While there are plenty of important primary elections happening now, and even bigger general elections happening in the fall, Senator Bernie Sanders’s rallies in Philadelphia and Boston earlier this month were focused on something entirely different: the struggles of the working class and the importance of building the labor movement.

Sanders was joined at these events by Association of Flight Attendants president Sara Nelson and International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Sean O’Brien, just as he was in Chicago earlier this summer. Bernie’s team called these rallies in Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia “The Working Class: Fighting Back Against Corporate Greed.”

Before the rallies, Sanders met with workers, activists, and local progressive elected officials. I was lucky enough to be part of the meeting in Philadelphia. He opened up our meeting by saying, “I don’t want you to tell me what I want to hear, I want you to tell me what you are seeing and experiencing with your own eyes and your own lives. What is going on?”