The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is known for having special guests brought out on stage to rock out with the megastars headlining the stage.
Indie pop darling Clairo already had a massive crowd in the desert to see her perform, but the special guest who introduced her made waves across the Festival. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the longest-serving independent in congress known for his progressive politics, took the stage to give the message he’s been hashing out for decades.
“Now you can turn away and you can ignore what goes on, but if you do that, you do it at your own peril,” Sanders told the Coachella crowd. “We need you to stand up — to fight.”
The 83-year-old Sanders, one of the oldest members of the U.S. Senate, appeared with the youngest member of Congress: Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost, 28.
The appearance in front of a younger crowd with the nation’s youngest elected federal representative is just part of the Vermont senator’s appeal to the up-and-coming generations of America.
Earlier in the day, while sporting a blue Dodgers cap, Sanders stood in front of a crowd of an estimated 35,000 in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday as part of his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour with New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“The American people do not want the richest guy on Earth running all over Washington DC decimating the social security administration,” he said, speaking about Elon Musk’s involvement with the White House. Musk has been a key advisor to President Donald Trump in the new administration — the pair were together at UFC 314 in Miami on Saturday night.
Ocasio-Cortez, better known by her initials AOC, is one of the more prominent progressives in office. The 35-year-old’s name has been floated among potential presidential candidates for the Democratic Party in 2028, although others think she could be in line for a U.S. Senate seat should one open up in her home state of New York.
She has provided similar rhetoric to Sanders in her belief that money has too much of an influence in politics, and that America is becoming an oligarchy before our very eyes.
“It will never be just institutions and officials alone that uphold our democracy,” she said in front of the DTLA crowd. “It will always be the people, the masses, who refuse to comply with an authoritarian regime.”
The “Fighting Oligarchy” tour will continue making its way up California, with stops in Bakersfield and Folsom in the coming days.
