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Friday, September 4
 

2:30pm CDT

Abolitionist Campaigns in Hostile Terrains: Fighting Against Immigrant Detention in NY
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
We will be looking at the NY Dignity Not Detention (DND) campaign as a case study on abolitionist organizing that builds the power of migrant communities. We will discuss the hostile conditions of the moment and how we worked with communities & groups resisting ICE to achieve victory. Join us to learn about DND and develop and strengthen your abolitionist anti-deportation campaigns.
Speakers
VM

Viju Mathew

Viju is a member of Critical Resistance and has been fighting abolitionist campaigns in coalitions across California & New York for the past few years. Viju & Critical Resistance see the abolition of ICE as Part and Parcel of prison industrial complex abolition.
SG

Sophia Gurule

Sophia Elena Gurulé (she/her/ella) is a member of Critical Resistance based in Brooklyn, New York with experience organizing at the intersection of prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition, migrant justice, and organized labor. A long-time member of the Dignity Not Detention coalition, Sophia has... Read More →
Sponsors
avatar for Critical Resistance
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
  Abolition

2:30pm CDT

Confronting Colonialism: Race, Indigeneity, and Liberation
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
In a period marked by the rapid expansion of U.S. empire at home and abroad, how can the left build a real fight back beyond white supremacist ideas of justice? What does meaningful solidarity between Indigenous, Black, and working-class struggles look like? How can movements confront colonialism while building collective liberation? Join Kyle T. Mays and Michael Staudenmaier as they examine these questions and envision a path toward organizing beyond colonial structures.
Speakers
KT

Kyle T. Mays

Kyle T. Mays is an Afro-Indigenous (Saginaw Chippewa) writer and scholar. He is a professor of African American studies, American Indian studies, and history at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author or co-author of four books, including Rethinking the Red Powe... Read More →
MS

Michael Staudenmaier

Michael Staudenmaier is an independent scholar living in Chicago.  He received his PhD in history from the University of Illinois and taught for more than a decade at various universities in Illinois and Indiana.  He is the author of White, Black, Brown:  Becoming Puerto Rican in Chicago (University... Read More →
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
  Anti-colonial Politics

2:30pm CDT

The Threat of Geoengineering and the Socialist Response
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
As the climate crisis intensifies, capital is turning to geoengineering, technologies capable of directed perturbation of Earth systems. Here, we’ll explain what geoengineering is and why socialists should be opposed to its development. We will also discuss large-scale visions of ecosocialist transformation that challenge the urgency of intentional climate modification.
Speakers
TC

T Callahan

T Callahan is a freelance science writer based in Chicago and author of The Stranded Asset on Substack. An editor of the forthcoming third edition of the Ecological Economics textbook and passionate advocate for eco-socialism, T strives to reveal capital's root-level complicity and... Read More →
AS

Ashwin Shantha

Ashwin Shantha (they/them) is a Ph.D. student at York University in Toronto, CA. They are a scholar of political economy, focused on exploitation and development in the Global South. Ashwin also maintains the Journal of International Solidarity Substack and podcast.
T
Sponsors
avatar for Science for the People
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
  Climate Justice

2:30pm CDT

Sing, Struggle, Organize: Movement Songs, Political Education, and Collective Power
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
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
avatar for Steff Reed

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

2:30pm CDT

A University Fit For Our Dreams: Abolitionist Higher Education
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
This session will situate the university as a key site of ideological and material struggle within the United States’ racial-gendered-colonial-capitalist political economy. Participants will be introduced to the challenges impacting higher education, be guided in critically appraising the frameworks influencing our Universities’ actions in this moment of perpetual “crisis” and collectively find solutions that generate greater well-being and real safety on campus.
Speakers
SA
LB
SG
PM
JW
Sponsors
avatar for Scholars for Social Justice and Coalition Against Campus Debt
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
  Education Justice

2:30pm CDT

Community Lessons for Fighting Fascism: In Honor of Amisha Patel
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
Organizers and storytellers from across Chicago’s movements speak to what our people will need to carry into the fights against fascism: deep relationships, courage to act amidst uncertainty, self-reflection and healing, and a long-arc strategy to move us past the short-term pain. This session is held to honor the legacy of our sister and comrade, Amisha Patel.
Speakers
T
Sponsors
avatar for Truthout
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
  Fighting the Right

