In the early 1970s, when many student activists were migrating from campus to industrial jobs to promote working class radicalization, no labor film was more influential than Salt of the Earth.

This pioneering docudrama was made two decades earlier by a producer, writer, director, and several actors who were unemployable in Hollywood, due to McCarthy era-blacklisting.

This left-wing creative team recruited a cast of workers and their families from the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) to play themselves in a fictional account of a long strike at the Empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico. 

Local 890 members knew something about red-baiting too. Shortly before their 1951 fight for better conditions and an end to wage disparities between Anglo and Chicano workers, Mine, Mill was expelled from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), along with the left-led United Electrical Workers (UE) and west coast longshore union, the ILWU. In 

In real life, and later on screen, the key to the success of this mining community struggle was the militant participation of strikers’ wives, mothers, daughters and sisters after their own mass picketing is enjoined by a local judge.

In Salt of the Earth, this picket-line replacement strategy, which challenged and changed traditional gender roles in a socially conservative company town, is heatedly debated by film’s two lead characters. 

Blacklisted and Deported

Playing the role of Ramon Quintera, Juan Chacon, an actual IUMMSW local president, initially objects to the strike activism of his fictional wife Esperanza, played by Mexican actress Rosaura Revueltas (who was deported for making the film). Other members of an entirely male and largely Latino workforce are similarly conflicted about the emergence of a vocal and empowered women’s auxiliary.

When Esperanza and her fellow female pickets are arrested, she takes her small baby behind bars with her. The resulting boisterous jail house protest—which prefigures southern civil rights and peace movement tactics in the 1960s--forces the sheriff to release them all. The miners’ subsequent defense of the Quintera family--when the company tries to evict them--becomes a turning point in the long strike which ends in a contract settlement.

Berkeley journalist and now first-time novelist Barry Bergman was among the many young radicals much inspired by this now iconic depiction of Mexican-American labor struggle.  Before Bergman relocated to California and began a long career as a newspaper reporter, magazine writer/editor, and communications specialist for UC Berkeley and numerous non-profits, he worked for several years in a copper smelter near Tucson.

That experience as a rank-and-file member of the United Steel Workers (USW)--which gobbled up the IUMMSW, after years of raiding it--led to his writing Proles. (Serving House Books). Bergman’s novel is a funny, moving, and historically accurate account of workplace “colonizing”—or “salting” as it’s called today-- told from the point of view of the author’s fictional alter-ego. 

Via a college course entitled “Celluloid and Social Change,” Simon Bussbaum learns about a film called City of Emeralds. He is captivated by its depiction of “dirt-poor Chicano miners in the Southwest” and their humble but charismatic leader, Naldo Galvin.

Art Imitates Life

Simon does further research and discovers that Galvin—like the real-life Juan Chacon in the 1970s—has become a dissident in the Steel Workers. The former strike organizer—and Salt of the Earth co-star-- is now rallying his co-workers against “a class collaborationist union which muscled its way into zinc and copper mines in the Sun Belt” by marketing itself as a labor-management partner, rather than a class struggle foe.

The bookish film buff from Queens (the author’s hometown as well) leaves anti-war politics behind for a very different blue-collar life in open shop Arizona. Arriving for his first shift at Cobra Copper Company (aka “ThreeCo”) near Turcson, Simon walks into a scene lifted from the film that inspired his turn toward the working class.

“Outside the giant garage doors that opened out from the smelter’s shell, hundreds of men clustered in small groups, coveralls gone or dangling at their waist. Some were standing, others lying on bare ground or using their hardhats for seats. A handful were shirtless, glistening in the sun. It might have been a disorderly line at the Fillmore East, save for the work clothes and industrial boots.” 

A new co-worker, a “hard-looking Chicano with a missing tooth, a Fu Manchu mustache and a cobra tattoo on his right forearm” tells Simon what’s going on.  “It’s a ‘wildcat,’”  explains Snake, who seems happy to follow the crazy "white dudes” who started it all by “waving their arms, walking out, and shouting, ‘Join us!”. 

Other hard hats in the now idle crowd are pissed off about losing a few hours pay. “Anarchists,” one grumbles. “Commies and agitators. They don’t like it here, can’t blame them for that. But you can’t strike till the contract’s up. That’s the law.”

