standing up for the working class,” Sanders said.
Members of the crowd came from Missoula and from outside Montana, the early risers in line by 5 a.m.
They came to hear the message from the progressive politicians and star Montanans rallying people to push against a system they describe as broken for everyday workers and devastating the things they love.
They came because they are worried — about Social Security, human rights, due process for all people, federal workers, Medicare, education.
They came to be encouraged — to stay involved in politics and hear a message from Sanders, a politician some have admired for decades.
Sarah Willis said she’s a lesbian from Livingston who is “up to my ears” with Trump and his followers.
“I just want to feel good and inspired, like there’s some hope,” Willis said.
In November 2024, Trump won his second election for president, with 58.4% of the vote in Montana, a higher margin than he earned in 2020.
In a social media post Wednesday, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte reminded people voters had chosen Trump — and rejected his opponent and the vision of the visitors to Montana.
“Bernie Sanders and AOC are in Montana pushing their far–left agenda — but Montanans rejected them and their puppet Joe Biden after four years of failed policies,” Gianforte said.
“The people have spoken. They aren’t feeling the Bern.”
However, some Montanans have seen consequences they don’t like from the Trump administration.
Workers for the U.S. Forest Service have lost their jobs, the Montana Food Bank Network has lost money for food that goes to pantries across the state, and international students at the Montana University System recently lost visas.
Cammie Edgar of Stevensville said she’s worried about cuts to federal institutions including those earlier this month at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a National Institutes of Health research facility in Hamilton.
The facility lost two dozen employees earlier this month as part of a nationwide reduction intended to take the NIH down by 1,200 workers, according to the Ravalli Republic.
“That’s going to hit the Bitterroot Valley really hard,” said Edgar, who wore a T-shirt that read, “This is my living in unprecedented times shirt.”
Ahead of the keynote, Tracy Stone-Manning, former head of the Bureau of Land Management, warned the crowd of more to come, such as potential sales of public lands.
But Stone-Manning also said the country needs Montanans.
Stone-Manning, head of The Wilderness Society, said the organization turned 90 this year, founded by Bob Marshall, of the eponymous Bob Marshall Wilderness Area.
Marshall said the country needed “spirited people who will fight for the freedom of wilderness,” she said.
“Y’all know a thing or two about bringing spirit,” Stone Manning said.
She asked people to bring that spirit to fight for the Forest Service, the Park Service, the BLM, their favorite trailhead.
National parks brought Connie Sidebottom of Polson to the rally. Sidebottom wore a “Resist” button with Smokey Bear, and she said she’s worried about cuts to the places she loves.
“I want to resist because I love our national parks,” Sidebottom said.
She and her husband, Ralph, take their grandsons to a national park every year, and in 2010 or so, they saw a grizzly mama and cubs in Yellowstone National Park.
“We take our grandsons to parks so they love them like we do,” Connie Sidebottom said.
Ocasio-Cortez, a former waitress, said the crowd had gathered because people share a frustration and heartache that comes from watching those in power actively tear down the country and refuse to fight for everyday working Americans.
“We are watching as our neighbors, students and friends are being fired, targeted and disappeared,” said Ocasio-Cortez, of New York.
The possible contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028 said people who are LGBTQ+ are being harassed, immigrants are being taken off the streets by men in vans without uniforms, and educators are being fired for teaching American history accurately.
She said the Trump administration jailed a husband and father without evidence of a crime.
But Ocasio-Cortez said it will always be the people, the masses, who refuse to comply with authoritarian regimes, who will uphold democracy.
“Know that a better world is possible, and we are willing to do something about it,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
But she also said the political state of affairs didn’t come out of the blue. It has been a long time coming, she said, and it is tied directly to the growing and extreme wealth inequality building in America for years.
“Donald Trump is not an aberration,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “He is the logical conclusion of an American political system dominated by corporate and dark money.”
She told Montana that America is at a crossroads, and some members of the crowd saw the crossroads in their own lives.
John Moderie, of Missoula, said he hasn’t been politically active in the past.
But he’s on Social Security, and he’s worried about it, along with a multitude of other things.
“I don’t really lean left or right too much, but what’s going on woke me up, got me stirred up,” said Moderie, who wore a black leather vest with the American flag on the back. “So I’m political now.”
