PHILADELPHIA — Decrying the power of the “oligarchy that runs this country,” 80-year-old Sen. Bernie Sanders told thousands attending a pro-labor rally on Independence Mall that “we are in the fight of our lifetimes.”
To applause from the friendly audience, in a campaign-style speech Sanders attacked the concentration of wealth in the nation, the spiraling pay of chief executives, the crushing weight of college debt, and the lack of universal health care.
“Brothers and sisters,” said Sanders. “We are in the fight of our lifetimes. We are fighting incredible wealth and incredible power. We’re going to create an economy that works for us, and not just the 1%.”
Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, told the crowd, gathered between Independence Hall and the National Constitution Center, that the country was saddled with the largest inequities in income and wealth in 100 years.
“You are not just a cog in a machine. You’re a human being with some rights,” Sanders said. “If we are going to save the middle class in this country, we are going to have to grow the union movement.”
The Vermont senator wore a baseball cap of the area’s Teamsters Local 107 for shade during the hot afternoon.
He was joined at the rally by two stars among labor leaders — Sean O’Brien, the insurgent who became the national president of the Teamsters in March, and Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. Nelson urged the audience to support a unionization drive at Delta, the only major airline to have a nonunion workforce of flight attendants.
The trio are to appear at a similar rally in Boston on Sunday, and previously held one in Chicago, in June.
Their tour comes as the long-besieged labor movement has notched some wins of late.
In Philadelphia, workers at four Starbucks cafes have voted to unionize this year, part of a boomlet that has seen baristas at about 200 of the chain’s 9,000 stores vote in favor of unionization since December. Union activists have also been buoyed by a successful union drive at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island.
