On April 8, days after Philadelphia’s official COVID-19 shutdown, Bernie Sanders delivered a video statement announcing the suspension of his presidential campaign. Nikil Saval, candidate for Pennsylvania State Senate in the First District, posted this brief statement: “Thank you, Bernie Sanders, for your vision and your tireless work. We will continue to fight for what the majority wants: housing as a human right, universal healthcare and family care, an end to mass incarceration, a sustainable, equitable future.”

Saval’s history with Bernie is long. In 2016, he campaigned for Sanders in South Philadelphia, where he lives, and ran a campaign hub out of his home in the days leading up to the election. After Sanders’s loss in 2016, Saval and his fellow volunteers didn’t want to let the community they’d built around the campaign disappear. They founded an organization called Reclaim Philadelphia, a grassroots organization that would work year-round canvassing neighborhoods to build support behind some of the key issues facing the Philadelphia and American working class today: universal health care and housing, well-funded public education, climate justice, workers’ rights, and progressive democratic and justice reforms.

A little over a month after he suspended his campaign for the second time, Bernie Sanders sent an email to his supporters asking them to donate to nine candidates running for state office. By this point, Saval had moved his campaign online and redirected much of his campaign’s energy to mutual aid efforts related to COVID-19, but he was still running in Philadelphia’s rescheduled June 2 election.