How do you get millennials to pack the house at your campaign rallies? Easy: all you have to do is win the hearts and minds of the nation’s hottest indie rockers and they’ll volunteer to be your opening act.
Bernie Sanders counts such acts as Vampire Weekend, Grizzly Bear, TV on the Radio, Killer Mike, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco among his supporters, making his rallies into the hottest music tickets in NYC, second only to Hamilton.
According to Droste, who performed for a record-setting crowd of 28,000 at Sanders’ rally in Brooklyn yesterday, there are parallels between Sanders’ contempt for money in politics and the influence of money in the music industry.
“The people with the money get to decide who’s on the radio,” Droste said, adding that he believes the reason so many indie artists have lined up behind Sanders “is because none of us feels beholden to a giant corporate company.”
Droste says he’s always been politically active, campaigning and voting for whomever the Democratic nominee has been. But he says that Sanders has given voice to some of the frustrations Droste has about the Democratic party itself, particularly the influence of money in politics. So he started speaking out about his support for Sanders. Before long, the campaign reached out to him to see how they could work together.
Bernie Sanders’ NYC Campaign Is Like Pitchfork Come to Life [Issie Lapowsky/Wired]
(Image: Vampire Weekend FDS, Thomas Rx, CC-BY)
