Socialism 2026: Full Schedule

2:30pm CDT

From a Marxist Feminist Point of View: Freedom, Rationality and Human Nature

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

This panel explores the fruitfulness of approaching key philosophical questions from a Marxist-feminist perspective. It will examine how different modes of production (such as capitalism or feudalism) have structures which shape and limit potentials for human emancipation, particularly women’s freedom. In the process, panelists will articulate how capitalism should be understood as a framework within which other relations of oppression are structured and hierarchized.

Speakers

Nancy Holmstrom

Nancy Holmstrom, Prof Emerita Philosophy Rutgers, New Politics Editorial Board

Phil Gasper

Phil Gasper is co-editor of New Politics, editor of an annotated edition of The Communist Manifesto, and a member of the Tempest Collective.

Alex Holmstrom-Smith

Alex Holmstrom-Smith, labor lawyer

Rose Lenehan

Rose Lenehan, PhD Philosophy, tenant organizer

Sponsors

Daniel Singer Foundation

New Politics

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

Gender-Sexuality-Liberation

4:30pm CDT

Workers Deserve More! A Program for a Future Beyond Capitalism

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

Adler ABC

This summer, DSA released “Workers Deserve More,” our political program for a free, equal, and democratic society that prioritizes human flourishing and peace instead of exploitation, oppression, and war. We’ll discuss how we developed Workers Deserve More, its contents, the reactions so far, and its role in organizing for democratic socialism in our current moment, and for our future. program.dsausa.org

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 →

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 →

Michaela Brangan

Michaela Brangan is an educator and researcher, chair of DSA’s National Political Education Committee, and a member of North New Jersey DSA. She cochairs DSA’s Workers Deserve More program committee.

Frances Gill

Frances Gill is cochair of DSA’s Workers Deserve More program committee, and a member of DSA’s National Political Committee from Los Angeles. She is a health care worker and rank-and-file member of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD).

Megan Romer

Megan Romer is a mom, a writer, a PTA volunteer and an erstwhile Sunday School teacher from rural Central New York. She's been organizing with DSA since 2018, is a former co-chair of Southwest Louisiana DSA, and served three terms on steering of the DSA national Mutual Aid Working... Read More →

Sponsors

DSA

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

Left Strategy

10:00am CDT

Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World's Most Powerful Industry

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

Adler ABC

As tech bosses fall in line with the right, tech workers are fighting back. Join Clarissa Redwine and JS Tan as they explore the history and lessons of the tech worker movement that has been taking on their own employers since the early 2020s, drawing crucial insights from this inspiring workers' movement and analyzing the rise of the hostile labor politics that define Silicon Valley today.

Speakers

Clarissa Redwine

Clarissa Redwine helped organize the Kickstarter union and cofounded the tech organizing conference Circuit Breakers. Her organizing work has been featured in The New York Times, the BBC, The Guardian, The Verge, TechCrunch, and elsewhere. She is co-author of Against Tech Oligarchy... Read More →

JS Tan

JS Tan is getting his PhD at MIT and formerly worked in tech. His work has been featured in The New York Times, MIT Technology Review, Dissent, Jacobin, Foreign Policy, The Baffler, and The Guardian, among other outlets. He is co-author of Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance... Read More →

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

Labor Movement

12:00pm CDT

Rank and File Lessons from a New York Nurses Strike in the Mamdani Era

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

Adler ABC

Hear how the rank-and-file leaders of the longest nurses’ strike in NY history defeated multimillionaire hospital CEOs on the freezing picket lines by defying concessionary agreements from their own leadership and using open bargaining strategies to build unity, to win pay raises, staffing/workplace safety standards and protections against ICE.

Speakers

Roxana Garcia

Roxanna Garcia has been an active a member of NYSNA, throughout her 14 year career as an RN and NP. During the January 2026 strike, she served on the Contract Action Team and as a Strike Captain, acting as a liaison between members and leadership, supporting colleagues, and helping... Read More →

Beth Loudin

Beth Loudin is a NYC Union nurse who specializes in cardiac neonatal intensive care while leading her local bargaining unit as president of NYSNA at NYP. Beth lives in Brooklyn with her husband and toddler.

TBD

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

Labor Movement

3:00pm CDT

Ocean Deep Solidarity: Reparations, LANDBACK, and Collective Liberation

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

Adler ABC

As capitalism and empire intensify crises this panel explores how Black and Indigenous struggles for land, reparations, and sovereignty are braided to challenge structural power. Drawing on BLIS Collective research with RISE (Research for Indigenous Social Action and Equity) Center, we examine coordinated organizing, narrative, and strategy for liberated futures.

Moderators

Dallas Goldtooth

Speakers

Dr. Aymar Jean Escoffery

Dr. Aymar Jean "AJ" Escoffery (fka Aymar Jean Christian) is the Margaret Walker Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, Faculty Director of the MS in Leadership for Creative Enterprises, and Faculty Associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center... Read More →

Matthew Harvey

Matthew Harvey is a father, media literacy educator, and award-winning writer born-and-raised in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. His career is dedicated to empowering communities through access to information, and connecting people through storytelling. He spent nearly a decade as... Read More →

Claire Maracle

Claire Maracle is a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, raised as a guest on Muscogee, Osage, and Cherokee land. This experience directly informs their work in rematriation and their conviction that language is the key to transcending displacement... Read More →

Raven Schwam-Curtis

Raven Schwam-Curtis (they/she) makes disappeared histories visible through accessible education. As a Black, Jewish, and queer educator, Raven’s work emerges from the intersections where communities overlap, clash, and must find common ground. After earning degrees from Cornell... Read More →

Sponsors

BLIS Collective

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

Anti-colonial Politics

5:00pm CDT

War, Capitalism, and Navigating the Climate Crisis

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

Adler ABC

We are all living through the most severe ecological crisis in human history, and it can feel overwhelming, disorienting, and hopeless. A vision of a just future seems even more out of reach as capitalism and war continue to dominate the world order. What are we to do? Can our problems be solved politically? Will green energy save us? How can we remain steadfast in the face of an economy dominated by Big Oil, Big Tech, and militarism? In this discussion, prominent climate activist Tori Tsui and journalist Joshua Frank will explore what's at stake and how and why the broader climate movement must think and organize to confront these persistent and daunting challenges.

Speakers

Joshua Frank

Joshua Frank is co-editor of CounterPunch and co-host of CounterPunch Radio. He is the author of Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, and the forthcoming, Bad Energy: The AI Hucksters, Rogue Lithium Extractors, and Wind Industrialists Who are Selling Off... Read More →

Tori Tsui

Tori Tsui is an environmental activist, author, and climate advisor originally from Hong Kong. She is a senior advisor for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and a campaigner for the Stop Rosebank coalition. Her work has been featured in British Vogue, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan... Read More →

Sponsors

CounterPunch

Pilsen Community Books

Science for the People

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

Climate Justice

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

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

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

10:00am CDT

Mayor Mamdani vs. Wall Street. Sewer Socialism and Municipal Financing—Which Way Forward?

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

Adler ABC

Wall Street has cities in a financial straight jacket. Yet with the recent elections of socialist mayors and council members, notably New York's Zohran Mamdani, financing new social programs will be essential. This panel explores both the ways in which private financing and the municipal bond market can restrict what is politically possible, and what an inventive new generation of municipal socialists can do to escape the straight jacket.

Speakers

Left Strategy

2:30pm CDT

4:30pm CDT

10:00am CDT

12:00pm CDT

3:00pm CDT

5:00pm CDT

12:00pm CDT

3:00pm CDT

5:00pm CDT

10:00am CDT

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