Presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren's trip to Fairfield Sunday was originally planned as an intimate political house party, but more Iowans than expected wanted to hear the senator from Massachusetts out.

Around 400 people in a city with a population under 10,000 reportedly reserved spots for the event, prompting organizers to move the stump speech to the Fairfield Arts & Convention Center.

Warren held several such campaign events Memorial Day weekend, appealing to potential voters in rural Iowa with an account of her own working-class roots and the working-class protections she would advocate for as president.

In Fairfield, chairs were sparse. People crowded in the back of the convention center. Attendees on a stairwell craned their necks to get a better view.

Warren began by recounting her own upbringing. As a child, she said her father was unable to work; her mother got a job at Sears to keep from losing their family house.

“When I was a girl, a full-time minimum wage job in America would support a family," Warren said. "Today a full-time minimum wage job in America will not keep a mom and a baby in a home. That is wrong and that is why I’m in this fight.”

This set the stage for Warren's focus on economic reform and "big structural change," which she addressed repeatedly through the afternoon.

Warren specially brought up Amazon, which reported earning $11.2 billion this past year, paid nothing in federal taxes and received a $129 million rebate.

Warren proposed all companies making more than $100 million in profit pay a tax of a flat 7 percent of that income with "no exceptions, no loopholes." Warren stated that in doing this, the US government could receive roughly $1 trillion dollars over ten years with this tax in place, and would have received "nearly $800 million in taxes" from Amazon just this year.

She also proposed a wealth tax on "the top one-tenth of one percent." The tax would require anyone with $50 million in accumulated wealth to pay two-cents for every dollar they earn beyond $50 million.

"This isn't an attempt to be punitive," Warren said. "This is saying, 'You've built a great fortune in this country, good for you.' All I'm saying is when you make it big, pitch in two cents so everybody else has a chance to make it in this country."

Warren asserted that money could pay for universal childcare, universal pre-Kindergarten, a wage increase for childcare workers, tuition-free access to college and student loan forgiveness.

When the applause died, the first question Warren received came from a woman asking, "How can you alone get these things to come to pass?”

"There's a lot of different pieces to this, and I'm just going to mention a few of them," answered Warren. "The first one is, don't underestimate how much — oh, I love saying this — a president can do by herself."

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Warren emphasized a need to bridge the American political divide, both between everyday citizens and between inside-the-loop politicians.

"We need the Senate; we need the House of Representatives; we need our state governments," she said. "This is about the whole team."

The message resonated with Fairfield resident Dylan Gates, one of the hundreds listening to Warren in the packed atrium. Gates said Warren seemed to give straight answers, not the typical politician's "run around."

Still, Gates said he was uncertain about the impact of Warren's call for tuition-free college and debt forgiveness.

"I could really use help in getting rid of my financial debt," Gates said. "But I think the question is raised, what will that do to what it means to earn a degree? If there’s more competition that’s great, but is it going to affect what it means to have a degree?”

Garnet Stanley, a Canadian Citizen staying in Fairfield on a green card, had no reservations listening to Warren. Stanley can't vote, but he's a vocal supporter of Warren, particularly in conversations with friends who will head to the polls in coming months.

"A corporation uses a country's infrastructure in a massively huge way compared to us as individuals, and they should pay a reasonable amount of tax," said Stanley. "Elizabeth Warren is asking for something that’s extremely reasonable, and that’s her appeal.”