On May 14, 1937, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), the upstart union federation organizing the country’s mass production industries, awarded the Ottumwa, Iowa local of the United Packing House Workers its first charter for meatpacking employees. Workers had fought a pitched battle with their employer, John Morrell and Co., which sixteen years earlier had used the Iowa National Guard to break their strike and bust their union.

Last Monday afternoon, in a decidedly more subdued environment — the red metal union hall of the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Ottumwa local — immigrant workers who toil on the late-night shift at the local meatpacking plant assembled at a “satellite caucus” to deliver their verdict in the Democratic presidential primary.

It was a speedy affair: in less than twenty minutes, the fifteen attendees had filled out caucus cards and divided up into “preference groups.” All but one, an Elizabeth Warren organizer, went for the Vermont senator. And because Warren fell below the “viability” threshold (15 percent), Sanders grabbed all the site’s delegates — the first awarded in the 2020 Iowa caucus.