Friday, October 9, 2015

Bernie Sanders Will Be at Reid Park This Evening

Posted By on Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 11:51 AM

Zona Politics Eps.35 from Zona Politics with Jim Nintzel on Vimeo.


Bernie Sanders will be talking about income equality, climate change, single-payer health insurance, free college education and the like when he appears at 7 p.m. tonight at Reid Park. The crowd will be big so get there early. Doors open at 6 and Sanders will be speaking at the DeMeester Outdoor Performance Center.

In case you missed it earlier this year, here's a lengthy piece I wrote about Sanders' visit to Phoenix during this summer's NetRoots conference. It gives you some idea of what you can expect tonight:

On the stump, Sanders makes it clear that he's ready to raise taxes on the rich to pay for his many proposals, including universal preschool, free college tuition and a government-run, single-payer healthcare system. "We have a message tonight to the billionaire class," he thundered in his Phoenix speech, "and that message is: You cannot have it all!"

He's a ferocious critic of what he calls a "grotesque level of income inequality." He ties his complaints about the rich to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and the utter disgust many have with the ever-escalating cost of political campaigns driven by corporate campaign spending and dark money. He cites the Koch brothers' reported plan to spend almost a billion dollars in the 2016 election cycle: "When one family spends more than either of the two major political parties, that's not democracy," he said in Phoenix. "That is oligarchy!"