The Vermont senator held rallies in Springfield and in Boston on Saturday.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — Some 6,000 people were "feeling the Bern" in Springfield on Saturday.

 

Bernie Sanders, who seeking to run for the Oval Office in 2016 on the Democratic ticket, called for a "political revolution" at a campaign stump at the Mass Mutual Center.

 

Sanders is the second candidate to stop in Western Massachusetts this week; Hillary Clinton, former New York senator and secretary of state, was in Holyoke for a fundraiser on Thursday.

 

For an hour, the Vermont senator outlined his platform, touching on a number of topics from income inequality to health care to gun control. 

 

"No president of the United States, not Bernie Sanders not anybody, can do what has to be done to rebuild the crumbling middle class unless we have a political revolution," Sanders said. 

 

"That is not rhetoric, that is reality. The reality is that in our country today, sadly and tragically, corporate America, the corporate media, Wall Street, the big money interests have so much power that no president can do what has to be done unless millions of Americans come together and say loudly and clearly enough is enough."

 

Sanders led off focusing on income inequality. He said the 1/10th of the top 1 percent of people in the country own nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Of new income generated, 59 percent goes to the top 1 percent. And one family, the Waltons who own Walmart, own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the country.

 

"We are living in a rigged economy. Heads they win, tails you lose. That has got to change," Sanders said. 

 

He is calling for the creation of an economy that works for everybody, and not just those at the top of the economic chain. He is calling for clamping down on tax breaks to big corporations and trade agreements that keep companies from exporting jobs to countries with lower wages.

 

"This campaign is sending a signal and straightforward message to the billionaire class and that is your greed is destroying this country and you are not going to continue to get away with it," Sanders said. 

 

"You are not going to be getting huge tax breaks when children in America go hungry. You are not going to continue sending millions of jobs to China and other low-wage countries when people here desperately need decent paying jobs. You are not going to continue providing huge compensation packages to the CEOs of large corporations and then cutting back on wages, health care, and pensions of American workers."

 

He also called for increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour to help raise wages. He called the focus to be on "rebuilding the middle class," which has seen median family incomes drop $4,000 since 1999 with men making some $7,000 less per year. 

 

"We are the wealthiest country in the history of the world but very few Americans understand that and they don't understand that they don't feel it because they are out working two or three jobs. They're out making 8, 10 bucks an hour. They can't afford the prescription drugs they need. They can't afford to send their kids to college or pay for child care," Sanders said. "In some cases, they can't afford the rent and they are sleeping out in the streets."

 

Worker productivity is the highest it has ever been and yet workers are working longer hours for lower wages, he said. 

 

"In America, wages are just too damn low," Sanders said.

 

Meanwhile, he said there is a "major crisis" with youth unemployment. Among those between the age of 17 and 20, who graduated high school, 33 percent of white children, 36 percent of Hispanics, and 51 percent of African Americans are unemployed. 

 

"We have about 5 1/2 million young people without jobs who are not in school. They are hanging out on street corners in Springfield, Massachusetts, in Springfield, Vt., and all over this country," Sanders said.

 

There is a direct correlation to incarceration. The United States spend some $80 billion a year in its prison system and has the most people per capita incarcerated than any other nation, he said. He called for investments in education and jobs instead.

 

With a "real unemployment rate" of 10 percent, which he said includes those who are underemployed or stopped looking for work,  he said, "the time is now for the United States government to go forward with a massive federal jobs program, putting our people back to work," Sanders said.

 

That means hiring more teachers, hiring for day-care providers, and rebuilding roads and other infrastructure.He also called for pay equity among women workers.

 

"There is no rational, economic reason as to why women are making 79 cents on the dollar compared to men. It is sexism and it has got to end," Sanders said. 

 

The independent senator also called for laws allowing new mothers to take up to three months off for family leave. He said when Republicans talk about "family values" they mean that women shouldn't have the right to control their own bodies or that gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry — both concepts he disagrees with. 

 

"When I talk about family values, I am talking about the international embarrassment that the United States of America being the only major country on Earth that does not provide paid family and medical leave," Sanders said.

 

Sanders speaks to a crowd estimated at 6,000 in the Mass Mutual Center.

He said forcing a mother to go back to work just weeks after having a child, right in the child's most formative period of time, isn't "family values, it is the opposite."

 

Sanders also called for legislation to make higher education tuition free to combat the growing student debt.

 

Brandeis student Lexi Ouellette knows that debt all too well. She told the crowd that she will owe some $20,000 once she graduates and that is only a fraction of what some others end up paying.

 

"It is not about what college you want to attend but what college you can afford," Ouellette said. 

 

Sanders said he'd pass legislation to allow students to refinance at the lowest interest rates possible instead of 6 to 10 percent students currently are paying, which oftentimes becomes some 25 percent of their income.

 

Sanders said it wouldn't be that expensive to make college tuition free and said the funding source would come from a new tax on Wall Street speculation. He cited the 2008 bailout of large banks, despite his vote against, as why it is time for them to give back.

 

"Today it is Wall Street's turn to help bail out the middle class," Sanders said. 

 

Among those banks that were bailed out in 2008, three out of four are now bigger than they were before, he said, and it is time to "break them up" so they won't be "too big to fail."

 

The presidential hopeful promised the crowd that he wouldn't appoint a Supreme Court justice who does not support the overturning of Citizen's United. He said that court ruling has made it possible for big corporations to "buy the government." He said the Koch brothers will spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to buy influence this election season. 

 

"They have one vote plus $900 million to purchase the candidates of their choice," Sanders said.

 

He wants that decision overturned and he wants public funding of elections so that anyone who wants to run for office doesn't have to "beg wealthy people for contributions."

 

Sanders campaign isn't begging contributions from corporate America, he said. Some 650,000 Americans have made individual contributions and 99 percent of his fundraising has been from contributions of $100 or less. 

 

"I don't represent the billionaires and the millionaires and I don't want their money," Sander said. 

 

He touched on global warming, saying it has had devastating consequences and there is a "moral responsibility" to transform the country's energy system to save the planet. Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben, lead voice against the Keystone Pipeline, said Sanders has been supportive of combating global warming for years. Sanders came out against the pipeline project in 2011, he said.

 

"Everybody else in the country is finding out what we in Vermont found out long ago," McKibben said of the groundswell of support Sanders has been receiving across the nation. "He's not just running a campaign. He's building a movement."

 

Sanders also called for the country to move toward a single-payer health care system. While the Affordable Care Act has made progress, Sanders said there are still 29 million people uninsured and others paying high deductibles and co-pays. 

 

The push for a single-payer system earned him the endorsement of National Nurses United.

 

"We truthfully believe that he is the best candidate to reclaim our nation as the next president of the United States," said co-President Karen Higgens. 

 

Sanders also called for comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path toward citizenship, reform to the criminal justice system, a "sensible" gun control bill to keep guns out of the hands of people who "should not have them" and overcoming institutional racism.

 

"Our campaign is a different type of campaign. It is a grassroots campaign designed not only to elect someone to be president of the United States but to build a political movement," Sanders said to boisterous applause and cheers.