Socialism 2026: Full Schedule

2:30pm CDT

Sing, Struggle, Organize: Movement Songs, Political Education, and Collective Power

Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT

From picket lines to protest movements, songs have always been weapons of struggle. This interactive workshop teaches movement songs while unpacking their histories and political function, showing how culture builds consciousness, collective identity, and power. Participants will actively practice using culture as a tool for organizing.

Speakers

Steff Reed

Steff Reed is an award-winning musician, cultural organizer, scholar, and liberation theologian whose work uses music and faith as tools to build culture, consciousness, and collective liberation. Find Steff on Instagram at @iamsteffreed.

Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA

Culture and Art

4:30pm CDT

Introduction to Theatre of the Oppressed

Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT

TBA

Play Time! Brazilian Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed provoked director Augusto Boal to develop the Theatre of the Oppressed. He wanted a theatre that the working class could use as community building and as a weapon for revolution. This workshop invites all to participate in TO’s very fun game structures that create instant working relationships. No experience in performance or theatre is required.

Speakers

Douglas Paterson

Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA

Culture and Art

12:00pm CDT

Art and Propaganda: On Learning from Paul Robeson, Why the Artist must Take Sides

Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

TBA

Join award-winning poet and performer Saul Williams for a discussion of his new book, Song My Mother Taught Me: Why The Artist Must Take Sides, a clear-eyed exploration of radical poetry, art, and the role of the artist in these times.

Speakers

Saul Williams

Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA

Culture and Art

3:00pm CDT

Printing the Revolution: The Role of Art in Organizing and Building Community Resistance

Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

Speakers

Dio Cramer

Ricardo Levins Morales

Sponsors

Pilsen Community Books

Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Culture and Art

6:30pm CDT

Songs for Liberation

Saturday September 5, 2026 6:30pm - 8:00pm CDT

Songs for Liberation is a Chicago protest music collective that sings at protests, fundraisers and community events. They were formed in response to the genocide in Gaza, and for several months were the "house band" on Friday mornings at anti-ICE protests in Broadview. Hear the collective sing, and stick around afterwards to discuss how to duplicate our model!

Saturday September 5, 2026 6:30pm - 8:00pm CDT

Culture and Art

10:00am CDT

The Power of Speculative Fiction in a Shifting Political Climate

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

TBA

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

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 →

Vaishnavi Patel

Vaishnavi Patel is a lawyer focusing on constitutional law and civil rights. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Kaikeyi, Goddess of the River, and Ten Incarnations of Rebellion. Visit her on online at vaishnavipatel.com or on Instagram at @vaishnawrites.

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

Culture and Art

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

TBA

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
TBA

Culture and Art

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

TBA

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
TBA

Culture and Art

9:00pm CDT

The Neo-Futurists present THE INFINITE WRENCH

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

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

Culture and Art

10:00am CDT

Art is Politics: Making Movements Irresistible

Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

Art is a part of movements, but how can it best serve the struggles it emerges from? This panel brings together three political artists who work in a diverse range of contexts to present and discuss what they think art can and should do for movements, and where radical imagination can help to build popular power.

Speakers

William Estrada

William Estrada is an arts educator and multidisciplinary artist in Chicago. His art and teaching are a collaborative discourse, critically re-examining public and private spaces with people to engage in radical imagination. He is currently a faculty member at the UIC School of Art... Read More →

Margaret Vail Palmquist

Margaret Vail Palmquist is a DSA member living in Queens, NY originally from St. Paul, MN. She credits the experience of identifying shared emotions through art as her first and deepest relationship with the collective. Though they’ve been ruminating on and expressing ideas through... Read More →

Roger Peet

Roger Peet is an artist, printmaker, muralist and writer living in Portland, Oregon. He is a founding member of the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative and has been making visual materials for left movements for the last thirty years. He organizes with the Portland chapter of DSA and served... Read More →

Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

Culture and Art

2:30pm CDT

4:30pm CDT

12:00pm CDT

3:00pm CDT

6:30pm CDT

10:00am CDT

3:00pm CDT

5:00pm CDT

9:00pm CDT

10:00am CDT

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