When Bernie Sanders and his campaign decided to hold the candidate’s first New York City rally in the South Bronx, it was no accident. Where Manhattan holds three of the five wealthiest zip codes in the country, just over the bridge the South Bronx is the U.S.’s poorest congressional district. A quick ride up the 6 train showcases the increasing inequality that has become Sanders’s rallying cry. But St. Mary’s Park in the Bronx’s Mott Haven neighborhood, with its high-rise public housing complexes, didn’t just highlight the excesses of unfettered markets but became a space to debunk the myth of “Bernie Bros” as the archetype of Sanders’s base. The Democratic socialist’s first NYC rally quickly became a sea of diversity. While the crowd was largely young, lots of different sexualities, religions, ethnicities, races, and languages mixed vividly, showing the city and the world that it isn’t just white, heterosexual, millennial males who are feeling the Bern.

Here are some of the New Yorkers who endured hours in line to hear Bernie Sanders speak.



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