Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday called on Donald Trump to rescind his appointment of alt-right figurehead Stephen Bannon, vowing to hold the president-elect accountable for his campaign promises while fighting against “the expansion of bigotry.”

In a speech at George Washington University that was live-streamed for thousands of viewers, Sanders admitted that last Tuesday night was “a very, very depressing evening for me.” But he pivoted swiftly to optimism, citing the millions of people he met during his presidential primary campaign—”working people, young people”—and their inclusive vision for the United States.

“We are not going backwards in terms of bigotry, we’re going to go forward in creating a non-discriminatory society.”
—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

“Real change, and real politics, never takes place from top on down, it always occurs from the bottom on up,” said the senator from Vermont. “And what that means, in my view, is that when millions of people stand together and they refuse to allow demagoguery to divide us up—by race, by the country we were born in, by our sexual orientation—when we stand together by the millions, we can stop Mr. Trump and anyone else from doing bad things to this country.”

He rattled off a list of promises Trump made on the campaign trail, including his vows not to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; to invest a trillion dollars in U.S. infrastructure; to reinstate Glass-Steagall legislation; to ensure paid maternity leave; and to reject corporate-friendly trade deals.

“Mr. Trump, we have a list of everything you said and we are going to hold you to account,” declared Sanders, who joined other progressive senators earlier this week in blasting Trump’s seeming lack of follow-through on his pledge to “drain the swamp” of corporate lobbyists and Wall Street executives.

Meanwhile, he offered strong resistance to the strains of “bigotry, racism, [and] sexism” that were present during Trump’s campaign and have already marked his turbulent transition.

“I say to Mr. Trump, from the bottom of my heart…We are not going backwards in terms of bigotry, we’re going to go forward in creating a non-discriminatory society,” Sanders said.

To that end, he again criticized Trump’s appointment to “chief strategist” of former Breitbart executive chairman and white nationalist Bannon, saying “a president of the United States should not have a racist at his side.”