Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spoke to a crowd of people in downtown Raleigh Friday for a campaign rally in an effort to gather support before North Carolina’s upcoming primary election Tuesday.
The rally was held at the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts with over 5,000 supporters in attendance, many of whom arrived hours before the doors opened.
“I’ve never been interested in politics until now, and his policies really spoke to me because I believe that healthcare is a right,” said Charleston Coryea, an 18-year-old from Sanderson High School in Raleigh. “People should have healthcare, and I think it is bad that all the new wealth is going to the top 1 percent while the middle class is disappearing. People are getting more and more college debt when they’re getting out of college, and it is dis-motivating teens from going to college, and I don’t think that’s the way it should be.”
Coryea arrived to the rally at 6 a.m.
First to take the stage was Noah Cartagena, an 18-year-old North Carolinian who spoke about his upbringing as a member of the LGBT community and why he chose to vote for Sanders.
“I voted for Bernie Sanders because he believes in this radical idea of we should educate our children instead of imprisoning them, we should heal our children and put them in hospitals when they need to be, we should provide them the mental health if they need,” Cartagena said to the crowd.
In his speech, Sanders told the crowd his ideas about unifying the American people.
“We will win this election because the American people understand that bringing us together, working together, triumphs dividing us up,” Sanders said. “The American people understand that community — helping each other — triumphs selfishness. And most importantly, the American people understand that every major religion —Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism — all the religions have taught us that at the end of the day love triumphs hatred.”
Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who endorsed Sanders after resigning from the Democratic National Committee, then spoke about her time serving in Iraq and why she chose to support the Sanders campaign.
“I’ve endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders to be our next commander-in-chief because he has that intelligence, that foresight, that good judgment and, yes, that military mindset, to make the right decision when it comes to that all-important question of war or peace,” Gabbard said. Continuing, she talked about Bernie’s foreign policy, encouraged the crowd to vote for him and welcomed him to stage.
Sanders discussed warfare in the Middle East, campaign financing, trade policies, college tuition, Wall Street, racism, immigration, free healthcare and more. He also highlighted the differences between where he and Hillary Clinton stood on some of these key issues.
Sanders said, “I think if we can generate a large voter turnout — if many, many people stand up, fight back and tell us that our government belongs to all of us and not just a handful of campaign contributors, if that happens, we’re going to win here in North Carolina and in the other states.”
So far, the Sanders campaign has reportedly received over 5 million individual campaign contributions, averaging $27 each, setting the record for number of campaign contributions received by a presidential candidate in American history.
“When we began this campaign, we had to make a choice; what are we going to do, how are we going to raise the money — we decided on day one, that we would not have a super PAC,” Sanders said. “We do not represent Wall Street, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry. We don’t represent the billionaire class; we do not want their money.”
At the rally, Sanders expressed his views on the minimum wage, calling the current minimum wage of $7.25 a “starvation wage.”
“We cannot continue to have a government where day after day, legislation is supported to represent the interest of the rich and powerful while avoiding the needs of working families,” Sanders said.
Emilie Mathura, a junior studying human biology at NC State, supports Sanders because of his position on healthcare.
“Healthcare is my biggest passion, and I definitely want everything he’s saying about healthcare to come true, that would be the dream, to have universal healthcare,” Mathura. “I liked how he talked about Obama and about the Affordable Care Act and how it’s taking good steps but it’s not enough.”
So far in the Democratic presidential primaries, Sanders has won 576 delegates, while Clinton has won 1,231 delegates, making her the leading Democratic nominee. Even though his rallies attract huge numbers of attendees, the Sanders campaign is struggling with low voter turnout.
“As of right now, if everyone that came to this rally were to go out and vote we would already have more voters than we accumulated in the entirety of Nevada,” Cartagena said. “If everyone who came out today brought five people to their polling locations in the next three days, we wouldn’t have any problem winning this election … It’s now in the hands of the voters. The future of this country is in the hands of the voters.”
Primary Election Day is Tuesday. Polls open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m. More information can be found on ncvoterguide.org.
For coverage of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s Thursday rally in Durham, click here.
Supporters line up outside the Raleigh Memorial Auditorium before the Bernie Sanders rally March 11. The enthusiastic crowd started lining up as early as 7 a.m. to hear the senator speak in Raleigh.