A manager addresses the crowd with a bull-horn and repeats the same message. “This is an unlawful work stoppage. Your local union has not authorized this action, and joins us in ordering you to immediately cease and desist. This is your final warning.”

A Tactical Error?

The “cadre” organization members--who have inducted Simon into their small circle at a local radical bookstore--are among “the twelve people pegged as troublemakers and fired.” After this “tactical error,” Simon attends his first Steelworkers local union meeting. There, he encounters bureaucratic lethargy and business union routine familiar to many rank-and-file activists, then and now.

Only a smattering of members show-up—at a VFW hall with an “American flag on the pole outside the building and another hung on a wall behind the podium.” Much time is spent on the financial report and a reading of minutes from the last meeting. The biggest agenda item is the e-board’s unanimous decision “not to pursue grievance arbitration cases for employees who were terminated.”

As the union treasurer explains, this will result in “a big savings for the local because we could not have prevailed in defending an action that went against the ‘no strike’ clause in our own contract.” (“Good riddance,” blurts out the local’s business manager, “a pudgy man in a short sleeved white shirt,” who gavels the meeting to a close soon thereafter.)

Bergman’s workplace descriptions are equally on target. Some resemble the best passages in The Jungle, Upton Sinclair’s fictional account of job hazards in mid-western meat-packing plants a century ago or in Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Voung’s new novel about low wage work in 21st century New England.

“The smelter, known as ‘Freako,’ was a cavernous, ramshackle Big Top featuring spark-spewing furnaces, splashing cauldrons dangled from the cranes like murderous marionettes, rapids of liquid fire tumbling down in harrowing dayglow ribbons. Danger was everywhere, lurking beneath the dull roar and the rotten eggs stench. Everything black and orange, darkness and firelight, a waking nightmare Halloween that left him in terror of any possible misstep.”

Unfortunately, the hottest shop floor issue is not the threat of being scalded to death or maimed and killed in many other ways.  It’s ThreeCo’s controversial decision to hire its first female laborer, a feisty former high school athlete, who is a half-Latino and a single mother. It’s 1973, after all, and the era of equal opportunity is dawning. 

As the fictional reincarnation of Esperanza, Samantha Tanager is not just showing that she can, in a pinch, take a man’s place on the picket-line; she’s going to join them on the shop floor, in a fire-resistant orange jump suit, aluminum hard-hat, and steel-toed boots. But the sudden arrival of a “fetching copper miner’s daughter,” as a local newspaper describes her, proves to be very triggering for Bullock. 

He’s the big, tobacco-chewing redneck with “a natural talent for cruelty” that Bussbuam is assigned to work with. Already suspicious of Simon’s rather obvious East Coast Jewishness and college boy ways, Bullock views “Tanager’s admission to the sacred sanctum of the smelter as sacrilege, a grievous affront to the Code of the Working Stiff, Nonferrous Division.” 

Besides, he believes that Samantha is a lesbian. (Spoiler alert: much to Simon’s love-struck chagrin, Bullock’s gaydar is right.)

Casual Racism

Simon’s New Left idealism is now further tested amid Freako’s “dark, depraved beauty, which reeked of musty maleness that gave rise to a loose-knit, shambling ‘esprit de corps, wrapped in a kind of casual racism and sexism so expansive, so deeply rooted, it had started to feel—Simon not being of this world, and without standing perhaps to judge his co-workers’ cultural values—like just another flavor of assholism.”

When that “assholism” takes the form of a nasty campaign by Bullock to make Tanager’s life miserable on the job, Simon’s own personal class struggle ends in a parking lot brawl between two “union brothers.” It doesn’t end well for the new hire and little resembles more heroic scuffles, between labor and management, in Salt of The Earth. 

But it does lead Bussbaum to bid blue-collar life adieu and head for the greener pastures of California. (Tanager and her female partner leave for the more tolerant Texas oasis of Austin.)

Proles was definitely not written as a how-too manual for members of the Rank-and-File Project, a present-day effort to “recruit, educate, and support a new generation of activists who will join the fight for working-class power by taking union jobs on the shop floor.” 

