Annual Born Again Labor Museum Fund Drive

Dear friends and comrades,

Since opening earlier last year, we’ve been excited to have BALM become the evolving visual and conceptual art project/community meeting space we hoped it could be.

The local Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) has held movie nights and study groups at BALM. Folks have come together at BALM to defend abortion rights, forming the Southern Illinois Reproductive Justice Network (SIRJN). Events have been held in solidarity with immigrants. Folks have gathered to organize against the attempt to turn a forest preserve in Atlanta into a police training grounds. Local workers have held union-organizing meetings at BALM. Comrades have gathered to make protest signs and banners. And local bands have performed at fundraisers for community projects like the Carbondale Tool Library.

We are planning and working on new things like a conceptual art/mutual aid project, “Ring the Dollar Stores." "Ring the Dollar Stores" will distribute needed consumer goods (like dish soap, cat litter, etc.) augmented by irrealist narrative and conceptual gestures. And we are working on a collective exhibition, “Gregaria,” that will feature socialist artists from across the United States and India.

BALM aims to provide a site of both practical and impractical working-class solidarity. By practical solidarity, we mean to provide a space for our siblings to organize against exploitation and oppression. By impractical solidarity, we provide an area that isn’t commodified, where you don’t have to spend money to be there, and where you are relatively free from the constant pressures of neoliberal capital.

But to continue the BALM project, we need your support. Please donate to our new GoFundMe (here), or become a regular BALM patron through our Patreon (you can find a link at bornagainlabor.com). We are working-class people. We don't have a lot of money. And electricity costs have skyrocketed in the last year (even though we turn everything off when the space is not in use, including heating and cooling). Any amount helps. Thank you, comrades!

In Struggle and Solidarity,

Tish Turl and Adam Turl