Appalachia is often framed as a place to escape from, where people are hateful, lazy, and bring tragedy upon themselves. Join Beth Howard to discuss the powerful history of white Appalachians fighting alongside Black and Brown people, pushing back against billionaires who gain power by using racism to divide them. Appalachia has not only been hit hard; it is the place to wage a freedom struggle.
Beth Howard is the Cultural Strategist for Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), the largest national organization bringing white people into the fight for racial and economic justice. She grew up in a rural white working-class community in Eastern Kentucky and has organized in the... Read More →
Jerome Scott was a labor organizer in the auto plants of Detroit in the 1960s-’70s, and a member of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. As a community organizer, popular educator and author in the South since the 1970s, he was a founding member and former director of Project... Read More →
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT Jackson Park C
Working-class priorities are reshaping fiscal policy across America’s cities, prompting urgent debates on state and municipal budgets. Join representatives from New York’s Fiscal Policy Institute to discuss the fiscal issues confronting movement advocates and elected officials in New York State and New York City, from expanding revenue through taxing the rich to countering misinfomation about millionaire tax flight.
Elizabeth Cooper is the Housing Policy Analyst at the Fiscal Policy Institute. She received an MA in economics from the New School for Social Research. She is also the research coordinator for North Jersey DSA's electoral working group.
Ciarán Finlayson is Communications Director at the Fiscal Policy Institute. He is a student in the economics department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, and received an MA from the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, United K... Read More →
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT Jackson Park C
Socialist Horizon is an independent class struggle organization with branches and members across the U.S. Socialist Horizon is a member of the United Left Platform and is the U.S. section of the International Socialist League. Socialist Horizon meet-up with conference attendees will discuss the group's political orientation and collaboration with other Socialist groups, as well as prospects for mass organizing and socialist intervention in the coming year.
Saturday September 5, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT Jackson Park C
The struggle over trans healthcare is one of the clearest expressions of how medicine, incarceration, and borders are intertwined. As the US and Britain increasingly govern through prohibition, austerity, and criminalization, the reach of policing and punishment has rapidly expanded—both inside and outside the prison walls. Vicky Osterweil, S. Lamble, and Beatrice Adler-Bolton will discuss the carcerality of the anti-trans panic, its centrality to health fascism, and what abolition can teach us about defending care beyond the limits of the state.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton is a disabled and chronically ill agitator and independent researcher. She is the co-author of Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto (Verso, 2022) and a co-host of the Death Panel podcast.
Lamble is a community organizer and Professor of Criminology and Queer Theory at Birkbeck, University of London, and the author of Unsafe: The Carceral Roots of the Anti-Trans Backlash. Their work explores questions of gender, sexuality, and justice with a focus on feminist and abolitionist... Read More →
Vicky Osterweil is a Philadelphia-based writer, agitator, and worker and the author of The Extended Universe and In Defense of Looting. She is a member of the anarchist journal CAW and has written about the intersections of film, politics, and culture for publications such as The... Read More →
“Chimerica” is over. The twin titans of neoliberal globalization are now at loggerheads over everything from trade to high tech, geopolitical alliances, and military hegemony over the Asia Pacific. Today’s global slump, exacerbated by Trump’s disastrous war in Iran, has heightened this imperial rivalry. This panel will examine the roots of the conflict, its trajectory, and how the left can build international solidarity from below against it.
Tobita Chow is an organizer based in the Chicago area. He researches progressive strategy, great power conflict, and international climate politics. Tobita was the founding Director of Justice is Global.
Ashley Smith is co-author of China in Global Capitalism and has written in numerous publications including Truthout, New Politics, Against the Current, and many other online and print publications.
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT Jackson Park C
The United Left Platform, a coalition of six U.S.-based Socialist groups (Tempest, Solidarity, Workers’ Voice, Speak Out Socialists, International Marxist Humanist Organization, Socialist Horizon) was founded at the 2025 Socialism Conference in Chicago. The ULP has worked over this past year to create a non-sectarian space for socialist organizing, self-defense, and political intervention. The ULP meet-up will share its accomplishments and hold a public conversation with conference attendees about prospects for building out a broader space for mass organizing and socialist intervention in the coming year.
Saturday September 5, 2026 6:30pm - 8:00pm CDT Jackson Park C