But the book should be required reading, in such circles anyway, due to its deft exploration of the nexus between the personal and the political. Any left-wing “salt” trying to befriend un-class conscious (and sometimes weird) co-workers, while dealing with draining night shifts, imperious managers and not much nicer union bosses, will find humorous respite in Barry Bergman’s fictional rendering of his real-life experience with the “salt of the earth” in Arizona fifty years ago.

We, the undersigned DSA chapters of the State of Minnesota, denounce and strongly condemn the escalation of xenophobic rhetoric that the Trump administration is intentionally directing at our communities. The President’s recent othering and dehumanizing of Minnesota's Somali communities encourages violence, both from his supporters and the violent and unaccountable national security state.

Minnesota is stronger because of our Somali and other immigrant communities. Immigrants are our friends, co-workers, teachers, community leaders, and more. As Minnesotans, we know who we are and we won’t fall for dishonest actors spreading disinformation and hateful, divisive rhetoric about our immigrant neighbors. No Minnesotan should feel unsafe or unwelcome because of their faith, heritage, or background. We stand in solidarity with our Somali and immigrant neighbors, and the Minnesota 15 who are facing retaliatory punishment for standing alongside our community. 

This past winter, armed agents of the fascist federal government attempted to tear down our communities by force. But Minnesotans’ depth of organized resistance cannot be dismantled. We have organized by the thousands across race, class, and faith to effectively defend our neighbors and communities. We built a decentralized network based on the collective awareness and shared vision that we all deserve to live, thrive, and be protected in our places of work, worship, and homes. We have shown the world that the vast majority of Americans will not tolerate our communities being turned into high tech laboratories of surveillance and occupation. We have shown the world that we will not accept having our hardworking neighbors terrorized and disappeared out of their homes. 

In response to our show of street power, fascist politicians are once again using lies about immigrants in an attempt to incite fear, violence, and division. They think this tactic will help them win the upcoming midterm elections, but we are united in our vision for justice, liberation, and a better world. They fear our movements because we are powerful, principled, and we are angry. 

As the Minnesota chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America, we encourage our members and our neighbors to keep showing up for one another. Join your neighborhood group, host a community dinner, check in with a friend, get plugged into rapid response, and of course, join DSA and organize your community!

Stay strong. Solidarity and sincerity forever.

SIGNED: Twin Ports DSA, Twin Cities DSA, Brainerd Lakes Area DSA, St. Cloud DSA, Red River Valley DSA, Southeast Minnesota DSA

Policy gains are unlikely so long as Trump holds the presidency — but a historically large socialist bloc in Congress could demand changes to how the House is run that would shape the body’s post-Trump trajectory.

The post Socialists in Congress Should Hold the Speakership Hostage appeared first on Democratic Left.

The post Statement in Solidarity with Ilhan Omar appeared first on .

On November 3rd, voters will go to the polls and face nine ballot questions, some of which will have significant impacts on working people in Massachusetts. At the October General Meeting, RVDSA members approved the following slate of positions: Vote Yes on 1 to expand public records laws to apply to the Governor, State House, […]

by Vincent Lima

In our September General Meeting, members of ROC DSA wisely rejected a proposal that would restrict their right to vote on certain key decisions. The rejected proposal appeared to be part of a broader movement to shrink the voting base of DSA.

Our process for considering applications for the endorsement of candidates for elected office has been tweaked from time to time, but the main steps have remained:

1. The candidate submits an application signed by a certain number of ROC DSA members. The application includes a questionnaire. The signature requirement signifies some baseline level of support and at least hints at the candidate’s ability to collect signatures on a petition. In reality, the chapter does not passively await applications, but the application is what formally kicks off the process.
2. The Electoral Working Group vets the applicant. The group is open to all members. Thus, all members can engage on this level, but no member is required to do so. The EWG makes a recommendation regarding endorsement and forwards the package to the Steering Committee.
3. A candidate forum is scheduled. Every member is welcome to listen to and interact with the candidate. This process should include deliberation. In other words, members should be able to discuss their thoughts about the candidacy in light of the forum and in light of the chapter’s broader strategic goals.
4. The Steering Committee, which is the chapter’s elected political leadership, makes a recommendation.
5. A ballot is sent to all members to vote Yes or No on the endorsement. Crucially, the ballot includes links to the candidate’s application, the minutes of the candidate forum, and the recommendations of the EWG and Steering Committee.

