On Saturday, April 12th, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez hosted their own “Bernie-chella” at the Gloria Molina Grand Park in Los Angeles as a part of their ongoing Fighting Oligarchy tour across the country. Neil Young, Joan Baez, and Maggie Rogers were among the performers present at the political rally, which drew in over 36,000 people. Senator Sanders, beloved amongst Gen-Z and younger Millennial voters on the left, took to the stage and addressed the current state of affairs in America.
“We are living in a moment where a handful of billionaires control the economic and political life of our country.” Sanders encouraged protestors by assuring them that their presence at the rally would make President Trump and Elon Musk, AKA the acting Technocrat-in-Chief, “very nervous.”
When I saw the social media post advertising the political rally on Instagram, I was perplexed. The graphic was a tongue-in-cheek mock up of the famous Coachella lineup poster, which has been memed on the internet for years. Playful graphic design and cultural cache aside, why would Bernie Sanders and AOC reference Coachella, one of the most exclusive and expensive music venues in the Western world, in their campaign to fight against oligarchy? The irony was too rich for even Alanis Morissette to sing about. I made a TikTok highlighting the contradictory messaging, and the video was met with criticism from other Gen-Z voters. One user commented, “It’s not like they’re promoting the actual Coachella festival?” Then, like clockwork, Bernie made a surprise appearance at the actual Coachella festival that same evening.
Representative Maxwell Frost (D), the youngest member of Congress, came out to introduce the Senator, who delivered a sobering message to the crowd before introducing the indie singer-songwriter Clairo.
“The future of what happens to America is dependent upon your generation. Now, you can turn away and ignore what goes on but if you do that, you do it on your own peril. We need you to stand up and fight for justice, to fight for economic justice, racial justice and social justice.”
My question is: do we really need bourgeois and aristocratic twenty-somethings dressed in designer boho-chic clothes to lead the charge against the very systems from which they largely benefit? The cost of admission for the first weekend of the festival begins at $649. This does not include the cost of transportation to get to Coachella Valley, the cost of staying at a hotel or an Airbnb in the area, the cost of food and drink while you’re in the festival, and then, of course, we mustn’t forget all the money spent on wardrobe, hair and makeup, etc. Those who attend without paying upfront are sponsored by large corporations to make social media content in exchange for the hefty cost of entry. These are the people in the audience. The call for economic justice is coming from inside the oligarch’s house. No one is going to pick up.
Dear leftists: this is what the MAGA Republicans mean when they call us “coastal elites.” This is precisely why we continuously lose the interest and votes of poor and working class Americans. We are not reading the room. In an attempt to stay relevant and appeal to college educated, chronically online Gen-Z voters, we have lost the plot. What are we doing here?
The Democratic Party has long courted the ultra-rich celebrity class to act as endorsers of their political campaigns. This dates back to early Hollywood, when actresses like Katharine Hepburn1, a self-described socialist who was raised in a powerful political family on the left, used her fame to advocate for women’s suffrage and access to contraception when it was still very radical to do so. During the Civil Rights Movement, many famous artists such as Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, and Sidney Poitier participated in protests and marches with Martin Luther King Jr. to bring media attention to the plight of African Americans across the country. Though the intentions of these early activists/artists were positive, and I do feel it is important for those with large platforms to use their influence for good, it has become a tradition for celebrities to involve themselves in establishment politics for clout and positive press. Politicians have continued this trend by collecting celebrities as their personal cronies and unpaid campaign canvassers.
The incestuous relationship between Washington D.C. and Hollywood has become so grotesque that it is expected that politicians look like, behave like, and speak like actors and entertainers. John F. Kennedy was beloved for his dashing good looks, and even tanned before his debate with Nixon in 1960 because he was aware of how his appearance on television would draw attention from the voters watching at home. Bill Clinton won the hearts and votes of Black Americans when he appeared on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1992 and played “Heartbreak Hotel” on his saxophone for all the nation to hear. Barack Obama became more of a cultural phenomenon than a public servant when he ran for president and won in 2008. And of course, our current Camp Diva in Chief Donald J. Trump has been a fixture in pop culture for decades. He has appeared in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Sex and The City, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and was the star of his own reality television competition series The Apprentice. American politics has become a syndicated sitcom, and it’s about to get cancelled.
Celebrity culture has poisoned our political landscape. We have made even Bernie Sanders and AOC, who I admired for their humble, modest, normal appeal, into cultural icons. They were refreshing precisely because they seemed like everyday Americans who entered politics to become public servants—not celebrities. But I fear their newfound fame has made them just as out of touch and hypocritical as the people they once rebuked. Publicity stunts like Bernie-chella and AOC’s infamous “Tax The Rich” dress which she wore to the Met Gala in 20212 are nothing more than just that–stunts; empty gestures and lame gimmicks to get press attention and rile up emotion from their base without any serious action towards systemic change in the Senate or the House of Representatives (you know, the place they get paid to work for us, by us).
