U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders brought his ‘Fighting Oligarchy Tour’ to the Pierce Hill Performing Arts Center in rural Viroqua on Saturday, August 23. The event drew a large crowd on a beautiful late summer day to the rural venue, with most attendees drawn from Vernon, Richland, La Crosse, and Crawford counties.

Joining the Senator at the podium were U.S. Third Congressional District candidate Rebecca Cooke, local crop adviser Adam Kramer, and Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden.

Introductions

Internationally acclaimed crop adviser Adam Kramer pointed out that the Driftless Region of Southwest Wisconsin is one of the most unique land features in North America, if not the entire world. He said that it also happens to be the epicenter for soil loss in the continental U.S.

“We've worked hard on farms in this region to help prevent this soil loss. One big thing we've done to address this problem is to provide consultation and custom application of cover crops on tens of thousands of acres in this region,” Kramer said. “According to NRCS benchmark calculations, over a three-year period, we preserved enough topsoil through our work to fill something like 65 miles of side dump trailers, bumper-to-bumper, which would be filling the southbound lane of Highway 35, from Prairie du Chien to La Crosse.”

The crop adviser pointed out that that's what we've saved here, not what we've lost. But, he said, we lose much more, and we have a long way to go.

“Many of these acres of cover crops in the Driftless Area are subsidized with EQIP funds from the NRCS,” Kramer said. “Millions of federal dollars have been deployed to take a private approach to watershed management in the Driftless Area, and without the partnership of the government and the private sector, this work would not have been possible.”

Kramer said he believes in science that suggests we need to change how we farm to better care for the land and water as we all share.

“I'm mindful of this change, because often change is hard for our people,” Kramer said. “What first began as a conversation about food security has become a conversation about production systems, the hypoxia zone in the Gulf, the sediment load our watersheds carry, emissions, efficiency, biodiversity stewardship, and climate change. All these ongoing conversations involve agriculture and rural communities. I see now that we are all in this together, we need cooperative agreements to bring innovation to rural areas that will move through the supply chain. We need to be strategic so we don't waste resources trying to fix problems that could otherwise be prevented.”

Wisconsin Farmers Union President, and Westby dairy farmer Darin Von Ruden, said that his grandchildren are the fourth generation of his family on the farm. He said that they are his inspiration to make sure that there’s a future for them on the farm.

“When you look at today's economy, especially on the farm and in farm country, we have the issues of the tariffs and what uncertainty that has evolved into,” Von Ruden said. “There’s a future that's not bright in farm country right now. Corn and soybean prices are dropping, and if tariffs go into effect with some of our biggest trading partners, that just means, more corn and soybeans are going to end up staying here in the United States, which depresses our prices.”

Von Ruden asked the crowd, “when was the last time anyone’s grocery bill went down?” He said that farmer’s prices have dropped, but that those price drops are not being passed along to consumers.

“The BBB certainly isn't a beautiful bill for small farmers across the state of Wisconsin and across the country,” Von Ruden said. “We need to make sure that we have common sense in DC.”

Von Ruden said that people need to talk to their neighbors who don’t agree with them, ask them for their facts, and engage with them around the issues facing us.

“We need to turn over the House and the Senate, not only here in the state of Wisconsin, but in Washington, and we need to make sure that we don't have two more years of chaos like we have right now.”

Rebecca Cooke introduced herself as a candidate for the U.S. Third Congressional District. She hopes to secure the Democratic nomination to face incumbent Derek Van Orden in the November 2026 election. She has recently secured the endorsement of Senator Bernie Sanders.

“In 2026 we have an opportunity to finish the job I started in the last election, and send a working class voice to Congress that delivers for us, not special interests or party bosses.” Cooke said. “Last fall, we outperformed every Democrat on the ballot, garnering 9,000 more votes than the Vice President, and 5,000 more votes than Senator Baldwin, and we did that by showing up in rural communities that for too long have felt ignored or left behind by the Democratic Party.”

 Cooke said she chose to run for Congress because she felt opportunities in America's Dairyland have continued to dwindle for years, from agricultural consolidation to losing rural health care access to the struggle to fund our public schools.

What is oligarchy?

Sanders launched his remarks by explaining what the word ‘oligarchy’ means.

“I wanted to say a few words about where I perceive America to be today, and where I think we should be going into the future. What I will be telling you is something you don't see very often in corporate media, and you're not going to be hearing much from senators and members of Congress right now. You are living in a oligarchic society,” Sanders said. “Now, I am told by some pundits that the American people don't know what oligarchy is. I think they do. I was for better or worse, pushed into the front row when Donald Trump was inaugurated. And as some of you may recall, sitting right behind him were the three wealthiest guys in America - Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. And then, sitting behind them were another 13 millionaires that Trump had nominated to serve as heads of major federal agencies.”

Income inequality

Sanders contrasted what he called a “government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, and for the billionaire class” with words from President Abraham Lincoln’s speech on the battlefield of Gettysburg. There, Lincoln spoke of a government ‘of the people, by the people and for the people.’

