Socialism 2026: Full Schedule

arrow_back View All Dates

8:30am CDT

Morning Yoga

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:30am - 9:30am CDT

Outside on the lawn (weather-permitting)

Join us for a Vinyasa yoga session led by local yogi Angel. We’ll work to sync our breath and bodies to beginner’s poses with just enough challenge to get you out of your comfort zone. This 60-min flow is perfect for all levels. We will have mats available on a first come, first serve basis.

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:30am - 9:30am CDT
Outside on the lawn (weather-permitting)

Activity

10:00am CDT

Fighting for Trans Liberation in the Midwest: Organizing Under Hostile State Governments

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

Jackson Park D

As Midwestern states escalate attacks on transgender people, organizers are building networks of resistance and care. This panel explores strategies for fighting back in hostile political environments—through coalition building, local organizing, and community infrastructure—and asks what it will take to win real liberation.

Speakers

Colleen McRoberts

Dr. Emerson Cram

Dr. Emerson Cram is a public educator & community storyteller located in Iowa City, Iowa. Their research, teaching, and advocacy focus on historical linkages between disability, sexuality, and race in environmental planning, and how stories of the past get in the way of cultural... Read More →

V Fixmer-Oraiz

V is the first transgender County Supervisor in Iowa. While they built their first campaign around inclusive economic development, V has found themselves working to advance human rights and better protect LGBTQ+ indivuals while championing racial and social justice.

Rev. Sean McRoberts

Sean is an interfaith leader in Iowa who withdrew from their denomination in 2018 due to the tension of being a trans person and religous leader in a homophobic denomination. They are now the Director of Operations and Development at Sacred Collective, "a place of belonging for spiritual... Read More →

Mandi Remington

Mandi Remington is a Johnson County Supervisor and organizer in Iowa working on trans rights and reproductive justice. A former Medicaid recipient and parent of transgender youth, she also organizes around healthcare and basic needs while working to expand community-based public safety... Read More →

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
Jackson Park D

Gender-Sexuality-Liberation

10:00am CDT

Refusing Erasure: Justice, Accountability and Historical Memory in the War on Terror

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

Clark ABC

This September marks 25 years since 9/11 and the launch of the War on Terror. Built on harmful narratives and policies targeting Muslims and other marginalized communities, the war has relied on erasure and silencing to endure. This panel - which includes a survivor from Guantanamo - will explore the importance of documenting and preserving our histories to resist forgetting and sustain our ongoing demands for accountability, justice and our visions beyond it.

Speakers

Negin Owliaei

Mansoor Adayfi

Mansoor Adayfi is a writer, artist, human rights advocate, and former prisoner who
spent over 14 years at Guantánamo Bay Prison Camp without charges or trial. He was resettled to Serbia in 2016 as part of an agreement between the US government and Serbia. along with American lawyers and US-based NGOs, he co-founded the Guantanamo Survivors Fund... Read More →

Maha Hilal

Dr. Maha Hilal is a Muslim Arab American expert on institutionalized Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and counternarrative work. She is the author of the book Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11, the founding Executive... Read More →

Rashida James Saadiya

Rashida James-Saadiya (she/her) is a writer, cultural educator, and executive director of the Muslim Power Building Project, a collaborative learning space dedicated to supporting emerging organizers. Her work explores the intersections of identity, kinship, and social repair—themes... Read More →

Sponsors

Muslim Counterpublics Lab

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
Clark ABC

Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism

10:00am CDT

En español: El levantamiento de Bolivia: causas, contradicciones y lecciones

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

Dusable ABC

Este panel en español analiza la explosiva revuelta de la clase trabajadora y los pueblos indígenas de Bolivia contra el choque neoliberal de Paz Pereira. Investigaremos la profundidad y las contradicciones del levantamiento en medio de la rivalidad interimperialista, y apuntamos lecciones para los socialistas en Estados Unidos y abogamos por una solidaridad que se centre en el poder popular boliviano —y no en agendas extranjeras ni en la cooptación por parte de las élites nacionales—.

Lena, Movimento Mulheres em Luta (MML)/ CSP Conlutas-Brasil, PSTU — Emilio, activista y militante socialista en Bolivia - Blanca Misse — La Voz de los Trabajadores

This panel traces Bolivia's explosive working-class and indigenous revolt against Paz Pereira's neoliberal shock. We dissect the uprising's depth and contradictions amid interimperialist rivalry, extract lessons for US socialists, and argue for solidarity that centers Bolivian popular power—not foreign agendas or co-optation by national elites.

Speakers

Lena

Lena, Movimento Mulheres em Luta (MML)/ CSP Conlutas-Brasil, PSTU

Emilio

Emilio is an activist and socialist militant in Bolivia

Blanca Misse

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
Dusable ABC

International Politics

10:00am CDT

Russian Neofascism: Imperialism Abroad & Repression at Home

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

Erie

Vladimir Putin responded to democratic uprising in Russia’s former empire by repressing domestic dissent and launching an imperialist war on Ukraine. In a discussion of their new book, Russia’s New Imperialism, Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev will be joined by Robert Brenner and Daria Saburova to examine Putin’s neofascist project, Ukraine’s struggle for self-determination, and today’s inter-imperial rivalries.

Speakers

Ilya Budraitskis

Ilya Budraitskis, co-author of Russia’s New Imperialism

Ilya Matveev

Ilya Matveev, co-author of Russia’s New Imperialism

Robert Brenner

Robert Brenner, professor Emeritus UCLA, editor at New Left Review, author of Economics of Global Turbulence

Yulia Yurchenko

Sponsors

Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
Erie

International Politics

10:00am CDT

The Old Being Reborn: The Revival of Socialist Organizations in US and Belgium

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

Superior

What is the throughline between the Belgian Worker’s party and the Democratic Socialists of America? British socialist, Joe Todd and DSA member David Duhalde will examine the new DSA and Belgian Workers Party's structures over the past decade, their developments and differences. This panel will reflect on the historical labor, electoral, and factional dynamics, of the Socialist party that have led us to today.

Speakers

David Duhalde

David Duhalde is a lifelong democratic socialist organizer who has held positions in both the Democratic Socialist of America and its sister nonprofit the DSA Fund at the staff and volunteer leadership levels. He is an author on numerous topics including DSA history, which have appeared... Read More →

Joe Todd

Joe Todd is a researcher, organiser and political strategist. He writes on left parties for the Guardian, Novara Media and his Substack, and co-hosts the top 50 UK podcast Life of the Party. He is the author of "Between Autonomy and Control," a comparative study of the Belgian Workers... Read More →

Sponsors

RLS

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
Superior

International Politics

10:00am CDT

The General Strike and How to Build a Stronger, Bolder, and Bigger Pro-Democracy Labor Movement

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

Grant Park AB

For the last several years, May Day has been a touchstone for deepening relationships among unions and labor activists, building powerful local and national actions. As we look toward 2028’s “General Strike” moment, this discussion situates this organizing within a larger framework of election protection, Labor Day actions, and more necessary steps to strengthen the labor movement.

Speakers

Sean Fulkerson

Griffin Mahon

Griffin Mahon is a DC-based union organizer and a cochair of DSA's National Labor Commission. 

TBD

Sponsors

May Day Strong

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
Grant Park AB

Labor Movement

10:00am CDT

Protecting Our Own: Shifting from State Intervention to Community Care in Crisis Times

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

Jackson Park C

ICE agents are using family separation tactics central to US state violence. In this interactive workshop on "family policing" participants will examine real-world manifestations and analyze emerging resistance strategies. Workshop will share the tools to build a paradigm shift from "mandated reporting"—which fuels state intrusion—to "mandated supporting.”