2:30pm CDT

From a Marxist Feminist Point of View: Freedom, Rationality and Human Nature
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
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
NH

Nancy Holmstrom

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

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.
AH

Alex Holmstrom-Smith

Alex Holmstrom-Smith, labor lawyer
RL

Rose Lenehan

Rose Lenehan, PhD Philosophy, tenant organizer
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
  Gender-Sexuality-Liberation

2:30pm CDT

From Prairie to Poppy: How Struggles for Land, War, and Farming Are Connected from Chicago to Palestine
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
You're walking through the produce section and spot your favorite fruit! But how did it get to this grocery store? Whose labor, land, and future is tied up in the farming, packaging, and shipping of that fruit? In this workshop, participants will learn about how the struggles for food sovereignty are intertwined with struggles against imperialism and militarism. Join Chicago Dissenters and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) for an interactive session where participants will discuss, research, and leave with tools for how to divest from capitalist food systems.
Speakers
HA
AF
RS
Sponsors
avatar for Dissenters
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
  Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism

2:30pm CDT

Inside Organizing 101
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
Are you interested in organizing your workplace? Join Jaz Brisack, co-founder of Starbucks Workers United, for an inside look at the skills, tactics, and practices that make inside organizing most effective, and gain hands-on practice in mapping a workplace and untangling workplace dynamics.
Speakers
JB

Jaz Brisack

Jaz Brisack is a union organizer and the co-director of the Inside Organizer School, which trains workers to unionize their workplaces. They have worked on campaigns at companies ranging from Nissan to Starbucks to Tesla to Ben & Jerry's. They are the author of Get on the Job and... Read More →
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
  Labor Movement

2:30pm CDT

Mother Jones and the Early Socialist Movement: Lessons for Today
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, one of the Socialist Party's most successful organizers, a founder of the Industrial Workers of the World and the most successful labor organizer of the early 20th century constantly turned to her socialist beliefs in constructing innovative organizing strategies and tactics. What lessons does she leave us for struggle today?
Speakers
RF

Rosemary Feurer

Rosemary Feurer is Distinguished Professor of History at Northern Illinois University specializing in labor and social movements. A key organizer in the effort to successfully organize the faculty at her university, Feurer was a founding member of DSA and is the Director of the Mother... Read More →
JR

Joseph Rathke

Joe Rathke is a PhD student in labor history at the University of Chicago. He was a lead organizer in the successful effort to organize the 3000 member Graduate Students United-UE Local 1103, on the bargaining team for the groundbreaking first contract and is serving his second term... Read More →
Sponsors
avatar for Mother Jones Heritage Project
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
  Radical History

2:30pm CDT

We Keep Us Safe: De-Escalation Training
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
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
BB

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
avatar for Haymarket Books
Friday September 4, 2026 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA
  Skill Sharing

4:30pm CDT

Life After Death Row
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
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
MA

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.
KC
SH
MS
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
  Abolition

4:30pm CDT

Confronting Zionism: Decolonizing Palestine and Building the World Anew
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
For over one hundred years, Palestinians have struggled for liberation in their homeland. This session will take direct analytical aim at the ideology and institutional structures animating Israel’s brutal rule over Palestinian lives, and argue that Zionism is colonial and racist in essence and practice and that decolonization in Palestine predicated on redistribution, reparations and refugee return remains the only just way forward.
Speakers
NE

Noura Erakat

Noura Erakat is Professor of Africana Studies and Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is the author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019), which received the Palestine Book Award and the Bronze Medal for... Read More →
BA
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
  Anti-colonial Politics

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
DP
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
  Culture and Art

4:30pm CDT

Why Does Capitalism Suck and Why Does it Fail? An Introduction to Marxist Economics
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
Why does capitalism produce lousy jobs, long hours, unemployment, racism, sexism, homo/transphobia, xenophobia and periodic economic crises that make things even worse? Marx's analysis of capitalism provides some key answers.
Speakers
CP

Charlie Post

Charlie Post is a long-time revolutionary socialist and writer, and a member of the Tempest Collective.
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
  Economics

4:30pm CDT

Femme-inism Against Cisness: Bread, Roses, and Hormones, Too
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
Why must our struggles against capitalism combat “cisness” (the naturalization of assigned sex), and how can the political distinction between femininity and the “femme” assist us in this task? Join Sophie Lewis for a conversation about “femmunism,” life-making labor, whorish artifice, gender-maximalism, transfeminist abolitionism, and the class war from above waged upon us by contemporary misogynist and femmephobic enemy feminisms.
Speakers
AB