The step that has been made contentious is the last. The proposal was to restrict voting on the endorsement to members who attended the deliberative meeting. This proposal to restrict the vote is made in the name of democracy.

I will turn to Marx for a moment—not because he is necessary for this argument but because some advocates for limiting the franchise claim to be Marxists and argue that a universal franchise is a mockery of democracy; it is merely “bourgeois democracy.”

Marx appreciated “bourgeois democracy” for extending the franchise (the right to vote) but noted accurately that not everyone has the time and inclination to engage in the democratic process.

“Universal Suffrage is the equivalent for political power for the working class,” Marx wrote in the New-York Daily Tribute in 1852. In Capital, vol. 1 (1867; trans. Paul Reitter, 2024), he added (p. 235),

A worker self-evidently lives [their] whole life as nothing but labor-power. Thus, by nature and by right, all [their] disposable time is labor-time that belongs to capital’s process of self-valorization. Time spent on human and intellectual growth or social functions and interactions or the free play of vital physical and mental powers, or even time spent resting on Sundays—it’s all just a waste!

Lenin, in State and Revolution (1917), elaborated: “Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that they ‘cannot be bothered with democracy,’ and ‘cannot be bothered with politics’; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.”

Thanks to organized labor and popular movements, many of us have more time for “public and political life” than the workers described above. Still, to say, “If you can’t make the meeting, you can’t vote,” is not to take a Marxist position.

The counterargument is that democracy is not just about voting; it is more about process than outcome. Indeed, it is crucially important to provide every opportunity for members to participate in the process. But voting is not a reward for participation; it is an element of participation.

How do we make it possible for comrades who have to engage in social production and reproduction to participate in the democratic process? Or, in normal-people language, if you have to make a living and take care of yourself or your dependents—by going to school, caring for a child, looking after an elder, going on vacation, or whatever you will—do we tell you, “Too bad; you are canceled”?

How do we include everyone? Our hybrid meetings are a great step. You can’t attend in person? Attend remotely and save the time and expense it would take to commute, or participate while keeping an eye on the baby.

Our Slack debates are not great; they often consist of walls of text dominated mostly by a handful of men with time on their hands. But Slack is still an available venue for debate.

Offline conversations, too, are part of member engagement. Say I pick up the phone and contact a fellow member to say, “Mary is running and I think we should back her. What do you think? OK. Don’t forget to vote when the ballot comes!” That is exactly what we should be doing to involve people in our campaigns!

Showing up to meetings is but one form of involvement. I do it. Maybe you do it. But it’s not for everyone. Some members may not have the time, as discussed above. Others may just not want to do it. Maybe listening to another speech “in favor” is more than they can bear. Maybe Robert’s Rules get under their skin and all they want to do is knock on doors and talk to their neighbors about socialism. I embrace them and welcome them and insist that they have a vote.

The post Expand or Contract? On Member Voting Rights first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Organized, researched, and drafted by Victoria B., Janna T., Cole S., Cay Lynn C., and Josh S.

Introduction

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in US history, with over 120,000 members nationwide. We believe that the people whose labor built the world should decide its direction and benefit from its resources. That’s why we fight for thriving working-class communities, working-class foreign policy, and working-class democracy.

The Portland, OR chapter is the 4th largest in the country. We have over 3,700  members spread across the City of Portland, Southwest Washington, Clackamas County, East Multnomah County, the Tualatin Valley, and Yamhill County. At the chapter’s October general meeting, members approved the publication of the following voter guide to inform DSA members and allies in the upcoming election.

How to Use this Guide

First, check your voter registration status! You can do that at the Oregon Secretary of State’s My Vote website here. The deadline for making updates is 11:59pm tonight (Tuesday, October 13).

Then, get to know the categories we use. Finally, look at your ballot and scroll down to the Recommendations section below to look for the candidates and ballot measures you’re voting on. Make sure to vote for our endorsed candidates and rank them #1 in ranked-choice races.

Our Categories

This guide places candidates into three categories: endorsed, green light, and red light.

Endorsed candidates have received a 2/3 endorsement vote from chapter members. Their campaigns coordinate with DSA, and they commit to coordinate with the chapter once they are elected. Vote for our endorsed candidates and rank them #1 in ranked-choice elections. Please sign up to canvass or donate to their campaigns as well.