Speakers

jaboa lake

jaboa lake phd, is a sister, auntie, neighbor, former foster youth, organizer, and liberation researcher. jaboa’s work has centered liberation of oppressed people and solidarity across movements through using research as a tactic within grassroots strategies. jaboa’s work has... Read More →

Erica Meiners

A writer, an educator and an organizer, Erica R. Meiners lives in Chicago and works with others on a range of ongoing mobilizations for liberation.

Shannon Perez-Darby

Shannon Perez-Darby is a founding member of the Accountable Communities Consortium and a member of the Mandatory Reporting is Not Neutral core group. Shannon Perez-Darby centers queer and trans communities of color while working to address issues of domestic and sexual violence... Read More →

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
Jackson Park C

Left Strategy

10:00am CDT

The Forgotten History of the Civil Rights Movement’s Fight for Economic Justice—and Why It Matters Today

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

Jackson Park A

Martin Luther King Jr.’s call for a “radical redistribution of political and economic power” offers a way to challenge the growing power and influence of the authoritarian right. Come hear historians in conversation about a lesser-known side of the civil rights movement — and its relevance to fighting Trumpism today.

Speakers

Brian Jones

Brian Jones is the author of Black History Is for Everyone

Nancy MacLean

Nancy MacLean, William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University and author of Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace

Jeanne Theoharis

Jeanne Theoharis, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and author of King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr. 's Life of Struggle Outside the South

Elizabeth Todd-Breland

Elizabeth Todd-Breland, Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois Chicago and co-author with the late Karen Lewis of I Didn't Come Here to Lie: My Life and Education

Sponsors

Hammer & Hope

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
Jackson Park A

Radical History

10:00am CDT

Trust in God and Keep the Powder Dry: A Short History of Leftwing Religious Non-Nonviolence

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

Hyde Park A

While religion makes leftists squirm and liberals fetishize nonviolence, those at the center of liberatory armed struggles and insurrection attempts in the U.S. have often been deeply religious people. Their religiosity, however, is usually disparaged or ignored. This introductory-level popular education session brings this forgotten history into focus and explores what’s at stake.

Speakers

Adam Vander Tuig

Adam Vander Tuig was born and raised in rural Nebraska, works as Faith-Based Educator and Researcher at the Highlander Center in East Tennessee, and teaches courses on theology and class war at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. He organizes with NE Faith for Palestine... Read More →

Sponsors

Highlander

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
Hyde Park A

Radical History

10:00am CDT

From Exploitation to Replacement? Workers in the New Political Economy of AI

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

Field ABC

In this workshop, we’ll use Marx’s analysis of political economy to understand how "AI" technologies—such as chatbots and image generators—rapidly accelerate worker exploitation and shift the relations of production between capital and labor. Participants will discuss how "AI" is reinscribing the conditions for technofeudalism and how workers are resisting the harms of automation, workplace surveillance, and algorithmic management.

Speakers

Alex Hanna

Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR)

Nathan Kim

Nathan Kim is a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan. He’s interested in the political economy of tech production, and in particular Silicon Valley’s relationship to state violence after the Cold War.

Thomas Mariadason

Thomas Mariadason is the Executive Director of the Center for Political Education

Chika Okoye

Chika Okoye is the Lead Educator for the Center for Political Education

Sponsors

Center for Political Education

Distributed AI Research Institute

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
Field ABC

Science and Tech

10:00am CDT

The Deadly Tech Exchange: How Tech Companies are Profiting from Genocide and Anti-Immigrant Violence

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

Jackson Park B

In this workshop we will map the network of US and Israeli companies and investors fueling the world’s first AI-powered genocide in Gaza, and delve into the revolving door of tech and capital between Silicon Valley and Israel’s “Silicon Wadi.” We’ll discuss the destructive impacts of the Deadly Tech Exchange for communities in the US, Palestine, and beyond, and offer action steps for fighting back through cross-movement campaigning.

Speakers

Izzy Mustafa

Izzy Mustafa is the Co-Executive Director at Adalah Justice Project, a Palestinian-led organization focused on campaigns that challenge militarism, big tech, and systems of oppression while supporting labor organizing and building broad coalitions for justice and liberation.

Edith Romero

Edith Romero is originally from Honduras; she grew up in a banana town in the north coast of Honduras and moved to New Orleans to begin her higher education. Edith holds a Master’s in Healthcare Management and has experience in community health, Latinx health, reproductive justice... Read More →

Eric Sype

Eric Sype, US National Organizer, 7amleh. Eric fights for Palestinian human rights as 7amleh’s National Organizer in the U.S. He holds a Master of Development Practice from the University of California, Berkeley, where he researched the impacts of technological advancements on decolonizing... Read More →

Sponsors

Adalah Justice Project

Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
Jackson Park B

Science and Tech

12:00pm CDT

Why Socialism Requires Abolition

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Grant Park AB

Leading abolitionist thinkers will clarify the distinct formulation abolition offers about the relationship between capitalism, the state in general, and the carceral state specifically. They will each explain why socialism requires prison abolition.

Speakers

Zohra Ahmed

Zohra Ahmed is an associate professor of law at Boston University, USA. She writes and teaches about U.S. militarism, domestically and globally. She is a former public defender, and works closely with grassroots movements challenging criminalization.

Kelly Gillespie

Kelly Gillespie is a political and legal anthropologist at the University of Western Cape in South Africa. Her research focuses on criminal justice in South Africa, she is particularly concerned with the ways in which criminal justice has become a vector for the continuation of Apartheid... Read More →

Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Ruth Wilson Gilmore is professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences, and American Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, USA. Co-founder of many grassroots organizations including the California Prison Moratorium Project, Critical Resistance, and the Central California Environmental... Read More →

Vanessa Thompson

Vanessa Thompson is Associate Professor Distinguished Professor in Black Studies and Social Justice at Queen's University, Canada. Her research examines the relation between state violence, racism and capitalism, and how people struggle against interconnected forms of state violence... Read More →

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Grant Park AB

Abolition

12:00pm CDT

Palestinian Revolutionary Thought and the Prisoners’ Movement

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Hyde Park A

What lessons does the Palestinian left offer today? This session explores the history of prison writing in Palestine and key texts from the Palestinian left. Panelists will situate this discussion in relation to recently translated texts by Palestinian revolutionaries, including Ahmad Qatamesh and Walid Daqqa.

Speakers

Danya al-Saleh

Danya al-Saleh developed her commitment to Palestinian community and youth education while organizing in the Palestine movement in North America. She has contributed as an editor to translation projects of Palestinian literature into English. Danya’s writing has been published in... Read More →

Jenan Awaida

Jenan Awaida is a long-time community organizer in the Palestine movement based in Southern California. Her work has focused on grassroots mobilization, political education, Palestinian cultural programming, and coalition-building. She has contributed to national initiatives for the... Read More →

Ribhi Hussein

Ribhi Hussein is a Palestinian-American born in San Francisco. He spent much of his life living in Ramallah, until recently. He was active as a student organizer at Birzeit University, where he graduated from the Department of Sociology. He recently published a piece about interrogation... Read More →

Sponsors

People's Center for Palestine

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Hyde Park A

Anti-colonial Politics

12:00pm CDT

Black History is for Everyone

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Adler ABC

Join author and educator Brian Jones for an urgent discussion of the power of Black history to challenge our assumptions about race and nation, as well as the meaning of Black history in the context of attacks on education today.

