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YPSILANTI, Mich. — Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont held a boisterous campaign event at Eastern Michigan University here on Monday with about 9,400 supporters cheering along to his hour-long speech.

Though Mr. Sanders had scheduled two rallies in Michigan on Monday, he did not plan a visit to Flint and instead met beforehand with several residents of the city to talk about the lead-tainted water crisis there. Mr. Sanders, addressing a stadium full of supporters after the meeting, said Flint’s water problem was just one of several examples of the country’s dangerous, declining infrastructure.

“I’ve just come from a meeting, which was one of the more difficult meetings that I have ever attended in a long political life where I have seen a lot and I have heard a lot,” Mr. Sanders said to the crowd at the university. “I just met with seven or eight residents of Flint, Mich. I obviously have read the newspapers, and have been somewhat involved in the issue, but I really did not know how ugly, how horrible and how terrible what is going on there is. It is beyond my comprehension that in the year 2016, in the United States of America, we are poisoning our children.”

One person in the crowd shouted, “Go to Flint,” as Mr. Sanders said he had talked to parents who were witnessing the heartbreaking effects of tainted water on their children.

“I just talked to a mother who said that she has a kid who was very bright in school,” Mr. Sanders said. “In the last two years, she has seen her child’s ability to do school work markedly deteriorate. Can you imagine being a mother, seeing your own baby’s, you own child’s intellectual development deteriorate in front of your very eyes? That is happening all over that city.”

Some in the crowd loudly sighed, shook their heads and frowned as the senator explained the conversation with Flint residents. Several people also held signs up that read, “Flintstones 810 for Bernie” and “Fix Flint Now.”

Mr. Sanders said that he didn’t want to be “overly political” but that he had called for the resignation of Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan.

“If the local government cannot protect those children, if the state government cannot protect those children, then the federal government better,” he said.

Mr. Sanders said he wanted to create a jobs program that would help fix some of the crumbling infrastructure problems.

“All over America, communities are struggling with deteriorating water systems, waste-water plants, airports, rail systems, roads, bridges, levees and dams,” Mr. Sanders said. “We can create 13 million decent-paying jobs rebuilding that infrastructure.”

Mr. Sanders also talked about issues at the core of his candidacy, including the need to change a “corrupt campaign finance system,” to regulate Wall Street and to deal with economic, social and racial inequality. Many in the crowd, now familiar with his stump speech and Brooklyn accent, shouted along as he spoke.

“We have today a corrupt campaign finance system which is undermining American democracy,” Mr. Sanders said to cheers. “We have a system in which a small number of people, very small number of people, are making huge campaign contributions.”

“Yuuuuge,” the crowd shouted back.

“Huuuuge,” Mr. Sanders repeated, smiling. “I don’t know how I am going to use that word again. Every time I say it, 10,000 people are going to echo it.”

Mr. Sanders wrapped up his rally by turning his attention to the Supreme Court opening created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia and to Senate Republicans who have said they will not schedule any votes on Obama nominees.

“I say to my colleagues in the United States Senate, my Republican colleagues who today, unfortunately, are in the majority: You talk about the constitution a whole lot,” Mr. Sanders said. “Well how about obeying the constitution and start holding hearings when President Obama nominates the next Supreme Court justice?”

“Talk about obstruction,” Mr. Sanders added. “Here you have the Constitution, it is clear as clear can be. The president of the United States nominates people to the Supreme Court. Republicans start hearings on his nomination. Do not obstruct. Obey the Constitution.”

When asked why Mr. Sanders didn’t travel to Flint on Monday, the senator’s spokesperson, Michael Briggs, said, “The senator preferred to meet quietly today with seven or eight people impacted by the unbelievable, horrific situation in Flint without making a media show out of it.”

Mr. Briggs added that Mr. Sanders “wanted to hear what they had to say without television cameras, and what they had to say was unbelievable and hard to imagine in 21st century America.”

Mr. Briggs also said that Mr. Sanders will travel to Flint in the “very near future because the people he met with today urged him to come see firsthand what ground zero looks like.”