**This article was originally published in Northwest Labor Press November 1, 2024.
I was born in Spokane, WA but moved to Lake Oswego when I was 1.5 years old, so I consider myself a Portland native. I went to Ida B. Wells High (formerly Woodrow Wilson High). I have two younger sisters who also still live in this area. I grew up fishing with my father, going to the Portland Art museum in the summer, and listening to lots of opera and folk music. My mother was a gourmet cook (way before it was fashionable) and she trained us to enjoy all kinds of food. I work as an Administrative Analyst for Integrated Clinical Services in the Health Department. I love to hike – and have been fortunate to experience some incredibly beautiful waterfalls, wild flowers, and views over the past two years. I also love the theater and adore the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which I have been attending for many years.
I owe everything I know about unions to two socialist feminist organizations – the Freedom Socialist Party, FSP, and Radical Women, RW. I joined Radical Women in 1989 and walked the picket line with the Greyhound strikers – that was my first experience of labor solidarity. Both FSP and RW combine socialist feminist analysis with community organizing – so theory plus action – and I was lucky enough to have some amazing experiences supporting organized labor. I helped organize a union at Harry’s Mother, HM, (part of Janus Youth Programs), was fired for union organizing, and was reinstated after a community petition campaign. I was part of negotiating and renegotiating contracts for the workers at HM. I’m motivated by workers recognizing our power to change this world. In addition to organizing unions and collectively improving our working conditions, workers have the power to throw out capitalism and replace it with a system that utilizes all this incredible technology and abundance for all. I think that system is democratic socialism and I welcome conversations about how we get there. Being a union member means engaging in the taffy-pull for respect, a high quality life, and recognizing that when unions win, everybody else does too. One big step would be for organized labor to form a labor party…working folks needs our own political party, since big business already has two.
I’m currently on the Executive Committee of Local 88. I love being a shop steward and working with members on grievances. I have what feels like a lot of them but I’m blessed to work with members to improve their work situations. I’m planning to work as a bargaining delegate. I’m very enthusiastic to share bargaining updates with members. I’ve also spent the last two years working with the National Mobilization for Reproductive Justice, particularly around a letter campaign urging the AFL-CIO and President Liz Shuler to call for a national emergency labor conference in defense of reproductive justice. We gathered signatures from across the country from labor supporters, labor unionists, locals, state AFL-CIO bodies, and labor conventions. In June, on the 2nd anniversary of the Dobbs decision, I was part of a press conference that presented over 600 pages of signed letters to Shuler at the AFL-CIO office in Washington DC. Getting organized labor engaged in this fight is critical to winning full reproductive health care for all people who can get pregnant. Especially Black women in the country who have a devastative rate of maternal mortality.
You can reach Jordana by email jsardo60@gmail.com.
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