Speakers

Brian Jones

Brian Jones is the author of Black History Is for Everyone

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Adler ABC

Black Liberation

12:00pm CDT

Sumud in Praxis: Teaching for Solidarity from Turtle Island to Palestine

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Dusable ABC

Teach Palestine and the Xicanx Institute for Teaching & Organizing collaborated to provide teachers support in the face of state repression on teaching Palestine and build broader international solidarity. Our panel will share experiences from institutes that take place on the US-Mexico border, and support participants in bringing lessons to their communities.

Speakers

Anita Fernández

Dr. Anita Fernández has been a high school teacher, a professor and teacher educator for over 20 years. Her teaching, scholarship, activism and organizing have been in the areas of racial justice, decolonizing pedagogies, Chicanx/Latinx movements and Ethnic Studies. After the 2012... Read More →

Zeiad Abbas Shamrouch

Zeiad Abbas Shamrouch is a Palestinian refugee from Dheisheh Refugee Camp in the West Bank and executive Director, Middle East Children’s Alliance. He is the co-founder of the Ibdaa Cultural Center in Dheisheh. Zeiad is also a filmmaker, journalist and educator who has worked with... Read More →

Samia Shoman

Samia Shoman, Ed.D, is a Palestinian-American educator and administrator in the San Francisco Bay Area and the co-coordinator of the Middle East Children's Alliance Teach Palestine Project. She has spent the past 26 years of her career in public education promoting racial and... Read More →

Jenine Wehbeh

Jenine Wehbeh is an educator-organizer, circle-keeper, and former Middle School Social Studies teacher and union delegate, with extensive experience in Critical Ethnic Studies and K-12 education, and co-coordinator, Teach Palestine Project of the Middle East Children’s Alliance... Read More →

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Dusable ABC

Education Justice

12:00pm CDT

Weaponizing Antisemitism: An Interactive History

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Michigan

In a moment where pro-Israel watchdogs are weaponizing antisemitism to attack organizers, students, educators, public schools, and the broader infrastructure of the left, this session will explore the historical roots of how antisemitism began to be weaponized against the left in the late 1960s through a participatory mixer.

Speakers

Adam Sanchez

Adam Sanchez is the managing editor of Rethinking Schools. He is also the editor of Teaching a People's History of Abolition and the Civil War and a forthcoming book about teaching Reconstruction. He is a co-editor of Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices.

Sponsors

Rethinking Schools

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Michigan

Fighting the Right

12:00pm CDT

Unsafe: The Carceral Roots of the Anti-Trans Backlash

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

W190B

The 21st century “gender wars” have been driven by a powerful and seductive narrative: that safety can be secured through exclusion, surveillance, and the policing of difference. These punitive logics have gained momentum across the political spectrum, fueling an anti-trans backlash and distorting the meaning of safety itself. Join S. Lamble and Sophie Lewis as they challenge the toxic ideas at the heart of this backlash, and put forward a vision of safety built on collective care and radical solidarity.

Speakers

S. Lamble

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 →

Sophie Lewis

Sophie Lewis is a writer, utopian, feminist, and ex-academic scholar based in Philadelphia, hailing originally from the UK, France, and Germany. She is the author of Femmephilia, Enemy Feminisms, Abolish the Family, and Full Surrogacy Now. Lewis’s essays and articles appear routinely... Read More →

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
W190B

Gender-Sexuality-Liberation

12:00pm CDT

Resisting MAHA & Building Environmental & Reproductive Justice

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Jackson Park A

Gender oppressed people are raising questions about standard reproductive health interventions’ inability to address environmentally induced issues. In response, MAHA is organizing people to reject medical treatment and embrace individualistic “natural remedies.” This session explores how the Left can combat dis/misinformation while addressing environmental racism and reproductive oppression, in service to building a revolutionary alternative.

Speakers

Judith Clerjeune

Judith Clerjeune, (She | Li [Haitian Kreyol ]), moun Fond-Des-Blanc, is a Black Haitian immigrant. Judith has called the South home since moving to the United States in 2004. Judith’s work is grounded in the hope and resolution that we can and must build another world, one free... Read More →

Dr. Sydney Curtis

Dr. Sydney Curtis is a Black feminist scholar, educator, and leader. She contributes relational, spiritual, and Black feminist perspectives in postsecondary education, the nonprofit sector, and community-based organizations by leading programs, publishing critical scholarship, and... Read More →

Abhinaya Narayanan

Abhinaya Narayanan, MD, MPP is a family physician, abolitionist, reproductive justice advocate, and organizer with the People’s Care Collective based in Los Angeles, CA. She received her medical degree from UCLA, Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard, and completed residency... Read More →

Briana Perry

Briana Perry (she/her) is a Black Southern feminist with over a decade of movement building experience in racial justice and reproductive justice. Briana comes to this work as a former teacher, as it was during her time teaching that she became involved in local organizing efforts... Read More →

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Jackson Park A

Health Politics & Disability Justice

12:00pm CDT

Intro: Harm Reduction and Solidarity with Unsheltered Neighbors

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Hyde Park B

The rise of racialized capitalism has caused a rise in homelessness, primarily affecting marginalized groups. This session discusses how gentrification, private property, privatization of social services, and rugged individualism perpetuate homelessness, and the experience of the unhoused, focusing on harm reduction.… and what is to be done?

Speakers

Rachel Shearer

Rachel (they/she) is an anarchist, harm reductionist, and medical social worker living in so-called California. They have worked with street-based communities for almost a decade and are a survivor of the drug war.

Luna Bender

Luna Bender is a born and raised Chicagoan studying to become a public librarian. She spent early childhood in communal housing and is determined to form and maintain stronger communal support wherever she goes.

Andrew Atkinson Bernd

Andrew Atkinson Bernd is an independent Chicago-based researcher and analyst focusing on systemic inequalities, food systems, and geographic socio-economic disparities. Andrew’s work is rooted in building solidarity with the lumpenproletariat population; specifically, people experiencing... Read More →

Alexa Gold

Lexie Gold is an advocate, outreach volunteer, and interdisciplinary scholar. Her research and writing works at the intersection of Gender & Women’s Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, Rhetoric & Discourse. Specifically thinking about the subtle ways in which power operates. As an... Read More →

Lucy Morales

Lucy Morales is an advocate and disruptor of systems, specifically focused on dismantling the inequitable systems at the cross-section of homelessness, neoliberal policies, and forced migration. Lucy identifies as Chicana, indigenous tauramaura/mechica, raised in Chicago.

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Hyde Park B

Housing Justice

12:00pm CDT

Cuba Under Siege: A Round Table Discussion

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Clark ABC

During the 1990s, Cuba survived an economic crisis following the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Now, after 67 years of US economic/trade sanctions and a fuel blockade, the nation faces far greater challenges. What lessons can be drawn from the past? How will Cuba survive? What can Cuba solidarity activists do?

Speakers

Reed Lindsey

Reed Lindsey, Founder of Belly of the Beast, independent media outlet with reporting team in Havana, Cuba

Helen Yaffe

Helen Yaffe, Latin American and Political Economy, Univ. of Glasgow; Author, We Are Cuba, How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a post- Soviet World;

Justine Medina

Justine Medina, Cuban-Americans For Cuba, participant in Nuestra America Convoy, founding member and former organizer of Amazon Labor Union.

Sponsors

Chicago Cuba Coalition

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Clark ABC

International Politics

12:00pm CDT

The State of Worker Organizing in the South and the Southern Workers Assembly

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Field ABC

The level of organization of workers in the U.S. South is at a crossroad. This crossroad meets at the current motion of workers who are finding ways to wage struggle alongside various social movement formations and the necessity of building a unified front. The unification of these movements into an advanced worker’s movement is necessary. This session will explore the role of the Southern Workers Assembly within this struggle.

