DES MOINES — Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders urged cheering Iowans Saturday to help him bring real reforms to promote income and racial equality by supporting his upstart bid to capture the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

Sanders, a two-term senator, stood in the middle of a crowded downtown bridge that was blocked off to traffic for the Iowa Latino Heritage Festival and laid out his appeal for an unprecedented grassroots political movement to counter big-money efforts pushing the interests of the nation’s wealthiest few.

“What we’re trying to do in this campaign is kind of unprecedented,” said Sanders, who earlier this month established his bid for front-runner status by registering as the choice of 41 percent of likely Iowa Democratic caucus participants in a Quinnipiac University poll that had former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with 40 percent and Vice President Joe Biden at 12 percent. Biden still is deciding whether he will declare himself as a 2016 candidate.

“What we’re trying to do is win an election without a super PAC, without being funded by millionaires and billionaires,” he said.

“What we’re trying to do is win an election by having the strongest grassroots volunteer organization that anyone has seen,” he added. “So far we’re doing good, but we need all of your help.”

Sanders said his plan calls for putting more Americans — especially young people and minorities with the highest unemployment rates — to work at a living wage of at least $15 an hour or helping them better themselves with education via free tuition to attend public colleges and universities. His plan includes rebuilding the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, hiring more teachers and providing universal child care for working parents.

He also called for reforming the “broken” criminal justice system with a new sentencing structure and a law enforcement approach that is less militaristic and holds police accountable.

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He drew on themes sounded by Pope Francis last week in citing a “moral obligation” to maintain a healthy and habitable planet by shifting away from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives and engaging in a civil political dialogue focused on improving people’s lives.

The crowd cheered loudly when Sanders called for comprehensive immigration reform to fix a “broken” system by establishing a pathway to legal residency or citizenship for the 11 million undocumented workers living in the United States.

“What this campaign is about is not just electing Bernie Sanders, what this campaign is about is bringing millions of people together to demand that the United States government start representing all of us and not just a handful of billionaires,” he said.

“What this campaign is also about is saying that the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations, many of whom are doing phenomenally well, will finally have to start paying their fair share of taxes,” he added. “It is not acceptable to me that large corporations stash their money in tax havens and in some cases do not pay one nickel in federal income tax at the same time that children in America go hungry. That is wrong, that is going to change.”

What America is up against in this election cycle is a small group of people who are extremely wealthy and who are extremely greedy, he said.

“They are very, very religious people. Their religion is greed, and no matter how many billions of dollars they have,” he said, “they seem to want more, and that means cutting Social Security or cutting Medicare or cutting Medicaid.”

“If we do not allow our opponents to divide us up, white against black, straight against gay, man against woman, people born in the United States against people who were not born in the United States, if we stand together and are united there is nothing, nothing, nothing that we cannot accomplish,” Sanders told the crowd.