The Party for Socialism and Liberation has been instrumental in local organizing efforts like the campaign against ICE and has a presence at almost every major political protest in Eugene.

For many Americans, socialism still conjures thoughts of authoritarianism, famine and failed states. Locally, a growing group of organizers says that image is a distortion, and they’re building a movement to prove it. In 2004, a group of four socialists founded the Party for Socialism and Liberation in San Francisco. 

Twenty years later in 2024, PSL spread to Eugene.

Local organizers say the group’s rapid growth is driven by a combination of hands-on organizing and collaboration with other activists in town to create solidarity among the working class. “The people are feeling the idea that we need something else, that we need something different than what we have already and they’re really hungry for some kind of change,” says Rob Fisette, PSL member and Lane County Immigrant Defense Network (LCIDN) organizer.

PSL’s main goal  is to build a society where the working class holds political power. The basis of PSL’s theories relies on Marxist-Leninist principles using Karl Marx’s definition of capitalism and Vladimir Lenin’s ideas on how to organize and build a working-class political party.

One of PSL Eugene’s first major rallying points in 2024 was the war in Gaza. Fisette says watching videos of civilians dying was a major motivation for him to become more politically active. “Seeing PSL leading a lot of the movements for solidarity with Palestine around the country, ultimately, that’s what led me to join,” he says. 

“The movement for Palestine is very important because as Marxist-Leninists, we recognize that American imperialism is the primary contradiction of capitalism,” PSL Eugene member Sam Cook says. 

PSL frames the state of Israel as an outpost of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East, and after the most recent war in Gaza began, PSL remained outspoken against the mass murder of civilians in the city, framing the war as a genocide and a result of capitalist imperialism. 

The Eugene pre-branch of PSL was founded by Sam Cook and Kaleigh Bronson-Cook with the help of two longtime national members. Because PSL Eugene is relatively new, the group is still considered a pre-branch. Organizers hope that within the year, the group will become the second full-fledged PSL branch in Oregon after the Portland branch. A local PSL group like PSL Eugene remains a pre-branch until it has the membership to take on larger organizing projects. Then, it applies for branch status and works with the national PSL organization to take on those responsibilities.

 “Our goals locally are to try and build working class political sovereignty, and that is what we mean by socialism,” Sam Cook says. Today, the pre-branch consists of 25 active organizers who work with thousands in the community through mass contact lists, the LCIDN and a coalition of activists.

In early 2025, Cook and Bronson-Cook helped organize “We Fight Back,” the party’s first major action in Eugene. The event drew around 200 people to the Wayne Morse Federal Courthouse to organize against President Donald Trump and his administration’s policies.

After that first event, Cook says PSL grew from four active members to over 20 in the course of just six months.  

When Trump took power in 2025 and a fragile ceasefire in Gaza began, PSL Eugene increased its organizing for immigrant rights. “The immigrant rights struggle is not only a labor struggle and a working class struggle, but it’s also a struggle against imperialism, because many of our immigrant neighbors are here in this country because of the actions of the American empire,” Cook says. 

The LCIDN is not officially affiliated with PSL, but many of the organization’s leaders are PSL party members. “Doing some of the other projects we’ve been involved in, like the LCID, gives you the feeling of giving back that I think a lot of people want,” says Chris Case of why he joined the party.

“I just feel like I’m doing exactly what I should be doing with my life,” says Jazmin Flores, another party member. 

When someone is looking to join PSL, it is not quite like joining the Democratic or Republican Party. Instead, members are expected to be actively involved in organizing with the party, along with paying dues. Because of this requirement, many want to be involved with PSL but simply cannot dedicate themselves fully to the movement. That’s why the party launched the Action Network Initiative. 

The ANI is a network where supporters can be involved with the party without committing as much time as official members. “We had a small group of people who have experience and a big group of people who are willing to work but don’t have that experience,” Cook says. 

Collaborating with other activist organizations is one of the key principles PSL follows. Besides some red lines, like not working with the Democratic or Republican parties because it sees them as political vehicles of the ruling class, PSL tries to be involved or present in most anti-imperialist protests and actions in town. “Anyone who’s willing to work with us, we want to work with them,” Cook says. 

PSL is working with the Oregon Farmworker Union, PCUN, to support a general strike on May 1, the 20th anniversary of the 2006 Day Without An Immigrant protests, which fought against the criminalization of undocumented immigrants and their supporters. “We’re participating and helping to organize events every month that lead up to that,” says party member Kamryn Stringfield. 

PSL says it plans to continue its fight against imperialism for as long as it takes to overthrow the capitalist structure of the U.S. “Everybody just genuinely agrees that we all have a right to housing, to health care, to food,” Flores says. “You guys are all socialists, even though you don’t even realize it yourself.”

To get involved with PSL, visit PslWeb.org/join.