The chapter has endorsed Portland City Council incumbents Angelita Morillo, Tiffany Koyama-Lane, and Mitch Green, as well as Multnomah County Commission candidate Nathan Ong Norris, Oregon HD 27 Democratic nominee Dr. Tammy Carpenter, and Oregon HD 35 incumbent Farrah Chaichi in this election. We have also endorsed the Your 2 Cents ballot measure in Portland and endorsed a No vote on IL 26-001 and IL 26-638 in Washington.

A green light means that a candidate supports some chapter priorities, although they are not endorsed. A candidate received a green light if they did not meet any of the red light criteria and met at least two of the following criteria:

• Supports:
  • State-level single-payer health care, such as that supported by Health Care for All Oregon
  • Universal Pre-K, such as Preschool for All
  • Taxing the rich and corporations
  • A moratorium and/or ban on data centers
  • The Renters’ Bill of Rights (either whole or in part)
  • Restoring and expanding funding for public transit
  • Lifting the state preemption on local rent control
  • The Your 2 Cents ballot measure

A red light means that a candidate is unacceptable to the chapter. Do not vote for or rank red-light candidates. Candidates received red lights if they met a single one of the following criteria:

• Accepts endorsements or contributions from:
  • Police unions
  • Police-associated PACs
  • Chambers of commerce (such as the Portland Metro Chamber)
  • Chamber of commerce-associated PACs
  • Fuel storage or shipping companies (Zenith oil, etc.)
• Opposes:
  • The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement
  • Universal Pre-K
  • Gender-affirming care
  • Taxing the rich and corporations
  • The Your 2 Cents ballot measure
• Supports:
  • Data centers
  • Charter schools or anti-teachers’ union groups.

Most red lights were due to endorsements by corporate PACs. We based our list of red-light PACs on a recent article in The Thorn. 

Methodology

We created this guide democratically. In our project proposal and at a series of forums, we decided that we would not include races for Congress, state legislatures, or governor. Leaders of our branches outside of Portland decided what races in their areas should be included.

Our criteria for green and red lights were democratically decided at a member forum. In most cases, we evaluated criteria based on candidates’ public statements. We only contacted campaigns to ask about their positions on state-level universal health care and ending the state moratorium on local rent control.

The forums also decided other details of the format and process. A handful of volunteers researched and drafted the guide ahead of the October general meeting, where it was approved for publication by a majority of chapter members in attendance.

Portland City Council District 3

Tiffany Koyama Lane (ENDORSED – RANK #1 OR #2)
Tiffany is an award-winning educator, leader in the Portland Association of Teachers, and Democratic Socialist. During her first year in office, she served as Council Vice President. She used her position to strengthen our sanctuary city status and passed the Protect Portland Initiative to keep federal troops out. Make sure to rank Tiffany #1 or #2 alongside Angelita. To learn more about her, make a donation, or sign up to canvass, visit her website.

Angelita Morillo (ENDORSED – RANK #1 OR #2)
Angelita is an anti-hunger advocate, Constituent Services Specialist, and Democratic Socialist. She has been unhoused and has never owned a car. In her first term in office, she banned AI price fixing for corporate landlords, created an office to protect immigrants’ data from federal overreach, and called out abuse in Urban Alchemy shelters. Make sure to rank Angelita #1 or #2 alongside Tiffany. To learn more about her, make a donation, or sign up to canvass, visit her website.

Esther León (Green Light)
Supports Your 2 Cents, expanding funding for public transit, and a data center moratorium. 

Cristal Otero (Green Light)
Supports allowing local rent control and statewide single-payer health care.

Tom Sollitt (Green Light)
Supports allowing local rent control and statewide single-payer health care.

Steve Novick (Red Light)
Endorsed by United for Portland and Future Portland.

Kellie Torres (Red Light)
Endorsed by United for Portland and Future Portland.

Heart Free Pham (Red Light)
Opposes universal pre-K and taxing the rich.

Martin Ward (Red Light)
Opposes taxing the rich and gender-affirming care.