Where are the Fannie Lou Hamers of today? Where have the Cesar Chavezes of the movement gone? Where are the poor and working class activists without connections or fancy degrees who can actually relate to the communities who are most impacted by income inequality and wealth disparities in the Unites States? Why has the left abandoned the grassroots, poor and working class activism of the past in favor of a more polished, palatable platform that appeals to the college educated bourgeoisie and the jaded children of aristocrats? As a bougie, college educated leftist myself, I can confidently say that I am not the demographic that needs outreach right now. Plenty of us have enough social and cultural capital for everyone to get their fair share. We, the privileged, should not be the voice of a social movement attempting to eliminate privilege. What sense does that make?
I don’t want my politicians attending expensive music festivals and fancy fundraisers. I want them rolling up their sleeves and speaking with migrants in the fields and the underpaid employees at the Amazon Fulfillment centers. I don’t want to see my senators or congresspeople rubbing shoulders with wealthy singers and fashion designers. I want them laughing and eating with the most underprivileged constituents they represent at unassuming soup kitchens and fish fries in church basements. I want my leaders to be servants of the people. How can we believe that you are truly committed to holding the wealthy accountable while you’re enjoying the lifestyles of the rich and famous?
Coachella is not a cultural reference most people in any American hood or rural town would understand, nonetheless care about. None of these artists (no, not even Neil Young or Joan Baez) appeal to today’s working class voter, even if their lyrics are supposedly speaking to them. These stunts are tone deaf at best, offensively ignorant at its worst. PSA: If you have been invited to speak on stage at Coachella and attend The Met Gala, you are not an enemy of the elite. You ARE the elite. You can’t rage against the machine if you’re still a cog working within it.
The left needs a new generation of political figures who are unabashedly common. Activists who can empathize with the poor and working class—not sympathize. Compelling speakers who don’t talk down but who speak across and whose words uplift the communities at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy. I don’t know where these bold, authentic and captivating leaders are right now, but I know for damn sure they are not, have not, and will never be at Coachella. Look elsewhere.
Katharine Houghton Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn’s mother, was a well known suffragette and activist for Women’s Rights in the Unites States. She was the head of the Connecticut Women’s Suffrage Association and member of the National Woman’s Party in the early 1900s. She authored the book Woman Suffrage and The Social Evil. Her daughter’s successful career as a Hollywood actress and daring independent persona opened doors for women in the industry to advocate for themselves, not only as artists, but as power players in the industry which profited off of their femininity. It was, without doubt, inspired by her time watching her mother fight for women’s rights in the Suffrage Movement.
Congresswoman Ocasio Cortez was a sponsored guest at the 2021 Met Gala, meaning she did not purchase her own ticket to attend the event. She attended the swanky fundraiser with Aurora James, the Canadian fashion designer who designed her now infamous “Tax the Rich” dress, and James’s romantic partner Benjamin Bronfman, a wealthy business man who happens to be the grandson of Seagrams founder Edgar Bronfman Sr. and the son of billionaire mogul Edgar Bronfman Jr. An individual ticket to the Met Gala that year was priced at $35,000 and the cost of a table ranged anywhere from $200-300,000. So much for eating the rich!
I agree with what you are saying, but I think it is also important to note that on this Bernie AOC tour they were visiting deeply red states in the west. I live in Montana. I went to their rally just yesterday. Before AOC or Bernie was on stage, they had union reps for the Forest Service as well as climate lawyers take the stage to talk about public lands, unions, and the importance of public service in the the inner mountain west (places often over looked by big name democrats). The day before 20 thousand people showed up to their rally in southern Idaho. The day before that, they were in Utah. I get that the Coachella of it all is a bit ironic, but it is getting way more airtime than them visiting red western states—which I find ironic as well. The people in these rallies were not coastal elites by any stretch of the imagination.
Great piece; half of me is like, hell yes, you are right and we need to ask these questions of our leaders. The other half is like, we need to stop tearing our own side apart, that’s a big part of how we got here. And yet another percentage of me somehow thinks: they are democrats. The Democratic Party is not going to save us from this situation we are in. I personally do know many activists, people leading social movements that are nowhere close to being household names. But they are doing the work in their own communities, and I know there are so many more in other communities that I’m not a part of doing the same. I hope those people are able to influence the larger conversation in the coming years. It’s a complicated conversation that’s worth having imo! There’s no easy answer.