Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign put a spotlight on structural poverty in the South by releasing video Tuesday of Sanders’ visit to Lowndes County.

The independent Vermont senator and Democratic presidential candidate visited the mobile home of Lowndes County resident and Poor People’s Campaign member Pamela Rush last month during a campaign stop in Alabama. Rush tries to provide for herself and two children on less than $1,000 a month in a mobile home without sanitation service, which causes raw sewage to empty into her backyard.

“When we use the expression ‘It is very expensive to be poor,’ this is what we’re talking about,” Sanders says in the video, titled “Trapped” and released Tuesday by his campaign. “The word ‘poverty’ is something that is not talked about very often in the United States. We have tens of millions of people in the richest country in the world who are struggling every single day to take care of their families in the most basic way.”

Rush said her mobile home cost $114,000 and she still owes $15,000. She said the conditions in Lowndes County make it a struggle to survive.

“I’ve been living in Alabama all my life, in Lowndes County, Alabama, all my life. My momma also lived in a mobile home, too, and one time it got so cold my momma caught pneumonia and she died from it,” she said. “I know I need somewhere else to stay. These people did us wrong by charging us all this money for a mobile home -- $114,000, and I still owe $15,000. It ain’t worth it. It ain’t worth it.”

Catherine Flowers, a local activist and rural development manager of the Equal Justice Initiative, said people in poverty face structural disadvantages.

“When you have, you get more. If you don’t have anything, you won’t get anything,” she said.

The video ends with Sanders hugging a teary-eyed Rush, telling her not to lose hope.

“This is just the beginning,” he says. “You have to get attention to the issue and I’m going to do something about it.”