[Margaret Butler made these remarks at the beginning of “Rumble on the River #32: Building Community for the Long Haul,” held at St. Andrews Church hall on June 16, 2026. She moderated the panel discussion. – Ed.]
By Margaret Butler
A little about me–I spent most of my adult life helping connect workers and their organizations to each other, a lot of it through Portland Jobs with Justice (JwJ). We organized and built some real power. Not enough to turn around the downward slide for working people, which was the goal. We are living with the impact of that downward slide, as well as other impacts of centuries-long exploitation of people and the planet.
We are in a critical moment, but also one of huge opportunity–so many more people understand the need for systematic change than I have ever seen. When I was at JwJ I used to tell the annual dinner that the oppressive system wants us to be simply worker units and consumer units, that every time we join together as humans, supporting each other, we are building for the world we want.
We can’t go back to what it was before this [Trump] administration. We have to go forward to a transformed system that is not exploitative of people, land, or other beings. We won’t get out of the climate crisis, the authoritarian crisis, the crisis of attacks on our brown and Black brothers and sisters without building deep connections and organizing for the long haul.
No one can give us a road map for how to do that, and there will be many pieces to it, but one thing we know is that we are an interdependent species and we need each other, so the more we can connect and build networks of connections, the better we can come through the challenges ahead of us.
I just got back from the Labor Notes conference. There were almost 5000 union activists committed to putting the movement back in the labor movement (as Labor Notes says). It was so inspiring to be with so many people committed to building working class power. A highlight for me was getting to hear from the unionists in Minnesota about the role they played in defending their communities with so much courage. Teachers’ unions in Minneapolis and St. Paul setting up networks with their parents and families, broader mutual aid networks, accompaniment networks for those most at risk. Janitors’ union stopping ICE from coming in their workplaces, taking care of members. My union, the CWA, had 68% of its members not go to work on January 23rd, the no work, no school, no shopping day with a march of 100,000 people in -20 degree weather. Relationships that had existed were deepend, new relationships were forged, and Minnesota had been building those relationships for over a decade.
We need to have masses of people ready to take action together and that means organizing more broadly than we have been able to up to now. The good news is that people are hungry for ways to step up. Here In Portland people have been organizing many kinds of networks. We want to lift that up and encourage everyone here to help build the relationships we are going to need going forward.
