Socialism 2026: Full Schedule

2:30pm CDT

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

With growing political turbulence making the future unpredictable, now more than ever it is crucial that we take responsibility for developing the skills and knowledge to protect our communities. This workshop is an active training in de-escalation skills for social movement activists, and all are encouraged to attend.

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 →

Sponsors

Haymarket Books

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

Skill Sharing

4:30pm CDT

Life After Death Row

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

Clark ABC

In the late 1990s, death row prisoners and their supporters hosted a series of live unscripted conversations between death row prisoners and audience members in forums around the country, reshaping the national debate on capital punishment and helping to force the overturning of capital punishment in IL, MD, and CA. Join two former death row prisoners who spearheaded the historic campaign and their “outside” allies for a conversation on their remarkable story and how their struggle for justice continues after death row.

Speakers

Mumia Abu-Jamal

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an African-American journalist, advocate for racial and economic justice, and former Black Panther. He is currently serving life without parole in Pennsylvania.

Kenny Collins

Stanley Howard

Mike Stark

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

Abolition

12:00pm CDT

AI Extractivism: Global Systems, Local Processes

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

Clark ABC

From colonial cattle economies to gold, critical minerals, and data centers, this session presents AI as an evolving extractive regime of global capitalism that reorganizes governance frameworks. It examines how system logics within emerging geopolitical structures translate into local politics and collective responses, exploring possibilities for transnational resistance and solidarity.

Speakers

Shiera S. al-Malik

Shiera S. el-Malik is Professor of International Studies at DePaul University in Chicago. She teaches and writes on themes of coloniality, politics, and theory. Her research is guided by an interest in the intersection of politics of knowledge and lived experience, particularly in... Read More →

V'cenza Cirefice

Dr. V’cenza Cirefice is an ecofeminist researcher, organiser and artist from the Mourne Mountains in the North of Ireland. She works on themes of resistance to extractivism and feminist political ecology. Currently she organises with CAIM, Communities Against the Injustice of Mining... Read More →

Marta Cook

Marta Cook is a researcher, writer, and widely recognized as one of the foremost harpists in Irish traditional music. Her article Subjects of Tradition: Cultural Construction and Irish Comprador Capitalism appeared in Irish Studies Review Volume 32, 2024. Her work on cultural extractivism... Read More →

Fawn E. Pochel

Fawn E. Pochel (they/she), a gender-queer urban Native, works closely with communities across Chicago to incorporate land-based pedagogies and Indigenous worldview into curricula and policy while working towards dismantling systems of white supremacy. Their father, a member of the... Read More →

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

Science and Tech

1:30pm CDT

Labor for Palestine National Network Meet-Up

Saturday September 5, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT

Clark ABC

Join Labor for Palestine activists to strategize about how we can collectively organize workers' power to shut down genocidal wars, from LA to Palestine, Iran, and beyond.

Saturday September 5, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Clark ABC

Meet-up

3:00pm CDT

Connecting with Coworkers to Form Your Union

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

Clark ABC

Trying to organize your workplace? Want to learn how to have conversations that move people to action? Join the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) for a training on tried and true methods of organizing: how to build relationships, ask good questions, and bring your coworkers in to join the campaign.

Speakers

Dawn Tefft

Dawn Tefft works as a union representative and organizer, volunteers as a Lead Organizer and Advanced Organizer for the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), and volunteers with the Federal Unionists Network (FUN). She has helped develop and facilitate labor trainings... Read More →

Araya Barnes

Araya is a trainer and organizer for EWOC and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. They most frequently work at the intersection of the labor and electoral arms of the DSA.

Rumin

Rumin supports trainings at EWOC that help workers launch efforts to organize their workplace. In her day job, she conducts public health research.

AK Alilonu

AK is a Southsider, an organizer with EWOC and one of the coordinators for its Chicago local, CHIWOC. He works as a union lawyer at the Illinois Nurses Association.

Atulya Dora-Laskey

Atulya was an organizing and bargaining committee member for the first-ever unionized Chipotle. She is now an EWOC volunteer and a staff organizer for the University of Illinois Chicago United Faculty. She is trying to read more.

Sponsors

EWOC

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

Labor Movement

5:00pm CDT

Who Moves America: Film Screening and Discussion

Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 7:00pm CDT

Clark ABC

As the deadline for a historic strike looms, UPS workers across the country navigate the challenges of building solidarity with their 340,000 co-workers. Feature documentary Who Moves America joins Teamsters in New York, California, and Kentucky. Join us for a conversation with Teamsters organizer Antonio Rosario.

Moderators

Jesse Sharkey

Jesse Sharkey is the former president of the Chicago Teachers Union.

Speakers

Yael Bridge

Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 7:00pm CDT
Clark ABC

Labor Movement

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

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

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

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

10:00am CDT

Neoliberalism, Fascism, Feudalism...or Socialism? What Lies Ahead

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

Clark ABC

What comes next – what configurations of neoliberalism, fascism, feudalism, and socialism lie in store in the decades ahead? And what are the opportunities to change those trajectories? To answer these questions, this session convenes speakers, all drawing from the history of global capitalism, to reflect on our current moment and offer divergent perspectives on what lies ahead.

Speakers

Hagen Blix

Hagen Blix is a New York City–based cognitive scientist whose research spans language, artificial intelligence, and political economy. He is the coauthor of Why We Fear AI.

Jasper Bernes

Jasper Bernes lives in Oakland and teaches in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. A regular contributor to the Field Notes section of the Brooklyn Rail, he is the author of The Future of Revolution: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George... Read More →

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.

Erin McElroy

Erin McElroy is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Washington, where they run the Anti-Eviction Lab and work on issues surrounding gentrification, technology, race, and empire. McElroy is also cofounder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project and is an editor with... Read More →

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

Socialist and Marxist Theory

2:30pm CDT

4:30pm CDT

12:00pm CDT

1:30pm CDT

3:00pm CDT

5:00pm CDT

10:00am CDT

12:00pm CDT

3:00pm CDT

5:00pm CDT

10:00am CDT

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