"What do we need to do to improve the quality of life of our citizens of the world?"
—Jane Sanders, The Sanders Institute"I think it's important that we realize the intersectionality of the issues," explained Jane Sanders, who along with executive director David Driscoll founded The Sanders Institute and organized the Gathering. "I mean environmental sanity has to do with income inequality and so many things. And that's why we intentionally do things more comprehensively because we don't want to say, 'We're having an environmental conference,' or 'We're having a housing conference.'"

And while Jane's husband, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), was at the conference—delivering the keynote and sitting on several panels—the weekend was distinctly not about him. Throughout the weekend, the senator could be found waving off reporters, sitting quietly in the back row during panel discussions, trying not to be seen, but listening intently to what was being said by the assembled speakers and the engaged attendees.

"I'm a guest here," Bernie told The Real News Network in an interview on Saturday as he credited his wife and the Institute for putting on the event. "And what Jane understood," he explained, "is that when we deal with climate change, when we deal with the economy, when we deal with housing, when we deal with criminal justice or immigration issues—we have got to deal with them in a holistic way. We cannot see them as silo-ized, separate issues. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that we live in a nation owned and controlled by a small number of multi-billionaires whose greed—incredible greed, insatiable greed—is having an unbelievably negative impact on our entire country."