“I’m tired of saying I’m fine when I’m not,” Sasheer Zamata said at the event. Photograph by Mindy Tucker

On a recent fall evening, a crowd of about two hundred filed into the Bell House, a nineteen-twenties former warehouse with a rough brick exterior, in Gowanus, Brooklyn, to raise money for Bernie Sanders’s Presidential campaign, and to laugh. The concert and special-events venue sits on a wide block of stumpy converted spaces, across from an Apple support store. Inside, the atmosphere was warm, vibrant.

Near the ticket window, just outside the main event hall, a flyer decorated the wall. “Stand Up for Bernie Sanders: Bern’in Down the House,” it read, in an autumnal, chestnut-and-pumpkin color palette. A ghoulish drawing of Sanders sat beneath a burning building (maybe the White House?). Two women representing the Bushwick Berners, a grassroots organization mobilizing for Sanders in North Brooklyn, stood adjacent to the ticket counter, hunched over a fold-out table crowded with signage, stickers, a donation jar, pens, voter-registration forms, and pamphlets. (“Bernie is Bae,” one sign read.) In the room next door, a d.j. launched into a cut of Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Got Your Money.”

Lauren Irwin, a Bushwick Berner dressed in a long black coat with fur-like fuzz on the shoulders, solicited new volunteers and registered voters. “It’s all very D.I.Y.,” Irwin said, enthusiastic and proud, pointing to the chaotic arrangement of papers on the table. Irwin had designed and printed one of the pamphlets—a “zine,” she called it. The “BK Bern Book,” a few folded pieces of white paper stapled together, contained features like Sanders’s Senate voting record compared with Hillary Clinton’s, a Republican-candidate-quote matching game, an image of Donald Trump superimposed on a hair-transplant advertisement, celebrity tweets in support of Sanders—from Lil B the Basedgod, Anne Rice, Sarah Silverman, Cornel West, Killer Mike—and information about how to get involved with the campaign.

“This is something that I’m very passionate about—the physicality of a pamphlet or a zine, where you can pass them around,” Irwin said, beaming. “The zine is not just about [Sanders]. He represents this larger movement, this larger grouping of people who are not down with establishment politics.”

Inside the hall, a relatively young, mostly white after-work crowd gathered in an orchestral arrangement of seats. Flannel shirts, plaid tops, and knit hats were sprinkled throughout the audience. The chandeliers dimmed as the night’s hosts—Kenny DeForest, Will Miles, and Clark Jones—took the stage together. “Yell out some reasons you’re a fan of Bernie Sanders,” Miles, a comedian from Chicago and a co-host of Sunday Nights at the Knitting Factory, said. He had a thick mustache and wore a dark button-down shirt and dark jeans. “What do you guys think?”

“Socialism,” a man yelled.

“The hair,” a woman hollered.

“He’s not an asshole,” another woman shouted, her voice strained and groggy.

“His accent!” a man with an Irish-sounding lilt, who was sitting near the sound technician, bellowed. He had to repeat himself three times before the hosts onstage could understand him. “What about your accent?” DeForest countered, to the crowd’s amusement. The exchange set a light, conversational tone that would carry throughout the event. “We’re just going to have some fun and support a good man,” DeForest said, sipping a can of Tecate.

Each of the eleven comics had between ten and twenty minutes onstage, broken up by appearances by the hosts, and nearly all of the acts seized on some of the central issues in the 2016 campaign: Black Lives Matter, police brutality, economic inequality, feminism, mass incarceration, abortion and contraception, the regulation of financial institutions, and campaign-finance reform. The comedy show was, after all, also a political fundraiser. (Proceeds from the ten-dollar admission benefitted Sanders’s political campaign. The event’s organizers are not officially affiliated with Bernie 2016.) The comedians, each of whom performed pro bono, also turned many of the Presidential hopefuls, including Sanders, into punch lines.

During his own set, DeForest, who lives in Bushwick and is originally from Springfield, Missouri, quipped about his appearance and his privilege. “It’s a hard thing to accept that my life is easier because I’m a white dude,” he said. “I don’t want to accept that. I’m a competitive dude. I don’t want an asterisk on my scorecard.” DeForest was at his funniest all night during that earnest searching.

The Lucas Brothers—identical twins named Kenny and Keith, who perform together—brought the laid-back style from their animated series, “Lucas Bros. Moving Co,” to their colorful routine. “Every time Steph Curry makes a three pointer,” one brother said, followed by an extended pause. The crowd held their focus. Then: “a nigga gets shot in America.” The audience managed to let out a delayed, nervous laugh. Throughout their set, the two brothers, who affixed political pins to their jackets—a Goldwater ’64 button and a blue “Say Nope to Dope” button—craftily disguised dense, heavy subject matter in their characteristic deadpan delivery.

The “Saturday Night Live” star Sasheer Zamata applied a more melancholy tone to her dialogue. Inquisitive and caustic, she spent much of her time onstage appealing to the need for more honesty. “I’m tired of saying I’m fine when I’m not,” Zamata lamented. “I wish there were a concise way to say that I’m thankful to be alive, but I’m not good.” Zamata’s frustrations garnered a variety of responses from the crowd, which oscillated between excitement, unease, befuddlement, and amusement. A bit later in her set, Zamata received her loudest cheers not for telling a joke but for testifying to the merits of open and sincere dialogue. “I don’t think race or gender or sexuality or religion are taboo subjects,” Zamata said. “I think they are just subjects that we can talk about. And if we talk about it more the less uncomfortable it gets.”

Hearing this, I thought about Sanders himself, who has been both revered and reviled for his candor. The show raised an essential question about his campaign: Does a willingness to talk about difficult issues render them more uncomfortable or less?

After the show, I found Seaton Smith, one of the night’s standout performers, who co-stars on Fox’s “Mulaney,” standing in the rear of the room chatting with a couple friends. Smith, whose long, untamed Afro extends his chiseled jaw line, explained the importance of having conversations. “I like to talk political shit with people,” Smith said. I asked him about comedy’s role in facilitating political discourse. Then Smith, in a blue denim shirt and taupe sport coat with an upturned collar, briefly glanced toward the stage. “Comedy allows you to say things poignantly, but in an easy way. So it’s not forcing down your throat,” he said. “It’s an easier way to deal with a problem.”