PARK WEST — Hundreds of people waited in line Monday evening to see Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speak at a Chicago fundraiser.
Around 4:45 p.m., the line for the "meet-and-greet" fundraiser at Park West, 322 W. Armitage Ave. in Lincoln Park, snaked around Clark Street past the PNC Bank, 2021 N. Clark St., with it scheduled to begin at 5 p.m.
"I'm here to show support for a man who is not elite and desires to serve people rather than wealthy corporations," said West Ridge resident Jeanne Mayer, 67, who was waiting in line for the event. Tickets ranged in price from $50 to $1,000.
Others, like Streeterville resident George Miller, are still trying to make up their minds.
"I'm impressed [with him] so far," he said. "I'm just trying to make a decision way in advance."
The Lincoln Park event is the fifth official fundraiser of his campaign, the Sun-Times reported. Most of his funding has come from individual donations.
The last time Sanders was in Chicago, it was to stump for mayoral candidate Jesus "Chuy" Garcia and Ald. Susan Sadlowski-Garza (10th). Both figures will return the favor, appearing at Monday's event to speak in support of the populist candidate, the Sun-Times reported.
For Sanders, a University of Chicago alumnus, it was a homecoming of sorts. Recently, Time magazine looked at his student days. Sanders, class of 1964, "threw himself into activism — civil rights, economic justice, volunteering, organizing," says Time.
Back then, the now-Vermont senator was "a sloppy student" who was asked by the dean to take a year off from school. He had his run-ins with Chicago police: He was arrested for demonstrating against segregated schools here.
Time also relates how a Chicago squad car followed him as he put up posters protesting police brutality. The officers took down the fliers behind him, with one asking Sanders, "Are these yours?"
Sanders says of years at U of C: "I received more of an education off campus than I did in the classroom."
Bernie Sanders, right in sweater, during a University of Chicago protest against housing discrimination in 1962. [University of Chicago]
A University of Chicago Magazine look at Sanders' time in Hyde Park explored his leadership in a sit-in at the president's office over the U of C's racial segregation housing policies. The son of a Brooklyn paint salesman who often felt uncomfortable around his well-heeled classmates, Sanders admits, "I was not exactly a stellar student."
He did, though, hang out at Harper Library reading "Marx, a lot of Freud." He also got a taste of Chicago politics helping longtime independent Ald. Leon DuPres beat City Hall. ("I was very impressed by Richard J. Daley's Chicago Machine" which had "a city worker for every 200 voters," Sanders allows.)
Overall, Sanders says of the U of C: "It was a very, very vibrant place. It was just not 'earn a degree.'"
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), then a student at the University of Chicago, speaks at a 1962 sit in on campus. [University of Chicago]
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