16:42

Bernie Sanders returned to where it all began for him on Friday afternoon. In a last-minute campaign rally, he took to a windy podium in the middle of the street outside his childhood home off Kings Highway in Brooklyn to address supporters.

“All over this state and all over this country, there is a movement developing that says it is too late for establishment politics and establishment economics,” he told an adoring crowd.

As the building’s current residents peered down from open windows, Sanders declared that income inequality in America and the current campaign finance system was “unacceptable” – and received shouts of “Unacceptable!” from the crowd in response.

From there, he touched on all of his campaign’s main policy initiatives, from the “broken criminal justice system” to the $15 minimum wage, tuition free public colleges and universities, and from student loan interest rates to the need to “rebuild our crumbling infrastructure”. But it was when he declared “climate change is real and climate change is caused by human activity” that he got an “Amen!” from deep in the crowd.

Sanders wrapped up his first of three New York City appearances planned for Friday and Saturday with appeals to his electability, declaring that momentum was in his favor and it was he, not Hillary Clinton, who could beat Republicans in November. And with one last appeal to the assembled voters, he descended off the stage and attended to the crowd at the rope line – which was made of the NYPD’s ubiquitous metal barriers.

Sanders was introduced first by a singer, who chose America the Beautiful instead of the national anthem to lead off the rally. He then led the crowd – who did really sing along – in a new verse that ended: “We’ve got your back / No Super PACs / We feel the bern, Bernie!”

Actor and Sanders supporter Mark Ruffalo was up next, encouraging the crowd to talk to friends and relatives who were not ready to voter for Sanders. “They’re just scared,” he said, explaining that it was the job of Sanders supporters to encourage everyone to embrace their dreams.

“Incrementalism is dead,” Ruffalo declared – an obvious reference to Hillary Clinton’s supposedly more pragmatic policy platform.

Jane Sanders, Bernie Sanders and Mark Ruffalo outside Sanders’ childhood home in Brooklyn. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

The crowd in attendance was as eclectic as modern Brooklyn itself: a hijabi-clad woman kept an eye on her little girl as she played with a slightly older boy in a yarmulke, looking for a good spot to catch a glimpse of Sanders. So many attendees carried expensive DSLR cameras that it was difficult to tell photojournalists from supporters. An elderly woman in cheap knit pants leaned against a slim tree as a volunteer of South Asia descent led two African American supporters and their son through the crowd, telling them there was more room to stand on the other side of the press riser. People shouted in support at inopportune times during Sanders’ speech, high school kids fresh out of class giggled in packs and everyone pressed forwards towards the rope line the second his speech ended, hoping to get a selfie or even just a snap with their candidate.

Those who did emerged from a pack of humanity grinning, to show their friends (or even just their followers on social media) and then started the long, cold walk back to the subway.

Watching the crowd from the other side of the barriers was Kiaza Dozorets, a 78-year-old current resident of Sanders’ childhood building. Through a translator, she explained that she’d only lived there for 24 years, and thus had not overlapped with Sanders.

She said that although she liked Sanders, she could not vote for him: despite being a citizen, she had never registered to vote.

Though it is too late to register for New York’s primary on 19 April, when told she could register and vote in the November general election, she nodded. “Yes, maybe,” she said, watching the last of the Bernie supporters leave her block.