PHILADELPHIA — Sen. Bernie Sanders made an appeal to Pennsylvania lawmakers at a May Day rally outside of City Hall on Thursday.

“I’m here in Pennsylvania to tell any member of the Pennsylvania delegation that if they vote for tax breaks for billionaires and cut Medicaid, nutrition, and education, we are going to throw them out of their jobs,” Sanders, I-Vt., said to a roaring crowd at the rally organized by the Philadelphia AFL-CIO.

The former presidential candidate’s Thursday appearance “For the Workers, Not the Billionaires May Day Rally” was the first of a three-day swing through Pennsylvania as he tours the country on his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.

Tall white signs on each side of the stage said “For the people, not the billionaires,” and “billionaires are defunding our lives,” with images of money with flames around it.

Sanders has been delivering speeches around the country in opposition to President Donald Trump‘s agenda, drawing large crowds. His Philadelphia appearance comes on a particularly significant day for the labor movement.

Sanders said May Day, a day when organized labor groups hold rallies across the globe for workers’ rights, is a “sacred” holiday.

“All over the world, in dozens of countries, workers are standing up to oligarchy and demanding a world in which all people have a decent standard of living,” he said to cheers.

The independent senator who caucuses with Democrats praised the work of the trade union movement over the years that he said fought against child labor, long work weeks, and dangerous working conditions, and helped lead to the creation of overtime pay, Social Security, and Medicare.

“May Day as you know was established way back in 1886 and workers then stood up to the very powerful forces and said, ‘You know what? We don’t want to be slaves. We don’t want to work 60, 70, hours a week. We want an eight hour day,’” said Sanders, who unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016 and 2020.

He said there’s still work to be done to address workforce discrimination and collective bargaining rights. He called for Congress to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would allow more workers to unionize, and said there are millions of workers who want to join unions but can’t because of illegal behavior of corporations.

“If we are going to build the movement that we need to take power in this country we need to grow the trade movement in this country,” he said.

Sanders spoke for about 20 minutes touching on a range of policies he supports, including raising the minimum wage, providing free public education, Medicare for all, and expanding Social Security. He decried the top 1% of earners in the country and wealth inequality in the country, which he’s been speaking about for years.

Chants of “Free Palestine” could be heard during his speech from outside the rally and one disruptor spoke into a megaphone while sitting on top of a statue throughout Sanders speech but it was unclear what he was saying.

A couple of people in the crowd held up giant Palestinian flags in front of the stage that Sanders spoke on, and an interpreter standing on the stage behind Sanders wore a keffiyeh and a shirt that said “Free Palestine.”

Sanders did not directly address the flags, but he criticized Congress for the amount of military aid it sends to Israel and spoke out against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s role in the war in Gaza.

“We can cut military spending and build 5 million units of low income and affordable housing,” he said.

Sanders was critical of Trump, Elon Musk, and other billionaires, and argued that the United States has become an oligarchic society under Trump‘s administration.

“The American people by the millions are saying no to oligarchy, no to Trump‘s authoritarianism, no to Trump‘s kleptocracy and no to tax-breaks for billionaires,” he shouted, and the crowd roared, “no!” in response.

He also called on Democratic colleagues in Congress to “stop defending the status quo.”

Nicole Parisano, 29, a Philadelphia resident who works as a data analyst at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, agrees with that sentiment.

Dressed up in a red cloak and bonnet depicting women in "The Handmaid’s Tale," a look activists have embraced to advocate for abortion rights, Parisano said Democratic leadership in Congress needs to do more to resist Trump.

She said it’s an “honor” that Sanders chose to be in Philadelphia for May Day and that it was a fitting choice because of the rich American history in the city.

“I just hope that we can, like, live up to the Founding Fathers and reclaim our freedoms from the corrupt government,” she added.

Sanders also alluded to Pennsylvania’s history in his speech.

“All of us remember that when Abraham Lincoln was in Gettysburg, right here in Pennsylvania, and he looked out at a battlefield where a few days before 20,000 Union soldiers had died or been wounded,” he said.

“And he looked out and he said, ‘Our vision for the future of America is a government of the people, by the people and for the people,’” he said, as the crowd spoke the phrase aloud with him.

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