His brother, Mike Moderie, wore his “Fight Oligarchy” T-shirt over a Kamala Harris T-shirt written in UM-Grizzlies-maroon.
Harris, a Democrat, lost her presidential bid against Trump, but Moderie said he’s alarmed at the actions of the government, and he wants Republican representatives to impeach Trump.
He also said he wants people in the United States to follow Turkey’s lead in the ferocity of their political activism.
“They’re filling the streets up and pushing their leaders out,” Moderie said.
The crowd booed when the speakers mentioned members of Montana’s Republican Congressional delegation and Gianforte, a multimillionaire, and they cheered when Ocasio-Cortez said she knew Missoula had elected Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr to Montana’s Legislature.
One of the Montana speakers, Anne Hedges with the Montana Environmental Information Center, spoke to the wealth and power in the Treasure State, in times past and the current day.
She said Montanans are familiar with oligarchs of the past, the timber barons and the Copper Kings.
Now, she said, Montanans are beholden to NorthWestern Energy, a monopoly utility she said is fighting a healthy climate, recently raised rates 28%, and is asking for 26% more.
“Montana simply cannot afford these modern-day robber barons,” Hedges said.
Although the speakers railed against money in politics, their fight takes resources too.
A media contact for the Fighting Oligarchy event did not answer a question about the cost of the tours or sources of funds.
However, Sanders’ campaign committee listed on the Fighting Oligarchy website, Friends of Bernie Sanders, pulled in $11.5 million in the most recent quarter, of which $9.7 million came from donations of $200 or less, according to the most recent report filed with the Federal Elections Commission.
Ocasio-Cortez reminded the crowd that she pledged when she first ran for office that she would never take corporate donations, although an investigation by the Washington Examiner showed she has taken significant money from lobbyists representing powerful corporate clients.
But she also illustrated the influence of lobbyists in Washington, D.C., when she landed on the powerful House Committee on Energy and Commerce and said all of a sudden, her phone lines lit up with lobbyists who wanted to be her new best friend.
Ocasio-Cortez said the tour had recently drawn 12,000 people in red Idaho, 20,000 in Salt Lake City, and 36,000 in Los Angeles.
She said she learned on the way to Missoula that some House Republicans in districts where they’d held rallies wrote a letter warning Republican leadership: “We don’t know if we can vote for Medicaid cuts now.”
The politicians encouraged the crowd to run for office and stay involved, to hold their elected officials’ feet to the fire, and rallygoer Brittany Doctor said she always drags her significant other, Aaron Leek, to political debates and town halls.
Doctor and Leek drove from Walla Walla, Washington, for the event the night before, and they were second in line at 5 a.m. Wednesday.
Doctor said they’ve been disappointed that Republican Congressman Michael Baumgartner stopped doing town halls in their district.
But they both love Sanders and his message to the people.
“We’re taking every opportunity we can to, I guess, liberate ourselves,” Doctor said.
Allison Wilson, 24, said she works at the Poverello Center, a soup kitchen and shelter in Missoula, and she feels anxious about everything.
“I came to hear Bernie and AOC and to feel connected in the community, gain some hope out of it,” Wilson said.
Wilson said she’s seeing federal money dry up including dollars that go to local government and support housing programs.
“It just sucks that you can see a big storm coming,” Wilson said. “I know for sure I feel nervous.”
The Trump administration is making deep cuts to the federal government and its employees, and speakers and members of the crowd said the trend worried them.
Sam Forstag, a wildland firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service and union leader, told the crowd he has coworkers and friends “who’ve broken their backs and died in their boots making $15 an hour as a federal employee.”
“When I talk to my coworkers today, I hear a lot of people who are trying real hard just to hold onto hope because right now, the people who give their lives to public lands and public service are under attack,” said Forstag, who noted he was speaking personally and not in an official capacity.
Joan Egan, 80, said in the place she lives, many residents exist on Social Security, “and they’re very frightened.”
She said the nation is rapidly descending into an oligarchy, and she was hoping to help gird it against the slide.
“We’re here to try to save our nation,” Egan said.
This story first appeared on Daily Montanan.