Portland City Council District 4

Mitch Green (ENDORSED – RANK #1)
Mitch is an economist, anti-war army veteran, and a Democratic Socialist, and has also been endorsed by DSA nationally. In his first term in office, he has secured a historic investment in social housing, supported striking workers, and recently introduced a proposal to give relief to small businesses by taxing mega corporations. He is running for reelection to deliver social housing, climate justice and resilience, welcoming communities, trickle-up economic development, and government for the people.  Make sure to rank Mitch #1 on your ballot. To learn more about him, make a donation, or sign up to canvass, visit his website.

Jamey Evenstar (Green Light)
Supports Your 2 Cents, expanding funding for public transit, allowing local rent control and statewide single-payer health care. 

Jeremy Beausoleil Smith (Green Light)
Supports a data center moratorium, the Renters’ Bill of Rights, allowing local rent control and statewide single-payer health care. 

Matt Schulte (Green Light)
Supports allowing local rent control and statewide single-payer health care.

Josh Leake (Green Light)
Supports allowing local rent control and statewide single-payer health care. 

Eli Arnold (Red Light)
Endorsed by Go Portland Go and Future Portland.

Olivia Clark (Red Light)
Endorsed by the Portland Police Association, United for Portland, and Future Portland.

Eric Zimmerman (Red Light)
Endorsed by the Portland Police Association, United for Portland and Future Portland.

Multnomah County Commission District 2

Nathan Ong Norris (ENDORSED – RANK #1)
Nathan is a hazardous waste technician, union member, community organizer, and Democratic Socialist. He is a first-time candidate running to protect Preschool for All, improve housing stability through measures like social housing, and protect our environment. Make sure to rank Nathan #1 on your ballot. To learn more about him, make a donation, or sign up to canvass, visit his website.

Bri Williams (Green Light)
Supports Preschool for All, allowing local rent control, and statewide single-payer health care.

Tony Robertson (Green Light)
Supports allowing local rent control and statewide single-payer health care.

Serena Cruz (Red Light)
Endorsed by United for Portland.

Herman Greene (Red Light)
Endorsed by Future Portland.

Nabil Zaghloul (Red Light)
Endorsed by Future Portland.

Multnomah County Chair

Shannon Singleton (Green Light)
Supports Preschool for All, allowing local rent control, and statewide single-payer health care.

Julia Brim-Edwards (Red Light)
Endorsed by United for Portland and Future Portland.

Sharon Meieran (Red Light)
Endorsed by Future Portland.

Clark County Council District 2

Michelle Belkot (Red Light)
Opposes gender-affirming care and taxing the rich.

Hillsboro City Council Ward 1

Diana Jackson (Green Light)
Supports allowing local rent control and statewide single-payer health care.

Sarah Marugg (Red Light)
Endorsed by the Hillsboro Police Officers’ Association.

Hillsboro City Council Ward 2

Karim Delgado (Green Light)
Supports a data center moratorium, parts of the Renters’ Bill of Rights, allowing local rent control and statewide single-payer health care.

Ivette Pantoja (Red Light)
Endorsed by the Washington County Chamber of Commerce PAC, the Hillsboro Police Officers’ Association, and the Portland Metropolitan Association of Realtors.

Hillsboro City Council Ward 3

Titonian Wallace Sr. (Red Light)
Endorsed by the Washington County Chamber of Commerce PAC and the Hillsboro Police Officers’ Association.

Beaverton City Council Position 1

Evelyn Kocher (Green Light)
Supports parts of the Renters’ Bill of Rights, expanding funding for public transit, taxing the rich, allowing local rent control, and statewide single-payer health care.

Rachel Philip (Red Light)
Endorsed by the Beaverton Chamber of Commerce.

Washington County Commission District 4

Kipperlyn Sinclair (Green Light)
Supports a data center moratorium, allowing local rent control, and statewide single-payer health care.

Steve Callaway (Red Light)
Endorsed by the Portland Metro Chamber and the Washington County Chamber of Commerce PAC.

Washington County Commission At-Large

Nafisa Fai (Green Light)
Supports expanding funding for public transit and a data center moratorium.

Pam Treece (Red Light)
Endorsed by the Portland Metro Chamber, the Washington County Chamber of Commerce PAC, the Hillsboro Police Officers’ Association, and the Portland Metropolitan Association of Realtors.