Speakers

james pope

Abdul Alkalimat

Destiny Blackwell

Mike Goldfield

Sponsors

Southern Workers Assembly

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Field ABC

Labor Movement

12:00pm CDT

Psychic Militancy

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Jackson Park C

This talk argues that in the face of accelerating fascism, we need to take seriously that our psyche is contested space, learn to track psychic intrusions that aim to settle and reconfigure our psychic province and interiority, and most importantly, learn to remain antagonistic to this violence through psychic militancy. Lara Sheehi discusses her new book to distill the mechanics of psychic militancy and how we might engage in refusals against these intrusions and their politically demobilizing work.

Speakers

Lara Sheehi

Lara Sheehi is a Research Fellow at the University of South Africa's Institute for Social and Health Sciences, a licensed clinical psychologist, and the host of the Psychic Militancy podcast. Lara’s work focuses on psychoanalysis, the psychic refusals central to liberation struggles... Read More →

Sponsors

Pluto Press

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Jackson Park C

Left Strategy

12:00pm CDT

The Muslim Left, NYC, and Zohran Mamdani’s Victory

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Huron

The historic victory of Afro-Asian Muslim socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in NYC in 2025 was won in part by the NYC Muslim community, which mobilized in mass and has birthed an anti-imperialist ecosocialist Muslim Left. This panel will share and explore the ideological and organizational underpinnings of this new political formation as well as reflect upon the messy grappling with contradictions that comes with building counter-hegemonic power.

Speakers

Ashik Siddique

Ashik Siddique is national co-chair of Democratic Socialists of America, and has served on DSA's National Political Committee since 2021. He has organized with DSA’s campaign for Bernie in 2020, for campaigns against the climate crisis and for labor rights, with protests at the... Read More →

Iskander Abbasi

Iskander Abbasi, PhD scholar of Islamic liberation theology and ecosocialism at Fordham University.

Asad Dandia

Asad Dandia, local Muslim activist, Brooklyn Borough Historian and radical NYC tour guide leader.

Aber Kawas

Aber Kawas is a Palestinian-American organizer from NYC. She has worked in community and movement organizations fighting for racial and economic justice across NYC and the country since she was a teenager.

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Huron

Left Strategy

12:00pm CDT

Documenting Actions, Activism, and Activists’ Lives: Strategies for Preserving Personal and Organizational Archives

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Erie

This workshop will include tips, strategies, and discussion on preserving analog and digital documentation of our own lives as activists and the work of our organizations in unprecedented times. We will also discuss privacy, anonymity, donating material to archives and libraries, and its future use for scholarship and restorative justice.

Speakers

Kate Stewart

Kate Stewart is the Curator of the Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements at the Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas. She has worked as a librarian and archivist for twenty years, including managing oral history projects such as the Civil Rights History Project... Read More →

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Erie

Organizing

12:00pm CDT

Organizing 101: a Black Youth Project 100 Joint

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Jackson Park B

Help! I don’t know where to start! Don’t worry we got you! We will put you through three acting scenarios in small groups that will help build the basis of your organizing journey! Join Byp100 in building more rounded organizers and preparing for a world we want to live in.

Speakers

BYP100 Members

Sponsors

Black Youth Project 100

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Jackson Park B

Organizing

12:00pm CDT

The Present State of People’s History

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Superior

This panel will present on the historiography of “people’s history” and the landscape of contemporary projects (outside of the academy) dedicated to documenting specific movement history and regional radical histories. The members of the panel will be drawn from a nascent group, the People’s History Network, that has started to take shape over the last several months to promote and expand the documentation of the history of the left. Our panel will explore the various methodologies at work in distinct recent projects of left public history, and will draw lessons from practical comparisons.

Speakers

Isaac Silver

Isaac Silver is a socialist activist and independent archivist/historian based in Chicago.

Peter Cole

Matthew Ray

Sponsors

Left in the Bay

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Superior

Radical History

12:00pm CDT

Socialize the Grid: Data Centers and Translocal Organizing

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Burnham ABC

Data centers have become a ubiquitous element of the political and social lexicon. While local wins are encouraging and inspiring, the need for translocal organizing models is necessary to fully socialize grid networks as part of the larger push for 100 percent publicly owned power and stopping data center proliferation.

Speakers

David Cobb

Johanna Epke

Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright

India Willi

Sponsors

Black Alliance for Peace

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Burnham ABC

Science and Tech

12:00pm CDT

Rosa Luxemburg and Frantz Fanon on Imperialism—Its Lessons for Today

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Jackson Park D

While Luxemburg and Fanon are rarely discussed together, placing them in dialogue provides important insights into how anti-imperialist struggles relate to efforts to develop alternatives to capitalism. Both viewed imperialism as a global system that was integral to racialized capitalism, and their perspectives on how to overcome both speak to today’s challenges.

Speakers

Alex Adamson

Alex Adamson focuses on decolonial philosophy, Marxism, and queer, trans, and feminist philosophy. He is a community organizer in the Greater Boston area and currently working on a co-authored book with Juliana Gleeson titled Dyke Dialectics. Recent and forthcoming publications include... Read More →

Peter Hudis

Peter Hudis is the general editor of The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, of which six volumes have appeared so far, and is co-editor of The Rosa Luxemburg Reader. He is author of Frantz Fanon, Philosopher of the Barricades, Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism, and... Read More →

Ndindi Kitonga

Ndindi Kitonga, a black activist in LA originally from Kenya who is founder of Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid, an abolitionist housing network. She has also been active in BLM and related community organizing.

Sponsors

International Marxist-Humanist Organization

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
Jackson Park D

Socialist and Marxist Theory

12:00pm CDT

Necessary Trouble: Movement-Building since the Financial Crisis

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

W190A

The 2008 financial crisis upended US politics, and laid the groundwork for how we got to the current conjuncture. In the years since, we’ve seen the rise of both right-wing populism and a new class politics on the left. Marking the 10th anniversary of her book documenting post-crisis social movements, join Sarah Jaffe and comrades for a conversation about the trajectory of struggle—from Occupy to the Movement for Black Lives to rising socialist electoral power—and reaction that has shaped this pivotal political period.

Speakers

Cat Salonek Schladt

Cat Salonek Schladt (she/her) is a South Minneapolis based organizer for people power.
At work, Cat serves as Executive Director of Tending the Soil, an alignment of five power-building non-profits and labor organizations led by working class, BIPOC community leaders with a long history of effective and equitable organizing. Prior to her current role, Cat made good
... Read More →

Chenjerai Kumanyika

Chenjerai Kumanyika is a journalist, scholar, organizer, and professor at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He is the host and creator of Unruly Subjects, produced with Rowhome Productions. Through conversations with organizers, journalists, artists, and scholars, Unruly... Read More →

Alex Hanna

Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR)

Sarah Jaffe

Sarah Jaffe is the author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt, Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion To Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone, and From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire, all from Bold Type Books. Her next book, Heterosexuality... Read More →

Yotam Marom

Yotam Marom has been in movements since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. He has played leadership roles at Occupy Wall Street and other movements before and after, and co-founded IfNotNow and the Wildfire Project. Yotam has trained and facilitated many of the leading social justice... Read More →

Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
W190A

US Politics

1:30pm CDT

On the Mend: A Sashiko Workshop

Sunday September 6, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT

Lake Shore Drive Boardroom

The history of Japanese sashiko stitching celebrates something island nations are intimately familiar with: the material reality of resource scarcity. Ironically, today’s apparel industry is defined by excess and fragile craftsmanship.This workshop will equip participants with the basic techniques to mend their clothing and repurpose existing garments. SPACE IS LIMITED.

