At the University of Illinois-Chicago on Sunday, hundreds packed into an auditorium to hear Sen. Bernie Sanders denounce the power of billionaires and warn against a creeping authoritarianism. The rally was part of his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, which has wound through the country since February.
Just days earlier, President Donald Trump had threatened a federal takeover of the city, citing crime, and The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon had been quietly planning a possible military deployment there for weeks. Against that backdrop, both Sanders and Rep. Delia Ramirez, who represents Illinois’ 3rd District, used the moment to draw direct lines between economic inequality, civil rights, and the prospect of troops patrolling Chicago’s streets.
“For me, everything the Trump administration and their billionaire bosses are doing—cutting services Americans rely on, perpetrating mass deportations, attacking workers and their rights, persecuting human rights defenders, deploying the National Guard to Democratic cities, undermining our civil rights, and yes the genocide of the Palestinian people—it is all connected,” Ramirez told the crowd. She accused billionaires of being “willing to rob us blind, leave us starving, displaced, detained, deported, and dead to enrich themselves.”
Ramirez said Trump’s rhetoric about Chicago was designed to vilify the city’s diversity and resilience. “Chicago is one of the most successful and diverse cities in the country. It is everything he stands against, and so it is no surprise that he’s trying to do that,” she said. She pledged to resist any deployment with “every single legal fight necessary and community fight necessary to ensure that they know that they’re not welcome here.”
Sanders, who has long tied wealth concentration to political dysfunction, described Trump as a “demagogue whose function in life is to serve the oligarchy” and to divide people by scapegoating minorities. “Historically, the way demagogues succeed is by dividing people up and by scapegoating powerless minorities,” he said. The real crises, Sanders argued, are not the ones Trump highlights in speeches or interviews but those that touch people’s everyday lives: health care, education, climate change, and affordable housing.
“What a demagogue like Trump does is say, ‘Forget about the health care crisis, forget about climate [change], forget about education, forget about housing. We’re not going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about how we hate this group of people and that group of people,’” Sanders said. “And the antidote to that which we must bring forth, we must create, is an understanding that if we do not all stand together, we’re all going to go down together.”
The rally underscored what Sanders and Ramirez framed as a simple truth: the fight against oligarchy and authoritarianism is inseparable from the fight to defend communities like Chicago, and the struggles of ordinary people against wealth and power are woven into one.
