Socialism 2026: Full Schedule

10:00am CDT

Song for a Hard-Hit People: Building Anti-Racist Solidarity in Appalachia

Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

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.

Speakers

Beth Howard

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

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

US Politics

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

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

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

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 →

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

10:00am CDT

12:00pm CDT

3:00pm CDT

5:00pm CDT

5:00pm CDT

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