Hailey Freeman

Template:TOCnestleft Hailey Freeman is active in Salt Lake Democratic Socialists of America.

DSSL Meeting with Howie Hawkins & Angela Walker

Salt Lake Democratic Socialists of America monthly meeting Auugust 31 2020·

Join @slcDSA, @HowieHawkins, and @AngelaNWalker for a discussion and glimpse at the DSSL's monthly meetings. The chapter will hold an endorsement vote after interviewing the Green Party nominees.

With Kitrina Kearfott, Phelan Acheson, Mark Patterson, Elliot Goble , Charlie Erickson, Sonja Hutson, Wendy Thompson, Michael Lavery, Deborah Gressett, Trent Weber, Joshua Gonzales, Hailey Freeman, Jonathan Camacho, Freeman Stevenson, Jeff Staples .^[1]

Socialist Mormon

SALT LAKE CITY—As about 60 people gather in a small suburban library in late February 2020, a guest speaker proudly declares, “Bernie is the most Christ-like candidate I have ever seen.”

Though perhaps a small event, it stands out for another reason: The Bernie Sanders presidential campaign had largely avoided conversations about religious faith. This event specifically addressed the concerns of Utah’s largest voting bloc—members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Hailey Freeman, a 22-year-old college student who volunteered with the Sanders campaign in Salt Lake City, helped plan the event. Freeman is a Mormon and a member of the Salt Lake chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). She tells In These Times that, out of roughly 200 active dues-paying DSA members, at least a dozen are Mormon or ex-Mormon—surprising, perhaps, because of the association between the Church and conservatism. In Utah, 62% of the state is Mormon; a Pew Research Center poll from 2016 shows 70% of Mormons identify as Republican.

Freeman believes some Mormon support for Sanders can be explained by the promises of universal child care and relief to small-scale family farmers, as the Mormon community often stresses the importance of family and children.

With the youth, however, the political leanings of the Mormon church may be shifting. “There is definitely a growing number of leftists in the Church among those who are younger,” says Tom Taylor, 35. Taylor, a robotics engineer and socialist in the town of Bountiful outside Salt Lake, ran for Utah’s 4th District congressional seat in 2018. He hails from a long line of Mormons—one of his great-greatgrandparents wrote the famous Mormon hymn, “High on the Mountain Top”—but “my family hardly talked about politics” growing up, he says.

Taylor, for one, credits his religious beliefs for his left political worldview. “I am not a socialist in spite of my religion, but because of my religion,” he says. “I was raised to care deeply about the poor and the needy and to try and bring a sense of justice to the world.”^[2]