U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks at a stop on his “Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here” tour in Warren, Mich., on March 8, 2025.
More than 10,000 people turned out for a rally with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), in Warren as part of his national “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.
The audience filled the main event space – the gym at Lincoln High School – and two overflow rooms, and still left hundreds more outside.
Wayne County Health Director Abdul El-Sayed, who ran for governor in 2018 and is exploring a run for U.S. Senate in 2026, said the size of the crowd is a sign of progressives’ resilience.
“They want us to step back, and today, all of you have said that we are not stepping back, we are stepping forward,” El-Sayed said. “We are recognizing that in one another, we have all we need to build that government for the people and by the people.”
Sanders compared the current political moment to various movements throughout history, including the American Revolution and the abolition movement.
“The change that we have experienced over hundreds of years of our nationhood only occurs when ordinary people stand up against oppression and injustice and fight back,” Sanders said.
But he said that the current landscape is unlike anything the country has experienced before because voters can no longer agree on a shared set of facts, which he said hampers the country’s ability to debate important issues.
“We’re up against a phenomenon that we have never seen, and that is the Big Lie,” Sanders said. “The Big Lie is not just stretching the truth; the Big Lie is not just fibbing. The Big Lie is creating a parallel universe, a set of ideas that have no basis in reality.”
Sanders said the tour is focused on areas where Republicans narrowly won seats in Congress. He called on U.S. Rep. John James (R-Shelby Twp.), to hold an in-person town hall with constituents.
“He has the right to make his case, to speak, you have the right to ask him questions,” Sanders said.
Sanders started his speech warning that “we have an administration that is leading us to oligarchy, an administration that is leading us to an authoritarian form of society, an administration that is leading us towards kleptocracy.”
He pointed to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg being seated in the front row at Trump’s inauguration as evidence.
“Instead of a government of the people, by the people and for the people, we have now become a government of the billionaire class, for the billionaire class,” Sanders said.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain spoke at the rally wearing a shirt that read “eat the rich,” which he said he had not worn since the Big Three automakers went on strike in 2023.
“Billionaires don’t have a right to exist,” Fain told the crowd.
El-Sayed said that the administration of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance “want to move fast and break things.”
“But what they’re breaking is the government that our hard earned tax dollars have been funding,” El-Sayed said. “And we’re here to say that that is our money, that is our government, take your damn billionaire hands off of it.”
Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor for questions: info@michiganadvance.com.
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