A.J. Bohrer

A.J. Bohrer is a theorist, activist, and translator based in Chicago. Their first book, Marxism and Intersectionality: Race, Gender, Class, and Sexuality under Contemporary Capitalism (Transcript Verlag, 2019) was short-listed for the Deutscher Prize and has been translated into Spanish... Read More →
SL

Sophie Lewis

Sophie Lewis is a writer, utopian, feminist, and ex-academic scholar based in Philadelphia, hailing originally from the UK, France, and Germany. She is the author of Femmephilia, Enemy Feminisms, Abolish the Family, and Full Surrogacy Now. Lewis’s essays and articles appear routinely... Read More →
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
  Gender-Sexuality-Liberation

4:30pm CDT

How Veterans & Labor Are Fighting VA Union Busting And Privatization
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
The murder of VA nurse member Alex Pretti drew national attention to federal worker resistance to Trump. On this panel, a VA care-giver, VA patient, and healthcare activist will report on labor/community campaigning to keep our best working model of socialized medicine from being privatized and dismantled.
Speakers
SH
DB
GN
LD
Sponsors
avatar for Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
  Labor Movement

4:30pm CDT

Unveiling the Prophet: Anti-Labor Secret Societies and Their Activist Enemies
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
Every December, St. Louis elites crown one of their daughters the Queen of Love and Beauty in a ceremony that celebrates the breaking of strikes and the enforcement of racial hierarchies. The Veiled Prophet Society has shaped the course of American history, and is an important example of how shadowy elites organize themselves against working-class power. Join Devin Thomas O’Shea as he explores the history of the secret society that has controlled St. Louis for over a century, and the lessons learned by the local activists who have pushed back against its power.
Speakers
KK
DT

Devin Thomas O'Shea

Devin Thomas O’Shea is the author of The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis. His writing has appeared in The Nation, Slate, The Iowa Review, Jacobin, Boulevard, and elsewhere.
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
  Labor Movement

4:30pm CDT

Transformative Rural Organizing
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
Rural communities are often written off as politically unreachable, but organizers across the country are building power through relational networks, trusted institutions, and local leadership. This session explores practical strategies for rural organizing and introduces a toolkit designed to help organizers build trust, grow a base, and develop leaders in rural communities.
Speakers
BB

Bo Belotti

Bo Belotti is a community organizer from Virginia and first year Masters of Public Policy student at Georgetown University.  Bo has spent the last 10 years engaged in movement work, starting with their local school board while they were still in high school.  They attended Virginia... Read More →
JK

Jake Krug

Jake Krug is an organizer based in Staunton, VA. Jake began organizing as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America before co-founding the Shenandoah Socialist Collective and Shenandoah Mutual Aid. He is a member of the United Campus Workers of Virginia, CWA Local 2265, where... Read More →
VR

Vida Rangel

Vida is a community organizer and public servant with a long history of working to improve the lives of those in her communities and improving the systems we all live under. As an autistic queer nonbinary transgender Latina woman, her commitment to community and to working families... Read More →
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
  Left Strategy

4:30pm CDT

Workers Deserve More! A Program for a Future Beyond Capitalism
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
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
AS

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 →
MB

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.
FG

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).
MR

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
avatar for DSA
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
  Left Strategy

4:30pm CDT

What We Saw in Chicago: From Midway Blitz to New Forms of Community Defense
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
When hundreds of Border Patrol agents came to Chicago to carry out warrantless arrests and racialized sweeps, Illinoisans mobilized to protect their neighbors and document abuses. But the response from Chicago and its suburban neighbors did not begin with the raids. It was built through decades of organizing, relationship building, and community infrastructure. As immigration enforcement continues to evolve, this panel explores what Chicago’s experience offers organizers confronting expanding state repression and building collective power in their own communities.
Speakers
JD
AG
T
RW
Sponsors
avatar for ICIRR
avatar for OCAD
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
  Migrant Justice

4:30pm CDT

People Over Mega-Events: Organizing for Housing, Workers, and Communities Beyond the World Cup
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
Cities increasingly chase global events like the Olympics and World Cup while working-class communities face displacement, policing, and exploitation. This session explores how organizers in Atlanta built Play Fair ATL to fight back—and how socialists can organize coalitions that turn mega-events into battlegrounds for housing justice, labor rights, and community power.
Speakers
T
Sponsors
avatar for Play Fair ATL
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
  Organizing