Oregon House District 27

Tammy Carpenter (ENDORSED)
Tammy is a retired physician, school-board member, and a Democratic Socialist, and has also been endorsed by DSA nationally. She is running to champion statewide single-payer health care, fully-funded public schools, the Renters’ Bill of Rights, a data center moratorium, abolishing ICE, and a Green New Deal. To learn more about her, make a donation, or get involved, visit her website.

Oregon House District 35

Farrah Chaichi (ENDORSED)
Farrah is a human rights advocate and Democratic Socialist. In the 2026 short session, she used one of her two allotted bills to introduce and pass identification requirements for federal officers (or suspected imitators) at the state level. She is running for reelection to guarantee housing, health care, a habitable planet, unions, and education for all. To learn more about her, make a donation, or get involved, visit her website.

Ballot Measures

Your 2 Cents

VOTE YES (ENDORSED)

The Your 2 Cents ballot measure would allow Portlanders to decide how to spend the equivalent of 2% of the city’s discretionary budget through a participatory budgeting process. Participatory budgeting is already used by 7,000 local jurisdictions around the world. To learn more about the measure, donate to the campaign, or get involved, visit the website.

WA IL26-001 and IL26-638

VOTE NO (ENDORSED)

These Washington state initiatives would require teachers to out LGBTQ+ children to their parents and impose genital inspections on students wanting to participate in girls’ sports. Our chapter voted overwhelmingly to recommend a No vote on both. You can learn more on this website.

Ballots will be mailed out October 14th, so once you get yours, we encourage you to

DSA Muncie Branch Statement of Recommendations for the 2026 Election The DSA Muncie Branch recommends voting for Sara Guillion for Indiana State House in District 34 and Phil Gift for […]

Revisiting Einstein’s "Why Socialism?" in 2026

The post The Physics of Freedom appeared first on Democratic Left.

by Bleu Cease, Curator

Rochester Contemporary Art Center (RoCo) presents Sanctuary: Borders & Belonging in 2026, an exhibition bringing together national and regional artists, creatives, and documentarians in response to the current political and social landscape surrounding immigration. On view October 2 through November 14, 2026, the exhibition centers the human lives behind political rhetoric, examining how belonging is made and denied, and how care, resilience, and solidarity persist amid increasingly hostile systems and cruel public narratives.

* * *

Sanctuary: Borders & Belonging in 2026 brings together national and regional artists, creatives, documentarians, and community members in response to the political and social realities surrounding immigration and migration. The exhibition amplifies immigrant voices, documents criminalization and detention, examines border politics and architecture, and creates space for people to share the complex experiences that shape belonging. Through testimony and creative resistance, these projects center the human lives behind political rhetoric while also countering simplistic and divisive narratives, insisting on dignity and human rights for all. Together, they ask how belonging is made and denied, and how care, solidarity, and resilience persist in the face

The installation honoring Dolores Bustamante, created in collaboration with Erica Bryant and Carly Fox, places portraits of a generous farmworker, grandmother, and community leader alongside 137 letters of support, turning a local campaign for her release into a public shrine honoring the woman at the center and our community’s mutual aid, collective care, and resistance to immigrant detention.

Bringing Tom Policano’s photographs from Slim Pickins into conversation with Cher Valentino’s recent paintings inspired by those images, this installation connects the conditions of migrant farmworkers documented in the 1970s to their continued vulnerability today. The pairing reminds us that poverty and unjust labor practices persist, now compounded by immigration enforcement targeting these workers, compressing decades of limited progress into an urgent shared present.

Julio Salgado’s project I Am UndocuQueer features heavily alongside the artist’s own personal reflections in the video My Name Is Julio, making visible undocumented queer people’s leading role in the immigrant-rights movement, and confronting fear with pride, humor, joy, and self-representation, even in the face of deportation.

Arleene Correa Valencia’s textile artworks transform family photographs, letters, clothing, and culturally specific fabrics into haunting portraits of migration, family separation, memory, and longing; where incomplete or absent figures represent the lives interrupted by borders, policies, and immigration enforcement.

Sound of Sanctuary, an immersive listening installation, created by Anaglog (Sean Mulligan) in partnership with RoCo, launches a live-recorded album and brings together five first- and second-generation immigrant artists and five Rochester musicians with the understanding that sanctuary is not a fixed place, but a shared culture of listening, relationship, attention, and care

The Community Interview Project: The Immigrant Experience presents nearly 100 intimate recordings with immigrants from Rochester and the surrounding region into the gallery, grounding political debates in the voices and stories of our neighbors, presenting immigration as a diverse collection of lived experiences through which this community and the U.S. as a country have continually been built.

