Socialism 2026: Full Schedule

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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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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 →

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

10:00am CDT

12:00pm CDT

3:00pm CDT

5:00pm CDT

6:30pm CDT

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