Sunday September 6, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Lake Shore Drive Boardroom

1:30pm CDT

BIPOC Social

Sunday September 6, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT

Jackson Park B

"This is for the homies, strictly for the homies. This is for the homies... the real homies!" Come kick it with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, who identify as socialists, communists, leftists, anarchists, abolitionists, feminists, liberationists, radicals, and revolutionaries. We are curating a space for us and by us, where we can just “BE"! Music and vibes will be provided. You just need to bring yourself and the homies! Hosted by Black Youth Project 100.

Sponsors

Black Youth Project 100

Sunday September 6, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Jackson Park B

Meet-up

3:00pm CDT

Redefining Family: Intro to Family Abolition and Creating Abundant Care

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

Dusable ABC

What does family abolition look like through a Black feminist lens? In this introductory workshop, we envision a world in which care is universally accessible and not reliant on the private family. We engage radical imagination to bring this post-capitalist vision to life with a creative exercise and group discussion.

Speakers

Alanah Armstead

Alanah Armstead (she/her) is a research and writing fellow at Kuluntu Reproductive Justice Center and a recent graduate from Yale University with a BA in the History of Science and Medicine and MPH in Social and Behavioral Sciences. Outside of advocating for Black maternal health... Read More →

Marin Hart

Marin Hart (they/them) is a writer, organizer, and research fellow at Kuluntu Reproductive Justice Center. Currently residing in Portland, Oregon, Marin owes much of their reproductive justice education to the kick-ass advocates of the South. Marin got their bachelor's degree in Gender... Read More →

Sponsors

Kuluntu Reproductive Justice Center

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Dusable ABC

Abolition

3:00pm CDT

Three Generations in the Struggle for Socialism and Black Liberation

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

Clark ABC

Gerald Lenoir, Jesse Hagopian, and Miles Hagopian—a grandfather, son, and grandson—reflect on three generations of struggle: from Black Studies student strikes, to socialist organizing, to anti-imperialist and anti-apartheid movements, to Black Lives Matter at School. They also discuss lessons from their family's discovery of the plantation that enslaved their ancestors.

Speakers

Jesse Hagopian

Jesse Hagopian has taught in the public schools for over 20 years, serves on the Black Lives Matter at School steering committee, organizes for the Zinn Education Project, and founded the Ethnic Studies course at Seattle’s Garfield High School. He is the author of Teach Truth:... Read More →

Miles Hagopian

Gerald Lenoir

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Clark ABC

Black Liberation

3:00pm CDT

Organize or Burn: Sewer Socialism for Climate Survival in the 21st Century

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

Jackson Park A

“Sewer socialists” transformed Milwaukee into a thriving working class city a century ago, and today Zohran Mamdani is raising expectations as a socialist mayor of New York City. How are socialists across American cities organizing collective action to fight the climate crisis, defend immigrants, and expand democracy for all?

Speakers

Aber Kawas

Ashik Siddique

Cihan Tekay Liu

Cihan Tekay Liu is an organizer with NYC DSA, and lecturer at City College of New York. She served as NYC-DSA’s electoral working group’s recruitment co-chair in 2025, overseeing the recruitment of the slate that won the 2026 primaries.

Kelsea Bond

Kelsea Bond is serving as a member of the Atlanta City Council for District 2 since 2026. They are the first Democratic Socialist of America to be elected to the Atlanta City Council.

Alex Brower

Alex Brower is alderman of District 3 Common Council in Milwaukee, the first open socialist elected to sit in City Hall since 1960, is an advocate for public utilities, tenants rights, and public education, and is a member of Milwaukee DSA.

Sponsors

DSA

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Jackson Park A

Climate Justice

3:00pm CDT

Poetry for the People: Creating Your Own Community-Based Poetry Workshop, A Training for Facilitators

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

Hyde Park B

June Jordan’s Poetry for the People followed principles radical both in their context and today. Poetry for the People cohered around the ideas that poetry is a “medium for telling the truth,” and that participants are creators of today’s literature not detached students of “the canon.” In this workshop we will discuss June Jordan’s groundbreaking blueprint for teaching poetry and collapsing the divide between the university and the community. We will talk about facilitation, collaboration, venues, funding, and readings &prompts.

Speakers

Maya Marshall

Sponsors

Haymarket Books

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Hyde Park B

Culture and Art

3:00pm CDT

The Politics of Debt: Organizing in the Age of Finance

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

Burnham ABC

As finance capital continues to reshape working class life, people are increasingly forced into debt to make ends meet. What is the political landscape of debt today, and how should we respond at the level of action? How has financialization shifted leverage across different sites of struggle, and what new contradictions or vulnerabilities has it produced for capital? Debt Collective organizers working on healthcare, education, and housing debt will discuss their work and the politics of debt in the current conjuncture.

Speakers

Braxton Brewington

René Christian Moya

René Christian Moya is an organizer with the Debt Collective and the Los Angeles Tenants Union. He is the former campaign director for statewide ballot initiative in 2020 to strengthen rent control in California, and has worked extensively on tenant rights, local rent control campaigns... Read More →

Lindsey Muniak

Lindsey Muniak is an organizer with the Debt Collective, where she leads national efforts to abolish medical debt, interrupt patterns of financialization in healthcare, and bring those who have experienced the failures of our profit-driven healthcare system into the fight for its transformation... Read More →

Sponsors

Debt Collective

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Burnham ABC

Economics

3:00pm CDT

Care Networks, Abolition, and the Fight Against Border Policing (Health Fascism Series)

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

W190B

Our violent border regimes produce illness, debility, and death while destroying the relationships that people rely on to survive. Families are separated, communities destabilized, and care networks fractured through the constant threat of detention. Silky Shah and A. Naomi Paik discuss border policing as a counterinsurgent attack on health, and how to defend and rebuild collective care in an era of escalating state repression and criminalization, from Prarieland, to the Minnesota 15, to the US State Department’s call for a new Red Scare.

Speakers

Beatrice Adler-Bolton

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.

Silky Shah

Silky Shah has been working as an organizer on issues related to racial and migrant justice for over two decades. Originally from Texas, she began fighting the expansion of immigrant jails on the US-Mexico border in the aftermath of 9/11. In 2009, she joined the staff of Detention Watch Network... Read More →

A. Naomi Paik

A. Naomi Paik is the author of Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding U.S. Immigration for the 21st Century and Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps since World War II. She revised and updated Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror for Young People... Read More →

Sponsors

Death Panel

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
W190B

Health Politics & Disability Justice

3:00pm CDT

Inquilab Zindabad: Bhagat Singh and the Revolutionary Left during South Asian Independence

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

Superior

Mainstream narratives of the South Asian independence movement often erase radical figures like Bhagat Singh, who articulated critiques of colonialism, capitalism, and religion, and was unafraid to embrace a diversity of tactics - including “violent” struggle. This session will shine light on his underappreciated history, and why it still matters today.

Speakers

Viral Mistry

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Superior

International Politics

3:00pm CDT

Our International Struggles Cannot be Confined to the Capitalists’ National Elections

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

Michigan

Under heightened imperialist rivalries, with global climate catastrophe and war destroying our world, the international issues we face cannot be solved within national borders. We are told that the elections are necessary to fight these issues and to counter the growing far right. But our everyday problems, like rising costs of living, can only be solved through collective class struggle. How do socialists trying to address these problems approach bourgeois elections knowing that our resistance must be international? How do we avoid the pitfalls of nationalism in a time of heightened nationalist rivalries?

