BROOKLYN, NY — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders blasted the "1 percent" and political "demagogues" in a commencement speech to Brooklyn College graduates Tuesday that echoed many of the themes he used on the campaign trail during his upstart run for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

"The very very rich are getting richer, and they get tax breaks," Sanders told a Barclays Center crowd that filled much of the lower and upper levels of the arena. "The working class and the middle class are struggling, and they are seeing drastic cuts in life-and-death programs that could mean survival or not survival for those families."

Sanders was back in his native Brooklyn, where he once attended Brooklyn College, part of the public City University of New York (CUNY) system, for one year after he graduated from James Madison High School in the Midwood/Flatbush area of South Brooklyn. While Sanders didn't graduate from the school, he was awarded on Tuesday an "Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters."

Sanders never mentioned President Trump in the 17-minute speech to graduates but conveyed a sense of doom and gloom about developments in the nation's capital. "We must never allow demagogues to divide us up by race, by religion, by national origin, by gender or by sexual orientation," Sanders said to loud cheers from the audience.



He then rattled off his usual laundry list of grievances — the rich are getting richer, prisons are filling up, women's rights are under attack. Still, Sanders said, he sees hope in future generations.

"You know, and I know that these are tough times in our country," Sanders said. "But looking out at the beautiful people in front of me, I have enormous confidence in the future of our country."



He concluded with this message for the recent grads: "Think big. Not small. And help us create the nation that we all know we can become."

Tuesday's ceremony got underway at 9:30 a.m. when the graduates filed into the Barclays Center. After remarks from the school's president, Michelle J. Anderson, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer addressed the crowd. (For news about your NYC neighborhood, click here to sign up for Patch's daily newsletter and free, real-time news alerts.) Schumer touted a tax break for middle class families who send kids to college and made a joke about Sanders' days on the James Madison track team.