Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks before an estimated crowd of 12,500 at Navy Pier in Chicago on March 3. He focused on systemic racism and other inequalities. | Nam Y. Huh/AP Photo 2020 elections In Chicago, Sanders talks race

CHICAGO — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) talked about his experiences protesting racial discrimination as a college student here at a rally Sunday at the Navy Pier.

Sanders, who kicked off his second campaign for the White House last month, also railed against racial disparities, voter suppression, and an unjust criminal justice system.


“The reason I tell you all of this is because my activities here in Chicago taught me a very important lesson that I have never forgotten,” he said. “And that is that whether it is the struggle against corporate greed or against racism, sexism, homophobia, environmental devastation or war and militarism, real change never takes place from top on down. It always takes place from the bottom on up.“

He spoke about wealth gaps and other inequalities between black and white Americans as well.

“Today, the infant mortality rate in black communities is more than double the rate for white communities,” he said, "and the death rates from cancer and almost every disease is far higher for blacks."

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Sanders, who struggled to win over older people of color in his 2016 campaign, is making an effort to reach out to those voters more aggressively and earlier in the 2020 primary.

The rally, the second this weekend, was part of a campaign kickoff tour highlighting Sanders’ roots. The first event took place in Brooklyn, where he spent his childhood and attended a year of college.

Sanders, who in his first presidential campaign didn’t often talk about himself, gave a speech Saturday in Brooklyn that highlighted his lower-middle-class upbringing and time protesting civil rights injustices in his early years.

Sanders and a slate of speakers who preceded him Saturday and Sunday said he helped lead the first known sit-in at the University of Chicago, went to the 1963 March on Washington, and protested school segregation.

Sanders also opened up Saturday about being the son of an immigrant whose family members were killed in the Holocaust.

"I know where I came from," he said in one of the more memorable lines of the weekend. "And that is something I will never forget.”

Jeff Weaver, a top adviser to Sanders, said the weekend’s events were “an attempt to draw a connection between Bernie Sanders’ life story and the policy agenda that he is putting forward in the campaign.”

Sanders spent a significant amount of time at both rallies talking about his platform aimed at fighting economic inequality.

Sanders, along with other 2020 hopefuls, also traveled to Selma, Ala., on Sunday to remember the 1965 civil rights march known as Bloody Sunday.

He spoke there about the presidential campaigns of Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was in attendance.

“Way back in 1984, this man stood up as a candidate for president, and he talked about a ‘rainbow coalition.’ Remember that?” said Sanders. “History will not forget that he talked about the imperative of black and white and Latino and Native American and Asian American to come together to fight for a nation of peace and justice and human dignity.”

Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator who is co-chairing Sanders’ campaign, praised him Saturday for supporting Jackson’s presidential aspirations: “When you are willing in the 1980s to be one of only two white elected officials to stand by the side of the Rev. Jesse Jackson when he was running for president, that’s the measure of a man.”

