The people of Washington D.C. want to be treated like everyone else.
And at a campaign rally at a skate park by RFK Stadium, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders did just that—with the same stump speech, more or less, that he’s given throughout the country. No mention of President Barack Obama’s endorsement of Sanders’ opponent, Hillary Clinton, earlier that day, or progressive Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who was endorsing Clinton as Sanders spoke.
“The punditry thought this campaign would not go very far,” said Sanders in a raspier-than-usual voice. “But here we are in mid-June, still standing.”
The crowd numbered 3,000, according to the Sanders campaign, looking to Feel the Bern.
Some of them were resigned to the idea that Clinton would win the nomination, but wanted to show Sanders how much his campaign meant to them.
“I just feel like we really need to show support to Bernie and the movement he started,” says Jannett Lopez, who remains undecided about who she’ll vote for in the general election.
But not all are so convinced that the campaign is coming to a close, nor do they want it to, even after D.C. has the final primary of the season on June 14.
“I’m still hopeful,” says Melanie Pedri, who just got back from canvassing for Sanders in San Diego, after knocking on doors in Maryland and West Virginia. “I don’t feel like it’s over.”
“I still want him to go to the convention,” says April Washington, who expresses anger that people want her to put a fear of Donald Trump ahead of her convictions. “It’s a part of the Democratic process. [Sanders] has every right to let the process play out and his supporters want him to. He’s our voice.”
Nicki Rubin was standing in front of Washington on the security line, nodding along for most what she said, until Washington called both Clinton and Trump wolves (“He’s a loud mouth wolf and she’s a wolf in sheep’s clothes.”) Rubin says, “I’ll give Hillary my support because she’s definitely better than Trump. Who knows? Maybe she’ll have Bernie in her cabinet. Look at what happened with Hillary and Obama.”
But Rubin was in the minority. Most of the attendees swore they’d never vote for Clinton. “Fuck no,” says Nick Fernandez, a former Marine. “I guarantee if she was president, we’d go back to war.”
It was her record in Iraq that concerned Sham Hasan, a former Army linguist from Iraq who now lives in D.C. “I witnessed, whatever you want to call it, the liberation or invasion process. I’ve seen a lot of people die as a result of that war. I blame it on her, she supported the war in Iraq.” The fact that she’s since called that decision a mistake doesn’t matter to Hasan. “I can’t have my family back,” he says.
Hasan says Sanders’ message resonates because “he’s going against the establishment. He’s very honest. He doesn’t seek fame and money.”
Not everyone there was on Team Sanders. There was Stephanie Sutton of Crystal City, wearing roller blades and a tie-dyed, stamped shirt from a Paul Ryan event in 2012. She says she’s just there to hear another perspective, and can’t be put in a political box. “I’m in support of policies that make sense to me,” she says.
Or Jonathan Bukowski, a young man in a full suit and clipboard with flyers imploring people to “Google Gary Johnson,” the Libertarian candidate. “I’m just trying to get his name out there as a viable third candidate,” he says. He’s not affiliated with the Johnson campaign, but figured “there’d be a lot of people here who would like his policies.”
And then there was Jamison Gillespie, a young Clinton supporter. “I live a block away and I’m hoping to see a concession speech, fingers crossed,” he says with a grin.
Gillespie did not get his wish. For the most part, it was a typical stump speech for Bernie Sanders. As his surrogate Ben Jealous said in his introduction, “The reason we are ‘Still Sanders’ is that if you roll the tape on Bernie and go back five years, go back 15 years, go back 50 years, he’s always giving the same damn speech.”
The crowd booed at the mention of the Koch brothers, top 1 percent, rigged economy, wage gap, pharmaceutical industry, lack of women’s suffrage 100 years ago, and the idea that a woman’s job is to stay home and have babies.
After his call earlier in the day for D.C. statehood, Sanders made one passing mention of the fight at the beginning of the speech. “I hope the next time I’m back we’re going to be talking about the state of Washington D.C.”
He said at the speech’s conclusion that “It would be extraordinary if the people of Washington, our nation’s capital, stood up and told the world that they are ready to lead this country into a political revolution.”
And with that, Sanders wrapped his speech up before 8:10 p.m. No mention of Clinton at all.
As attendees left the skate park, they posed for photos with their Bernie signs and shirts. Gillespie, the Clinton supporter, thinks most of them will ultimately vote for her. Having also backed Clinton in 2008, he says he has personal experience with the PUMA (party unity my ass) mindset. He’s telling his friends to “be open, be welcoming. [Sanders supporters] are having a tough time but most of them will come around, ultimately”
But Stefani Olsen of Maryland isn’t so sure. “The revolution is continuing whether Bernie is the nominee or not. He brought us all together,” she says. “I live in a blue state. If there was a chance my state was going to Trump I would, ugh, vote for her. But it’s not. They should only argue with people in toss-up states. Let the rest of us do our thing.”
Rachel Kurzius