4:30pm CDT

Why Eugene Debs Matters
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
Eugene V. Debs died 100 years ago, but the radical vision of this five-time Socialist presidential candidate, is more relevant than ever. This session is a conversation with Shawn Gude, the author of a new biography of Debs, who in 1920 received a million votes while running from prison.
Speakers
AD

Allison Duerk

Allison Duerk has served as the director of the Eugene V. Debs Museum since 2016. Originally from rural northeast Indiana, Allison studied political science and music at Indiana State University in Terre Haute. Allison's work at the museum connects the Debs legacy to ongoing movements... Read More →
SG

Shawn Gude

Shawn Gude is the author of American Socialist: The Life and Legacy of Eugene V. Debs (October 2026, Simon & Schuster).
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
  Radical History

4:30pm CDT

Abolition Judaism: The Revolutionary Possiblities of Diaspora
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
Everyone is made in the image of the divine—even (maybe especial)y) when you don't believe in God, or aren't sure. To take this seriously, to explore ira imication for a revolutionary horizon - we are making Abolition Judaism, continuing the proud tradition finding spiritual sustenance for our solidarity in our religious practice. Come co-create it, and hear what we are learning about sifting through the ashes of the old.
Speakers
BB
MB
RA
DR
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
  Religion & Spirituality

4:30pm CDT

Political Education 1: What Are We Up Against?
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
Political education begins from reality: we need to first understand the world in order to change it. This workshop provides a basic grounding in principles of participatory education, the dynamic relationship between our ideas and material reality, and an understanding of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony before inviting participants to collectively map the interlocking repressive and carceral structures we confront every day.
Speakers
GM
CR
AS
Sponsors
avatar for B-REAL
avatar for Center for Political Education
avatar for W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School
Friday September 4, 2026 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA
  Socialist and Marxist Theory

7:30pm CDT

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Palestine, Internationalism, Abolition
Friday September 4, 2026 7:30pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
The struggle against state terror extends from the occupied lands and bombed homes of Palestine to the prisons and detention camps of Trump’s America. Join Angela Y. Davis for a conversation on Palestine solidarity, Black feminism, and the abolitionist fight for the future.
Speakers
avatar for Angela Y. Davis

Angela Y. Davis

Angela Y. Davis is Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz. An activist, writer, and lecturer, her work focuses on prisons, police, abolition, and the related intersections of race, gender, and class. She is the author of many books, f... Read More →
avatar for Naomi Murakawa

Naomi Murakawa

Naomi Murakawa is an associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America and the editor of the Abolitionist Papers book series at Haymarket Books... Read More →
Friday September 4, 2026 7:30pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
  Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism
 
Saturday, September 5
 

10:00am CDT

The Black Path to Socialism
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
A recent pew research poll indicates that Black folk have the most positive opinion of socialism of any other race/ethnicity in the US—but there is a contradiction as it pertains to who these folk vote for, the party they support the most, and the “leaders” they allow to speak for and guide them. “The Black Path to Socialism” will explore these contradictions and give historic content as to why and how socialism was always the preferred model for poor and working class Black folk until the rise of the Black Misleadership class and other elements of neoliberalism.
Speakers
KA
I
BK
ER
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Black Liberation

10:00am CDT

No Such Thing As NIMBY: The Fight to Protect Our Water
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
Myopic local site fights have failed to meet the moment. Meanwhile, broad sloganeering and positive visioning around climate justice have not galvanized workers (especially across the South) the way ecosocialists have hoped. This session will explore how the struggle against Corpus Christi's water crisis became an anti-imperialist and ecosocialist struggle.
Speakers
JE

Jenny Espino

Jenny Espino has been organizing across the Gulf South since the Bush era. She has spoken at conferences such as the Southwestern Marxism Conference, the Texas Socialism Conference, Haymarket’s Socialism conference, and on panels and conferences across Europe including Beyond Gas... Read More →
JH

Jake Hernandez

Jake Hernandez is a union steward and the co-chair of Corpus Christi DSA. He has been instrumental in the fight to defend Corpus Christi’s bay and estuaries while connecting local issues like the tax abatements, the drought contingency plan, and water rates to internationalist... Read More →
CT

