With recent changes in immigration laws and deportation policies, threats to trans and queer gender-affirming care, the lessening of reproductive rights, defunding of climate protections, and an onslaught of daily atrocities in national and international politics, many people are feeling called to organize community and create connections to help keep one another safe on a local level.
In Portland, many have found a home at the Workers Tap, a local cafe and bar that opened in spring of 2022.
Conor is one of the original founders, and current co-owner at Worker’s Tap.
“It was really born out of activists in union organizing and still like that is what kind of drives us is like the free meeting space,” Conor said.
Four friends and members of Portland Democratic Socialists of America founded the bar to provide a third space to meet and organize with friends, coworkers, and community members in a time when those places are especially needed.
The Tap found its home in a 1904 Victorian house on the corner of SE Ankeny and 12th Avenue. The upstairs bedrooms have been repurposed into meeting rooms, and there is even a small library on the second floor. Unions and community members can rent the upstairs meeting rooms for free, and sometimes the basement floor opens up for special events.
On the first Saturday of the month, 10% of the sales at Workers Tap goes toward a local strike fund.
“We just recently started a strike fund for local unions, particularly the ones that don't have big union ties yet, because those ones already have access to funds,” Conor said. “Then when a union goes on strike in Portland, we are able to just donate money right away. We're happy to do that. That's kind of our mission.”
The Workers Tap originally opened as a beer bar, but has recently made the transition to being a cafe as well. They adjusted their hours to 9 a.m. to midnight daily in hopes to make the space more accessible to all throughout the day.
To go along with the new coffee program, Workers Tap hired on a coffee specialist, Gilberto “Gil” Dominguez, early in 2024.
“Since we've opened the cafe portion, one of the bigger things that I wanted to do was go above and beyond what people consider ethical trade practices with coffee, especially on my sourcing,” Gil said.
To Gil and The Worker's Tap, the focus isn’t necessarily on a label like “fair trade” but instead building relationships with coffee farm workers.
“A lot of the coffee producers that I work with and who roast our beans are people who have direct connections, either their members of the agricultural cooperatives from the coffee farms, or their families are the people who own and work at the farms in the countries that they're from,” Gil said.
The expanded hours mean more time for different unions and community groups to gather at the Workers Tap. That’s important, since another focus of the bar and café is revitalizing so-called ‘third spaces.’ If the first place is home, and the second place is work, a third place is an informal public gathering place. They play an important role on building community, but they’re increasingly hard to find in the U.S.
“We are a place that is very very out and loud. We say it with our chest -- We're a community space. We're very transparent about what we stand for and what we believe in." Gil said, "And we invite people who share those values to come into the space freely.”
The Workers Tap is open from 9 a.m. to midnight every day. They're also currently in search of a new food cart that might be interested in selling food in their back patio.