A longtime leader of Washington’s leftist wing, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders said in Chicago that his deeply-rooted push for income equality, guaranteed health care and other policies meant to lift up the working class are not “radical” and they’re “what the American people want.”

The independent from Vermont made Chicago the latest stop on his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour Sunday, where the 83-year-old addressed a couple thousand supporters, many of them much younger than he is, about why he thinks billionaires and corporate interests have too much influence over American policies.

The tour’s messaging is nothing new for Sanders, who has served on Capitol Hill since the early 1990s, including the last 17 years as a U.S. senator. But he keeps seeking to inspire a new generation of voters and political activists.

“Do a poll. You ask the people of Illinois whether or not they believe health care is a human right, and whether we should continue to be the only major country not to guarantee health care to all. And you know what? I will predict to you, what that poll will show is the overwhelming majority of Americans support what I am talking about,” Sanders said in an interview with the Tribune after the rally at the University of Illinois Chicago.

The event was somewhat of a homecoming for Sanders, who is originally from the East Coast but is an alumnus of the University of Chicago. As a student there in 1963, a Tribune photographer captured the young Sanders being arrested at a South Side protest — a sign of his early involvement in civil rights activism. More than 60 years later, Sanders is viewed as one of Washington’s formidable champions of progressive politics and outspoken critics of neoliberal policies.

The octogenarian trying to reach a new generation of voters amid a demoralized Democratic Party is a stark juxtaposition. But Sanders continues to push a progressive message even though some fear the movement has gone too far left. On the national stage, Sanders has attracted a more leftist voting bloc as he’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, finishing second each time. His defeat in Illinois in 2016 was by a narrow margin as he lost to Hillary Clinton by about 2% of the vote.

Last year during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the speech from its de facto host, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who is also a billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, was awkwardly preceded by Sanders, who railed against “billionaires in both parties” and “the need to get big money out of our political process.”

Sanders repeated a similar message during Sunday’s rally at UIC’s Isadore and Sadie Dorin Forum, where he railed against another billionaire, Republican President Donald Trump, and how the new measure he signed into law July Fourth called for massive tax breaks and spending cuts that will hurt low-income families. Echoing his sentiments at the rally during separate speeches were staunch progressives U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez of Chicago and Chicago state Sen. Robert Peters, who is running for a U.S. House seat.

After the event, Sanders affirmed that regular people don’t want America’s wealthiest to have so much power in this country.

“Go out and ask people whether they think it’s OK for billionaires to buy elections. They will tell you ‘no,'” he told the Tribune. “Ask them whether or not we should … give tax breaks to billionaires or build affordable housing. You know what people will say? Build affordable housing.”

“Now maybe the media pundits and the billionaire class will tell you that what I’m saying is radical. It is not radical. It’s what the American people want and, in fact, already exists in almost every major country on Earth in one respect or another,” Sanders said.

During the interview, he dodged any criticism of Pritzker’s billionaire status, even though the governor, a progressive Democrat in his own right who is running for a third term and has not ruled out a run for president in 2028, has used his wealth to secure his office and Illinois’ Democratic one-party control.

“I’m not here to talk about Illinois,” Sanders said. “What I will tell you is that billionaires through their Super PACs (political action committees) have enormous power over both political parties. And I don’t care whether you’re a conservative Republican or a progressive or a moderate. Most people understand that it is absurd that billionaires can spend unlimited amounts of money to elect the candidates of their choice.”

“Does that mean that every billionaire is doing a bad job? No, it does not,” Sanders continued. “But it means that democracy is about one person, one vote, not billionaires buying elections.”

To that end, he called for the controversial 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to be overturned. The landmark 5-4 ruling held that corporations and other outside groups such as Super PACs can spend as much as they like on elections because limiting “independent political spending” violates the First Amendment right to free speech.

“We have to get rid of Super PACs. We cannot allow extremely wealthy people and billionaires to pour unlimited amounts of money into the political process,” Sanders said. “What we have got to do is have public funding of elections. You know what? If you want to run for office, you don’t have to go and get a billionaire to fund your campaign so you work for that billionaire. What you have to do is show a certain amount of support, get public funding and let’s have fair elections.”

Sanders has traversed the country with his “Fighting Oligarchy” message, hosting events from Los Angeles to Wheeling, West Virginia. His next scheduled stop on the tour is on Labor Day in Portland, Maine.

During his roughly 40-minute speech in Chicago on Sunday, Sanders talked about Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and how he served as a cautionary tale for other politicians. Tillis broke ranks from his GOP colleagues by voting against Trump-backed tax breaks and spending cuts this summer, including slashes to various benefits for the poor, such as Medicaid.

Sanders said Tillis’ defiance of Trump prompted him to announce he wasn’t running for reelection rather than face a GOP primary opponent who Trump had vowed to back against Tillis for his vote against the legislation.

“Tillis is a conservative Republican guy. But he actually did something unusual: He read the bill,” Sanders said, drawing some laughter in the crowd. “He gets up and he says, ‘I cannot vote for this bill. It would be destructive for my constituents.'”

Sanders also took aim at other issues, including criticizing Israel’s military campaign against Gaza and Trump’s alienating of the trans community and immigrants in the U.S. without legal permission.

“What a demagogue like Trump does is they forget about the health care crisis, forget about climate, forget about education, forget about housing,” Sanders said. “‘We’re not going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about how we hate this group of people and that group of people.’ And the antidote to that which we must bring forth, we must create, is an understanding that if we do not all stand together, we’re all going to go down together.”

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