As part of the Colby Democrats’ Thursday “Speaker Series,” students gathered in Page Commons for a town hall with U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner. A Marine and Army veteran who served four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Platner now resides in Sullivan, Maine, where he works as an oyster farmer and has been actively involved in local governance. His campaign has drawn national attention, including an endorsement from Senator Bernie Sanders.
Platner started off by discussing healthcare. He credited Veterans Affairs healthcare with giving him the stability to return to his hometown and build a life as an oyster farmer and harbor master. Because he didn’t have to worry about premiums, copays, or medical bankruptcy, he was able to take professional risks and build a small business. That support, he argued, represented the kind of material freedom many Americans lack.
He asked the audience to imagine what rural Maine might look like if everyone had that same security, if creative and hardworking people did not have to stay in jobs they disliked simply to maintain health insurance. “What would Eastern Maine look like?” he asked. “What are the businesses we get to have? What is the art that gets to be created?”
Platner then widened his lens to economic inequality. When he was born in 1984, he noted, there were six birthing centers in eastern Maine. Today, there are two. Meanwhile, he pointed out that the number of billionaires in the United States has grown dramatically since 1990. The country has generated immense wealth, he said, but that wealth has not translated into more security or opportunity for ordinary people. “Something has changed,” he said. In his view, the current system is not malfunctioning but functioning as designed — concentrating time, money, and power in the hands of a small elite while leaving working people with less.
Platner described President Donald Trump as “the symptom of a much deeper rot,” arguing that right-wing populism emerges when economic systems fail working people. The answer, he suggested, is not a return to political norms but a revival of organizing traditions that have historically expanded rights in the United States.
Citing movements ranging from labor organizing to women’s suffrage and civil rights, Platner emphasized that transformative change has never come from asking permission. “Organizing isn’t complicated,” he said. “It’s just incredibly difficult.” Real progress, he argued, requires building coalitions across unions, community groups, and student organizations, not relying solely on established political institutions.
He aligned himself with what he called a “New Deal Democrat” tradition, pointing to former Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins as a model. Perkins and the Roosevelt administration demonstrated that the government could imagine and implement large-scale programs such as Social Security and unemployment insurance.
Platner then sharply criticized what he described as an entrenched political class and singled out Senator Susan Collins, saying she “has to go.” But he cautioned that defeating an incumbent is not enough. Winning office, he argued, must be paired with sustained organizing capable of advancing goals such as universal healthcare, climate action, limits on stock trading by members of Congress, and campaign finance reform. “This is a long-term power-building exercise,” Platner said. A single Senate seat, he added, will not by itself transform the system.
He closed by redefining what he called “freedom.” Rather than a purely rhetorical ideal, he described freedom as something material: the freedom to have time, to build a business, to create art, to raise a family without constant precarity. Politics, in his view, should be measured by whether it expands that freedom for working people.
~ Sophia Ikiri `29
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