It’s 1:30 a.m. on a Wednesday, I’m scrolling through Twitter when I see “Students for Bernie concert with Vampire Weekend and Foster the People.” My two long time favorite bands playing a concert for the first political candidate I’ve ever shown genuine interest in? My first instinct is to Google Map how far Iowa City is from Austin. 15 hours. I think to myself, “I could do it, I could drive 15 hours.” When in reality I am that person who gets bored driving the four hours back home to Dallas. After several phone calls back home and texts with my best friend in Illinois, in a matter of 24 hours I somehow managed to get my fangirl self to Iowa.
For the longest time I wasn’t really into politics. Growing up in conservative North Texas, I just went along with everything people around me were saying, which was primarily GOP focused. It wasn’t until high school where I learned more about myself and my morals and decided that the conservative lifestyle was not the one for me. When college came around, I moved to Austin, the most liberal city in Texas, and I felt right at home. Another beautiful aspect of Austin is the music scene which was one of the selling points of coming to college here. Vampire Weekend and Foster the People are my two favorite bands and have been for many years. I even met my best friends from Illinois and Kansas City because of Foster the People. I mean, who wouldn’t take this chance? I figured you’re only in college once so dropping everything, skipping a whole day of class, my internship, and weekend plans to go seemed totally reasonable in my mind. I don’t think the words “I’m so excited to get to Iowa” had ever come out of my mouth before now.
To be perfectly honest, there’s no way I would have gone all the way to Iowa if Vampire Weekend and Foster the People weren’t going to be there. That’s the special thing about Bernie, he’s a candidate who goes out of his way to attract younger voters. He doesn’t act like he’s knows the cool pop culture references in an attempt to relate to us, he just does his job and does it well. Even the artists agree. In interviews and social media both Vampire Weekend and Foster the People genuinely support Bernie. After each song Ezra Koenig or Mark Foster would talk a little about why they were there and why Bernie’s ideas matter to them. It makes younger voters want to be more involved and informed when it comes to politics. It’s really inspiring to see artists you admire and look up to advocate for a political candidate.
This event was something I won’t soon forget. It inspired me to join phonebanks, go canvas, read more articles, understand how caucuses work and mail in my absentee ballot form. That’s just one person. There were about 5,000 people at this rally. If I was so inspired, my hope is that countless others were too and are taking what they experienced back home to their friends and family. This is the political revolution that Bernie is talking about. We have a chance to change what is happening in our country, but the first step in that change is being well informed. Keep learning, researching and reading. And, as always, feel the Bern.