Skip to main content
Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders will get a literal rock-star welcome upon his return to Portland for a political rally Friday morning, March 25 at the Moda Center.
The welcoming speech will be offered up by Zia McCabe, keyboardist for local psych-rock band (and Dig documentary subject) the Dandy Warhols.
McCabe first became politically active in 2013 as an organizer for the campaign to block fluoridation of Portland's water, organizing a series of seven fundraising concerts and marches in the ultimately successful effort to block a City Council vote to fluoridate.
"I'm sure I land somewhere in the liberal, environmentalist category," she told WW back then. "I was fairly active for animal rights in my early teens, and I was on the news during the 'No on 9' campaign [a successful push to defeat a 1992 anti-gay Oregon ballot measure] wearing braces. But I didn't make any real-time investments in a political movement until now."
She has since become an anti-GMO activist, and joined the board of a Kansas nonprofit called Sun Cedar, which employs former prison inmates and the homeless to produce eco-friendly cedar ornaments and sachets.
McCabe has since become an outspoken advocate for Sanders in the presidential primary. She didn't offer up any specific details of her speech welcoming Bernie Sanders to Portland.
"My head is spinning!" she writes. "It's only a two minute speech welcoming everyone to the rally. But yes, I'm squeezing in a few things."
Willamette Week