Speakers

Laura R

Laura is an activist with the Revolutionär Sozialistische Organisation (RSO), based in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Tom T

Tom T, Nouveau Parti Anitcapitaliste-Révolutionnaires (NPA-R)

Jolene S

Jolene S, Speak Out Socialists

Sponsors

Speak Out Socialists

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Michigan

International Politics

3:00pm CDT

Radicalizing Labor Unions: A Balance Sheet of Reform, Class Struggle, and Rank-and-file Movement-Building

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

Jackson Park B

Rank-and-file movements in labor unions have shaped the terrain of labor struggle in recent years, with varying impact within union halls and on the shop floor. Some have served primarily as “reform” vehicles for a wing of the union bureaucracy, while others have anchored rank-and-file struggles on the shop floor with a reinvigorated class-struggle vision. UAW President Shawn Fain and Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, now the leading voices of the left and right labor bureaucracy, respectively, represent the culmination of two prominent union reform movements in recent years. While their initial promises of increased militancy and new organizing were refreshing, their administrations have yielded mixed results and often reinforced existing old-guard forces within the labor bureaucracy and the U.S. two-party system. At a time of all-time low unionization rates and decreased strike activity, we need to evaluate how to build rank-and-file movements capable of confronting the state and capital on key questions of our moment, from fighting ICE and imperialist wars to organizing the South. We’ll discuss and debate strategies for socialists organizing to build class-struggle unions.

Moderators

Toni Gilpin

Toni Gilpin is a labor historian, author of The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland

Speakers

Andrew Bergman

Co-Chair, Unite All Workers For Democracy (UAWD)

Andrew Bergman is an assembly worker at General Motors, member of UAW Local 22, and UAWD Co-Chair

Nelson Lichtenstein

Nelson Lichtenstein is a historian of labor and capital, biographer of Walter Reuther, author of Why Labor Unions Matter (2026).

Luigi Morris

Luigi Morris is an immigrant worker, a labor journalist, and a member of Left Voice. He is a former UPS warehouse worker and a former member of Teamsters Local 804 in NYC.

Margie Thornton

Margie Thornton is a legal services worker in Colorado, steward in UAW Local 2320, UAWD Steering Committee member.

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Jackson Park B

Labor Movement

3:00pm CDT

Data Centers, Class Politics, and Socialist Strategy

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

Grant Park AB

How can socialists organize within the diverse and widespread anti-data center movements gripping the nation, and help transform frustrations over tech giants’ dispossession of community resources into a broader struggle and a radical alternative to capitalism? This session convenes anti-data center organizers to consider these questions of socialist strategy together.

Speakers

Nathan Kim

Austin Kral

Austin Kral (he/him) is an abolitionist organizer and geographer based in Atlanta. He is a member of Southerners Against Surveillance Systems & Infrastructure and the Atlanta Abolition Research Collective.

Jasmine Lu

Cella Sum

Yvette Vargas

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Grant Park AB

Left Strategy

3:00pm CDT

Using Historical Ephemera for Political Education

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

Erie

Buttons of the Left preserves and curates buttons and other ephemera of working class resistance to tell the stories of our movements. This session shares case studies of exhibits and workshops, explores the project’s origins, and the challenges and opportunities of using tangible historical materials for political education.

Speakers

Isaac Silver

Isaac Silver is a socialist activist and independent archivist/historian based in Chicago.

Sponsors

Buttons of the Left

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Erie

Radical History

3:00pm CDT

Liberatory Spirit, the Spirit of Liberation: Multi-tradition Conversation on How We Get Free

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

Adler ABC

We know that: liberation is spirit work; the separation of spirituality, culture and politics is a colonial, white supremacist and capitalist construct; in times of collapse we must root in things bigger than ourselves. Our movements can and must become places that: give birth to nourishing spiritual frameworks and theologies that uplift our vision for the world as it must become; are communities of care, interdependence with each other and the earth, and mutual aid; create the felt sense and knowledge of our belonging with each other and the earth.

Speakers

Autumn Brown

Autumn Brown is a mother, movement leader, and musician, whose organizing work is rooted in Black feminist and fugitive freedom movements. For over 20 years she has organized for healing justice, developed movement strategy, and trained organizers in consensus process, facilitation... Read More →

Rev. Jinzu Minna Jain

Rev. Jinzu Minna Jain (they/them) is an artist, writer, and racial & systemic equity educator residing in Mni Sóta Makoce on the lands of the Dakhóta Oyáte. They identify as BIPOC, disabled, queer and trans/nonbinary. Jinzu has been practicing Sōtō Zen Buddhism for over twenty-five... Read More →

Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg

Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg is a teacher, writer and organizer based on Dakota land in South Minneapolis. She became a rabbi in order to learn diverse and nuanced histories, tell stories, and create spaces, ritual, and organizing that helps transform our relationships to past, present... Read More →

Sponsors

JVP

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Adler ABC

Religion & Spirituality

3:00pm CDT

Protecting Our Neighbors: DIY Community Defense Street Tactics from Midway Blitz

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

Field ABC

Adapted from street tactics popularized by the leading edges of anti-police struggles, this fantasy reenactment outlines several tactics community members could use to protect their neighbors from abduction. Trainers will first demonstrate these tactics, after which participants will practice in pairs and in full-group role-play scenarios.

Speakers

G.R.I.P.

Sponsors

G.R.I.P.

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Field ABC

Skill Sharing

3:00pm CDT

Left Insurgents and Liberal Exhaustion: Consolidating Power from Below

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

W190A

Trump’s reelection has triggered historic openings for the left. Wins at the ballot box suggest an organic hunger for leftist political visions among masses of people as well as an enduring exhaustion with the mainstream liberal establishment. In this panel, Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika and Hasan Piker will survey the state of left power in 2026. How can we build on and harness mass disaffection into a principled socialist movement in the US?

Speakers

Hasan Piker

Wielding sharp political insight and a characteristically irreverent sense of humor, Hasan Piker is redefining what political commentary looks like in the digital age. A journalist and wildly-popular content creator on the streaming platform Twitch, Piker has become an authoritative... Read More →

Chenjerai Kumanyika

Sponsors

Hammer & Hope

Unruly Subjects

Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
W190A

US Politics

5:00pm CDT

Are All Cops Bastards?

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

W190A

While liberal objections to an ACAB approach may be expected, recently some surprising defenses of police forces in supposedly socialist states have emerged. This session will examine the role of police around the world and ask the question, is there really any such thing as a “revolutionary” cop?

Speakers

brian bean

brian bean is a Chicago-based socialist organizer, writer, and agitator originally from North Carolina. They are one of the founding editors of Rampant magazine. Their work has been published in Truthout, Jacobin, Tempest, Spectre, Red Flag, New Politics, Socialist Worker, International... Read More →

Anderson Bean

Anderson Bean is a North Carolina–based activist and editor and contributor of the book Venezuela in Crisis: Socialist Perspectives from Haymarket Books, and the author of Communes and the Venezuelan State: The Struggle for Participatory Democracy in a Time of Crisis from Lexington... Read More →

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
W190A

Abolition

5:00pm CDT

Imagine a Future Without Family Policing!

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

Dusable ABC

The family policing (aka child welfare) system is designed to place marginalized families under intense state surveillance while it promotes a carceral logic that impedes social change. A growing movement calls for abolition: dismantling the system alongside the radical reimagining of a society that supports families and keeps children safe.

