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Boston — At 5 a.m. Saturday, about 80 minutes before sunrise, Brie DuMont woke up in Boston, Mass., to the sound of her alarm. It was a cold morning, dark and windy; the forecast called for snow. Still, DuMont pulled herself from her bed. She found her orange toque. She painted on a layer of pink eye shadow and dug her hands into a pair of fingerless gloves — black, with an overlay of purple bones.

At 5:45, the sun still nowhere in the clouded sky, DuMont left her house and started walking. Through the dark streets she paced, past historic sites from the American Revolution, toward the Boston Common, America’s oldest park. When she arrived, at 6:30, a handful of campaign staffers were already there. They were setting up tables and unloading boxes full of blue “Bernie” signs.

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DuMont found a bench and settled in to wait.

Photo by Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Over the next five hours, more than 13,000 people would pour in behind DuMont. They joined lines that eventually snaked in all directions around the park. There were students, lots of them, and seniors too. Joyce Hamilton, 67, drove in that morning from New Hampshire. “Bernie is the candidate I’ve been waiting for my entire life,” she said.