“And, what I can tell you as someone who has traveled all across this country is the American people will not accept oligarchy and authoritarianism,” Sanders said. “And that is what the struggle is about in America today.”

Sanders pointed out that one man in America, Elon Musk, owns more wealth than the bottom 52% of American households. He said that today, the top 1% of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 93%.

“The people on top today and have never, ever in history in this country, had it so good,” Sanders said. “What's going on for the working families of America? You are living in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and yet today, in Wisconsin, Vermont, all over this country, 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.”

Political control too

“But, for the oligarchs, for the people on top, owning the economy is not enough. The concentration of ownership impacts every aspect of our lives,” Sanders pointed out. “But it is not just the economy that they control - that's not good enough for them. They now own the corrupt American political system.”

Sanders said that ever since Citizens United, the worst decision in the Supreme Court has ever made, what you have are billionaires with the freedom to spend as much money as they want to elect the candidates they like, and defeat the candidates they don't like.

Healthcare for all

Sanders said that in his view, health care is a human right. He asked why we remain the only major country on earth not to guarantee healthcare to every man, woman and child.

“Why are Americans spending over $14,000 for every man, woman and child on healthcare - that's $56,000 for a family of four, and yet, we have 85 million Americans who are uninsured or underinsured?” Sanders asked. “We have the lowest life expectancy of any major country on Earth, and we have 60,000 people a year dying because they don't get to a doctor on time.”

Sanders said rather, that the goal of a health care system in a civilized, democratic society is to provide care to all people. He said it is not to exist as the current system does, to provide massive profits to the insurance companies and the drug company owners.

Investing in kids

Sanders pointed out that every psychologist who studies the issue understands that zero through four are the most important years of intellectual and emotional development for humans.

“Politicians in Washington stand behind the flag and love America, but somehow they do not love the children of America,” Sanders said. “Instead, they’re giving a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the 1% and yet, we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth.”

Sanders said that when we talk about education, we're talking about living in a competitive global economy.

“We're talking about education as a human right, again, not a radical idea to say that every child in this country should be able to go to a quality child care center at a cost that is affordable to their parents. Yeah, not a radical idea to say that our young people should know from their earlier stages that if they study hard, they can get a higher education,” Sanders said. “Some people think that making public colleges and universities tuition free is a radical ideal. You know that in the United States of America, 60 or 70, years ago, major university systems like the City University system in New York, the university system in California, and state colleges in Vermont and elsewhere were tuition free.”

Radical ideas?

 Sanders put forth that it is not a radical idea to say that we should not be paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, so that one out of four Americans cannot afford the medicine that their doctors prescribe. And, he said it is necessary to end the absurdity in Washington of a starvation minimum wage of $7.25 (an hour).

“Let us make that minimum wage a living wage of at least $17 per hour. And, we should not remain one of a tiny number of countries around the world that does not guarantee paid family and medical leave. You can tell a lot about where a country is at by how it treats its most vulnerable people, in this case, the elderly and the children,” Sanders put forth. “This the richest country in the history of the world, and yet 22% of seniors are trying to survive on $15,000 a year. How does anybody survive on $15,000 a year, let alone a senior who has health problems?”

 Sanders pointed out that now we have Republicans in Congress who think we should cut Social Security. He said that right now, people who earn 10 million per year, and someone who makes $186,000 per year, pay the same amount into social security. He said that taxing the higher earners more is an easy way to bring more money into the social security system.

“And, I don’t think it is radical to say that women should control their own bodies,” Sanders stated.

Difficult times

Sanders concluded by saying that these are difficult times for our country. He pointed out, however, that most people know that this is not the first time in American history that the country has had to overcome crises, going back to the American Revolution.

“Sometimes we forget about this small group of people living in our colonies that took on the most powerful military force in the world, the British Empire, and they beat them,” Sanders said. “We had people in the abolitionist movement in the 1840s with great courage, taking on slavery. We had workers fighting for workers rights, taking on their bosses, getting jailed and shot down. We had women fighting for the right to vote, and for other basic rights. We had the gay community standing up and demanding the right to love people. We have had to struggle in this country.”

Sanders quoted the abolitionist Frederick Douglass as saying, “Freedom is never given to anybody. It's not a given to you. You gotta stand up and fight for it.”

“The bad news is, we have a demagogue in the White House right now, somebody who does not believe in democracy, somebody who scapegoats people and tries to divide us up,” Sanders said. “It's really a very ugly thing – we’re told to hate this group of people, and that group of people, and then we lose our focus on what we should be doing instead of hating each other, let's come together.”

Sanders said that in his travels across America, he’s heard people demand and want a government that works for all of us and not just a few.

“Too many people in Wisconsin and Vermont fought and died to defend American democracy, and we’re not going to let Trump or anybody else take that away from us,” Sanders asserted. “On almost every major issue out there, the American people are with us. So let's stand up, let us fight back, let us create the kind of economy and government that the American people deserve.”