Speakers

Dorothy Roberts

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
Dusable ABC

Abolition

5:00pm CDT

The Extended Universe: How Disney Killed the Movies and Took over the World

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

Jackson Park B

Join Vicky Osterweil on a quest to discover how Disney’s “imagineers” have made it impossible to reflect on the wonders of growing up without thinking of Disney's movies, amusement parks, and merchandising. Drawing on extensive interviews with filmmakers, screenwriters, union organizers, and Disney “adults” alike, Osterweil unearths reactionary political commitments and maleficent legal maneuvers so cartoonishly evil they would make one of Walt's own animated villains blush.

Speakers

Daniella Mazzio

Daniella Mazzio is a Chicago-based, award-nominated culture writer, screenwriter, accessibility consultant, and performer, who has been featured in the Chicago Reader, Indiewire, Autostraddle, Slate, the Boston Globe, WBEZ Chicago, and more. In 2025, she launched a new film podcast... Read More →

Vicky Osterweil

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 →

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
Jackson Park B

Culture and Art

5:00pm CDT

The Power of Speculative Fiction in a Shifting Political Climate

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

Adler ABC

Join best-selling author, reproductive rights activist, and civil rights lawyer Vaishnavi Patel for a conversation about the power of speculative fiction to make real world struggles more accessible. The session will explore themes from Patel’s new book, We Dance Upon Demons, including confronting apathy and exhaustion in the face of continued injustice as well as finding strength and hope through community.

Speakers

Vaishnavi Patel

Sareena Kamath

Sareena Kamath is an editor publishing SFF, speculative, horror, and genre-bending imaginative fiction of all kinds, but especially those projects which shed light on underrepresented perspectives, take place outside Western contexts, and grapple with contemporary sociocultural themes... Read More →

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
Adler ABC

Culture and Art

5:00pm CDT

Socialism Beats Fascism: Organizing for a Post-Trump America

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

W190B

Against Trump, how can we keep building antiwar and migrant rights movements? As social forces grow in the US behind the May Day movement, No Kings protests, and Minnesota’s general strike against ICE, what will it take to keep building movements from the streets to transform our whole political landscape?

Speakers

Griffin Mahon

Griffin Mahon is a DC-based union organizer and a cochair of DSA's National Labor Commission. 

Eleanor Babaev

Eleanor Babaev is a member of DSA’s National Political Committee from NYC, and chair of the DSA’s Trump Admin Response Committee.

Bol B

Bol is Political Action Coordinator of Twin Cities DSA. He has been a long time labor and electoral organizer in the Twin Cities area, and a DSA member since 2018.

Eman Abdelhadi

Eman Abdelhadi is a scholar, organizer and writer. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago, writes a column for In These Times Magazine and is co-author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072, a sci-fi novel... Read More →

Sponsors

DSA

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
W190B

Fighting the Right

5:00pm CDT

We Are Each Other's Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

Clark ABC

Drawing out lessons from the revolutionary work of movement forebearers—including the Combahee River Collective, Claudia Jones, Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, and Third World Women’s Alliance as well as struggles today—this session will help us envision a cross-racial and internationalist politics that explicitly addresses solidarity between Black and Asian feminists.

Speakers

Moya Bailey

Rachel Kuo

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
Clark ABC

Gender-Sexuality-Liberation

5:00pm CDT

The Strike that Shook the Bay: San Francisco’s Historic 2026 Educator Strike and the Coming California Strike Wave

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

Field ABC

Earlier this year, United Educators of San Francisco led six thousand members out on the first SF public school strike in half a century. In a city seemingly dominated by big tech capital and real estate, and against the opposition of the leaders in the SF and California Democratic Party, UESF won a historic contract for teachers and the community. Join us for a discussion of how this strike was built through years of organizing, a big democratic bargaining team, and bold left-wing politics, and what’s next for California educators.

Speakers

Yajaira Cuapio

Yajaira Cuapio is a school social worker and lead negotiator for UESF.

Ilan Desai-Gellar

Ilan Desai-Gellar is a classroom teacher and regional picket captain in UESF.

Alex Schmaus

Alex Schmaus is a special education instructional aide and COPE director for UESF.

Sponsors

United Educators of San Francisco

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
Field ABC

Labor Movement

5:00pm CDT

Mass Labor Action in Defense of Immigrant Workers: Why We Need It and How We Can Get there

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

Burnham ABC

This panel brings together immigrant activists from San Jose and Los Angeles, a labor militant from Minneapolis, and a historian of the complex working class history in which radicals fought to create a powerful synergy between the unions and workers who have crossed borders.

Speakers

Justin Akers Chacón

Justin Akers Chacón is an educator, activist, and writer in the San Diego-Tijuana border region, and is a member of Socialist Horizon. His works include No One is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the US-Mexico Border (with Mike Davis), Radicals in the Barrio: Magonistas... Read More →

Lucia Flores

Lucia Flores is an organizer at Cal State University. She is a Mexican American daughter of immigrants who has been involved in community and student organizing for over a decade.

Victor Rodríguez

Victor Rodríguez has been active in the socialist movement for four decades. Since moving to the U.S. from his native South America more than 20 years ago, he has worked in factories in California and has been involved in union organizing and the fight for immigrants’ rights. Victor... Read More →

Dan Troccoli

Dan Troccoli is a trade unionist, middle school teacher, and community activist in Minneapolis, MN.

Sponsors

Workers Voice

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
Burnham ABC

Migrant Justice

5:00pm CDT

People's Movement Assembly 101: Building Insurgent Democracies in the US South

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

Hyde Park A

People's Movement Assemblies (PMAs) are radical democratic organizing processes that translate collective resistance into concrete action. As US imperialism continues consolidating power globally, PMAs are where insurgent democracies can be cultivated. Learn from the Black Nashville Assembly how PMAs are being used to build participatory democratic power in the US South.

Speakers

Denzel Caldwell

Born, raised, and organizing in Nashville, Denzel Caldwell is an organizer, economist, popular educator, and self- defense instructor dedicated to transforming the lives of Black folks in Nashville. Inspired by Vietnam War era Dr. King, he chose to study economics while at Morehouse... Read More →

Sponsors

Black Nashville Assembly

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
Hyde Park A

Organizing

5:00pm CDT

Standing Up to the National Security State: Collective Defense against Political Repression

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

Jackson Park A

This panel brings together movement targets of Trump Administration repression and representatives of defense committee from the Minnesota 15, the Michigan 8, the Committee to Defend Tom Alter, and the Prairieland defendants. The panel will reflect the urgent need for a massive national, broad-based defense effort that can push back the regime’s offensive on political rights. The discussion will be followed by an organizing meeting that can involve new forces who can take these campaigns back to local areas and hold meetings, host fundraisers, and systematically seek the support of unions, faith organizations, and community groups.

Speakers

Tom Alter

Tom Alter is a member of Socialist Horizon and an organizer with the Texas State Employees Union. In September 2025 he was fired from his tenured position at Texas State University after speaking at a Socialism conference. He is suing the University.

Yarden Azoulay Katz

Diana Rueda

Diana Rueda is the sister of Prarieland defendant Maricela Rueda and a member of the DFW Support Committee for the Prarieland defendants. The defendants have been sentenced by a federal judge to a combined 450 years in prison for alleged "domestic terrorism."

Treasure Thoreson

Treasure Thoreson is a Minneapolis special education teacher currently facing federal charges of conspiracy for protesting ICE raids.