(I’m)Migration is an exhibition within an exhibition; a collection resulting from an open call for visual art by immigrants in the Rochester region. It includes more than 60 artworks by immigrants and immigrant collaborators, bringing together stories of arrival, belonging, separation, resilience, cultural practice, and transformation while emphasizing the power of many voices speaking alongside one another.

The short advocacy film When They Come For Me: Hope and Fear for Immigrants in the Promised Land by Worldwide Documentaries brings together local immigrant advocates and community perspectives to document the effects of inhumane immigration policies in Rochester, the Finger Lakes region, and Western New York.

In Border Wall and several accompanying photographs, Saman and Sasan Oskouei use mirrors, fencing, barbed wire, and steel to fracture the apparent permanence of borders, transforming barriers into boats, doorways, flowers, flags, and passages toward freedom, movement, and envisioning another future.

Jim Mott’s ICE Detention Facilities and the American Landscape (Seven Studies) uses paintings based on field observation and digital reconnaissance to consider how the growing for-profit immigration detention system has become embedded within familiar rural and urban communities, connecting the concrete realities of incarceration to the economic decline, infrastructure, and broader culture of the places that host and enable it.

In Resist or Surrender, Annette Dragon’s compassionate photographs show that resistance is not an exceptional act but an ongoing local practice. She honors the ordinary people who gather throughout the region to advocate for immigrants and human rights while holding close the personal absence of her friend who is imprisoned at a nearby detention center.

Saints of Our Time by Pamela Araya reimagines Catholic devotional portraiture through three highly visible contemporary figures connected to immigration, Latin American identity, and cultural memory. The three paintings honor Liam Conejo Ramos in Hope, Bad Bunny in Voice, and Renée Good in Testimony, as embodiments of suffering, cultural power, courage, and the ongoing struggle for dignity and belonging.

Pamela Dodds’s installation Documenting Border Barriers transforms meticulously rendered drypoint etchings of fences, walls, razor wire, and surveillance systems into an imposing visual and information archive of the architecture of exclusion. It arranges the prints like a wall across the gallery and reveals these structures as deliberate, mostly contemporary acts of political control.

Installed outside the gallery, the related work of public art BELONG by Gianna Stewart confronts censorship and erasure by incorporating hundreds of words that have been removed from government websites, publications, and grant applications into a large graphic. This brave artwork makes visible the absurdity and the danger of this attempted erasure, while also reclaiming public space to insist that we all belong.

Sanctuary: Borders & Belonging in 2026 continues RoCo’s longstanding support for artists who engage urgent social and political questions. It also reaffirms our commitment to art practices that center testimony, witnessing, imagination, and action. At a time of censorship and fear, the exhibition amplifies artists who, often at great personal or professional risk, speak truth to power and advocate for human rights and a more just, equitable world. As global inequality, climate change, and the politics of fear lead to increasingly barricaded and surveilled borders, and immigrant communities face intensified criminalization, Sanctuary demands solidarity. To listen to one another. To defend one another. And to recognize that our freedom and safety are bound together.

Upcoming Events:

• Film Screening: Ice Breaker / Match Maker
. [Friday, October 16, 6:00pm – 9:00pm] 
A screening and related gathering exploring migration, connection, and the social realities of immigrant life. 
• Surviving Suppression: How Artists Experience and Overcome Censorship. [Friday, October 23, 2026, 6:30pm – 9:00pm] 
A panel and conversation examining the pressures artists face when their work addresses politically charged subjects, and the strategies they use to continue speaking through art. 
• Sound of Sanctuary: LIVE
. [Friday, November 13, 6:30pm
] A live performance of Sound of Sanctuary which is being launched in partnership with RoCo as an installation and listening station in the main gallery. 

Sanctuary: Borders & Belonging in 2026 will be on view October 2 – November 14, 2026, at Rochester Contemporary Art Center, [137 East Avenue]. Gallery hours are Wednesday – Sunday, 12:00pm – 5:00pm, with extended hours Fridays until 9:00pm. Suggested admission is $2; admission is free for RoCo members.

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