The inside of the former Diamond Hot Yoga studio at 1000 Diamond Street is gutted, chalked, painted, and decorated with white paper flames. The mirrors remain along the back wall, but chairs sit where college students once Sun-Saluted. People of all ages, from Temple students to grandpas and their baby grandchildren, fill the room. Blips of passionate political conversations and boisterous endorsements rise above the general hum of laughter and noise. A speaker adorned with a tie-dye “VOTE (working families)” sticker blasts The Talking Heads’ hit, “Burning Down the House.”

As people file into the revamped room, they get in line to sign up for volunteer opportunities, to receive wristbands for advanced access to the Wednesday night rally at the Liacouras Center and to snag a slice of the “yuge” amounts of free pizza provided. It’s Tuesday April 5, and Senator Bernie Sanders’s new campaign office is open for business.

“We like to kick it off with a bang,” said Ryan Hughes, the Pennsylvania state director of Sanders’ campaign.

The doors to the new office opened at 5 PM, with the grand opening celebration kicking off at 6 PM. Several speakers, including Hughes, Kim Selig, a Temple student and active Sanders volunteer, and Kendrick Sampson, star of television’s “The Vampire Diaries” and “How to Get Away with Murder,” addressed those gathered.

Sanders’ new campaign office sits just across from the train tracks leading to the Temple University SEPTA Regional Rail station, a short walk from the epicenter of campus. The campaign office will focus on in-person interactions with voters, canvassing, calling prospective volunteers, entering recruit and interest data after big events, and will sometimes hold rallies. In very, very rare occasions, the Vermont Senator himself will make an appearance. But, don’t get your hopes up, says John Lazarz, a Sanders campaign volunteer of four months. “Bernie [very] occasionally visits an office. [It] is an ‘almost never’ type of thing.”

“The senator has strong support among college students, so we always try to be close to a college campus,” said Hughes. “We’re going to talk to everybody in every neighborhood, but absolutely, it’s no secret that when young people turn out to vote, the Senator does very well.”

“Really, what he’s about is unity,” said Selig. “That people aren’t going to be stuck at a low level. That together, we really can achieve greatness.”

Lazarz echoes her sentiment. Lazarz is a firm believer in group work and achieving together.

“I’m a full-time volunteer, so what I do is whatever the campaign needs me to do,” he said. The Woronoco, Mass., native arrived in Philadelphia before the Sanders campaign did. “At first, our goal was voter registration, so we worked every single day,” he said. “Me and two of my friends here got 1,300 people registered ourselves, [and] we recruited 300 volunteers. So when the campaign got here, we were like, ‘All right, let’s do this, you have the resources, we know the people, let’s get started.’”

Sampson emphasized this theme as he addressed the crowd, airing his belief in the importance of volunteering.

“If you get one person when you’re out there knocking on doors,” Sampson said, “that person could create a network bigger than you ever could.”

Sampson was on his first trip to New York at the time of the office opening, but made it a point to travel down to Philadelphia to speak at the event.

“I believe [that Bernie] has a heart for the disenfranchised,” Sampson said. “He is the first candidate that I’ve seen that I feel really genuinely cares about those people and kind of feels like it himself. There hasn’t been anything yet that shows me he’s not a loving, peaceful guy that really wants to change the world for the better.”

Although the office opening is, to the campaign, clearly worthy of celebration, Lazarz says the work is not done. He believes that the Sanders campaign is working with the grassroots of America to create a larger movement.

“Nothing is an accomplishment until we actually make Bernie the president. That’s the goal and it will be worth it if we build something beyond one candidate, beyond one election.”

As the last few supporters trickled out, tossing their paper plates in the trash cans and saying goodbye to their friends and the campaign workers, the previously blank paper designated for responses to the question “What does Bernie mean to you?” was full of colorful words and phrases written in the provided markers. Arguably the brightest and boldest of all of them sat dead center. It read, “a future.”