Sponsors

United Left Platform

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
Jackson Park A

US Politics

5:00pm CDT

Unruly Subjects LIVE: A Reckoning with our Moment

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

Grant Park AB

From indiscriminate warfare to an AI-fueled tech oligarchy and sprawling new punishment systems, our moment poses new challenges that demand new answers: What are the key features of our political landscape? What solidarities remain untapped? How do we stop the oligarchs and the fascists?

Speakers

Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Chenjerai Kumanyika

Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University and a fellow at the Climate and Community Institute. He is the author of the critically acclaimed books Elite Capture and Reconsidering Reparations, a contributor to Greta Thunberg’s The C... Read More →

Sponsors

Hammer & Hope

Unruly Subjects

Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
Grant Park AB

US Politics

6:30pm CDT

Tarot for Socialists!

Sunday September 6, 2026 6:30pm - 8:00pm CDT

Grant Park AB

Who says socialists can’t be a little witchy? Whether you’re a seasoned tarot enthusiast or a total newbie, this tarot meet up will provide a friendly space for discussing all things tarot. Bring your own deck or use one of ours to do readings for your comrades and see what’s in the cards.

This meet-up will take place outside on the lawn, weather-permitting, or in Erie, in case of rain.

Sunday September 6, 2026 6:30pm - 8:00pm CDT
Grant Park AB

Activity

6:30pm CDT

Organizer Happy Hour

Sunday September 6, 2026 6:30pm - 8:30pm CDT

Bronzeville Winery

Join us at Bronzeville Winery for drinks, hor d'oeuvres and an opportunity to learn more about The Forge, Scalawag Magazine, and connect with other organizers and writers!

Sponsors

Scalawag

The Forge

Sunday September 6, 2026 6:30pm - 8:30pm CDT
Bronzeville Winery 4420 S Cottage Grove Ave, Chicago, IL 60653

Meet-up

6:30pm CDT

Firebrands: the Organizing RPG | Actual Play Session!

Sunday September 6, 2026 6:30pm - 9:30pm CDT

Superior

Our kingdom is plagued by dragons, monsters, and the greatest threat of all: multinational corporations crushing workers for profit!

Come play or watch Firebrands: BloomQuest, a homebrew D&D one-shot campaign. 5 player spots - first come, first served!

Firebrands is a TTRPG system that teaches people how to organize. Help us bring Firebrands to life by joining our mailing list: firebrandsrpg.com

Sunday September 6, 2026 6:30pm - 9:30pm CDT
Superior

Activity

7:00pm CDT

Tempest Meet-Up

Sunday September 6, 2026 7:00pm - 8:00pm CDT

Michigan

Join us in an informal setting to find out more about the Tempest Collective and the politics of revolutionary socialism from below. Tempest has local groups across the US and Canada, and we welcome new members.

Sunday September 6, 2026 7:00pm - 8:00pm CDT
Michigan

Meet-up

about <br>

7:00pm CDT

Steal This Story, Please! Film Screening and Discussion

Sunday September 6, 2026 7:00pm - 9:00pm CDT

W190A

Fiercely independent journalist Amy Goodman has spent three decades holding the powerful to account, reporting from war zones and the Democracy Now! newsroom. In Steal This Story, Please!, Oscar-nominated filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin craft a riveting portrait of journalism’s power – and peril – in an era of corporate control and political attacks on truth. (Film screening and Q&A)

Speakers

Amy Goodman

Juan González

Carl Deal

Sunday September 6, 2026 7:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
W190A

Radical History

7:00pm CDT

Democratic Socialists of America Meet-Up

Sunday September 6, 2026 7:00pm - 9:30pm CDT

RSVP to receive location info

Join Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for a Socialism Conference social! Members, interested members, and all comrades are welcome.

RSVP at this link to receive location info

Sponsors

DSA

Sunday September 6, 2026 7:00pm - 9:30pm CDT
RSVP to receive location info

Meet-up

8:00pm CDT

Chicago IPO/Neighborhood Org Social

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT

Dusable ABC

Looking for likeminded community in you neighborhood? Curious about political organizations in your area? Come connect with fellow Chicagoans building local movements!

Sponsors

33rd Ward Working Families

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
Dusable ABC

Meet-up

8:00pm CDT

Cultural Worker Meet-Up

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT

Field ABC

If you are an artist or someone who is curious about realizing the revolutionary possibilities of art, please join us at the Cultural Workers Meet-Up. This will be a space where artists and creatives can exchange ideas about how to meaningfully connect their creative labor to organized struggle and discuss what it means to create with radical intent.

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
Field ABC

Meet-up

8:00pm CDT

Jewish Voice for Peace Meet-Up

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT

Jackson Park B

Jewish Voice for Peace is the world's largest Jewish organization supporting Palestine. We're organizing a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of U.S. Jews. If you’re looking for a political home for Jews on the left in this perilous moment; if you’re wanting a Jewish community with justice at the center; if you're looking to turn your anger and grief into meaningful, strategic action: you belong with us. Come connect with other JVP members and leaders from across the country.

Sponsors

JVP

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
Jackson Park B

Meet-up

8:00pm CDT

Library Workers Meetup

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT

Hyde Park A

Radical library workers unite! If you identify as a library worker, please join us at the Library Workers Meetup. This will be a space where library workers can build connections and exchange ideas about how to support social movements, fight against fascist assaults on education, and build collective power in our workplaces.

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
Hyde Park A

Meet-up

8:00pm CDT

Radical Healthcare Workers and Friends Meet Up

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT

Jackson Park A

We all know our healthcare system is rotten at its roots due to its profit centered motive. It can feel isolating working under increasingly precarious conditions with patients' lives in our hands. Patients suffer and we do too. But we must build networks of solidarity because it is only through our collective power that we can win the healthcare system we all deserve. Come meet radical healthcare workers, medical debt abolitionists and disability justice activists to connect, scheme and dream!

Sponsors

Debt Collective’s Healthcare Worker Solidarity Collective

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
Jackson Park A

Meet-up

8:00pm CDT

South Asian Solidarity Meet-Up

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT

Hyde Park B

South Asia Solidarity Network (SASN) builds solidarity across interconnected struggles in South Asia and beyond. SASN members recently visited Pakistani-administered Kashmir, where a mass movement of protests for rights have faced a deadly crackdown. They will share their observations, and we invite attendees interested in South Asia or with a South Asian background to connect with us.

Sponsors

South Asian Solidarity Network

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
Hyde Park B

Meet-up

8:00pm CDT

Tech Worker Meetup

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT

Reggies Chicago (2105 S State St)

Join seasoned organizers who are building worker power across the tech industry, from the very first wall to wall union at Kickstarter to the massive solidarity union at Google. Chat about emerging strategy, hear highlights from the wider tech labor movement, and share tactics for common challenges like organizing remotely.

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
Reggies Chicago (2105 S State St)

Meet-up, Subtype1

8:00pm CDT

The South Meet Up

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT

Burnham ABC

Are you from the South of the US? Join fellow conference participants from the South to meet each other, talk about your organizing, and make connections for future struggles!

Sponsors

Southern Workers Assembly

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
Burnham ABC

Meet-up

9:00pm CDT

The Neo-Futurists present THE INFINITE WRENCH

Sunday September 6, 2026 9:00pm - 10:00pm CDT

Jackson Park CD

The longest-running late-night show in Chicago, THE INFINITE WRENCH is thirty original plays in sixty minutes. Each play offers something different—funny, profound, topical, irreverent, musical—inspired by the lived experiences of the cast. Ongoing, ever-changing, always honest, always transformative. The Neo-Futurists perform 49 weeks a year in Andersonville.

Sunday September 6, 2026 9:00pm - 10:00pm CDT
Jackson Park CD

Culture and Art