Chloe Torres

Chloe Torres is a proud lifelong resident of Corpus Christi, Texas and truly believes in the city’s potential to set an example for other Gulf Coast cities on how to fight back against environmental racism. They helped build successful campaigns to elect and reelect a socialist... Read More →
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Climate Justice

10:00am CDT

Hustle Culture vs. Solidarity
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
Hustle Culture offers working-class and poor people a false alternative to organizing that feels:: agency, aspiration, and a path that feels immediate and non-partisan. This panel examines how it shapeshifts across cultural contexts—from MLMs to Girl Boss feminism—and what its appeal reveals about blind spots in how the left communicates solidarity and collective action.
Speakers
NB

Natalie Bencivega

Natalie Bencivenga is an award-winning journalist, producer, and media consultant based in Pittsburgh. She hosts and produces Week in Focus for the Pennsylvania Capital-Star and Just the Source for PublicSource, and is a fellow at Duquesne University's Institute for Ethics and Integrity... Read More →
CK

Chenjerai Kumanyika

Chenjerai Kumanyika is an Assistant Professor at NYU Journalism and Program Director of the Urban Journalism Workshop. He specializes in narrative audio journalism at the intersection of race, history, and media critique. He is co-creator and co-host of Uncivil (Gimlet Media) and... Read More →
DN

Demetrius Noble

Demetrius "D." Noble is a professor, poet, and cultural organizer specializing in African American Literature, Black class antagonisms, and Hip-Hop Studies. A member of Greensboro Socialists, his work has appeared in Tempest, Hammer & Hope, African American Review, Socialism & Democracy... Read More →
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Economics

10:00am CDT

Journalism, Authoritarianism and Struggles Against ICE
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
This panel will explore journalism and other writing about the solidarity networks and mutual aid efforts that emerged in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and other US cities in response to the Trump administration's ICE surge. Speakers include the 2026 Daniel Singer Prize winner Diane de Vignemont, whose winning essay is entitled "Minneapolis Protests Sound a Lot Like the French Resistance," as well as Adam Goodman (Professor at University of Illinois Chicago and author of The Deportation Machine) and Memo Torres (journalist with L.A. TACO and host of the "Daily Memo").
Speakers
AG

Adam Goodman

Adam Goodman, Professor at University of Illinois Chicago and author of The Deportation Machine
MT

Memo Torres

Memo Torres, journalist with L.A. TACO
DD

Diane de Vignemont

Diane de Vignemont, journalist and winner of this year's Daniel Singer Prize
Sponsors
avatar for Daniel Singer Foundation
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Fighting the Right

10:00am CDT

Gender and Accumulation
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
Marxist historians note that “primitive” or “original” accumulation preceded capitalism. This early concentration of wealth depended on the theft of common lands, colonization, slavery, and the displacement of Indigenous peoples. It also required the imposition of a modern gender order. This presentation traces the role of gender discipline in both original accumulation and later moments of intensified capitalist accumulation.
Speakers
EM

Eric Maroney

Eric Maroney is a socialist writer and member of the Tempest Collective. His first book, tentatively titled The Anti-trans Turn, is forthcoming from Haymarket Books.
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Gender-Sexuality-Liberation

10:00am CDT

Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State (Health Fascism Series)
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
As governments retreat from care, and health increasingly becomes a signifier of discipline—rather than provision—fitness, disability, fatness, illness, Blackness, impairment, and bodily capacity are mobilized into measures of moral worth and political belonging. This panel examines how health, disability, body size, and race are instrumentalized by the state and being reorganized under health fascism. Da’Shaun L. Harrison, Beatrice Adler-Bolton, and Artie Vierkant will discuss what these transformations reveal about the changing relationship between capitalism, the state, and everyday life.
Speakers
BA

Beatrice Adler-Bolton

Beatrice Adler-Bolton is a disabled and chronically ill agitator and independent researcher. She is the co-author of Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto (Verso, 2022) and a co-host of the Death Panel podcast.


DL
AV

Artie Vierkant

Artie Vierkant is the co-author of Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto (Verso, 2022) and a co-host, as well as the editor and producer, of the Death Panel podcast. 
Sponsors
avatar for Death Panel
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Health Politics & Disability Justice

10:00am CDT

Building the Anti-War Movement: Identifying and Organizing Against U.S. Military Subcontractors
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
What will it take to meaningfully interrupt the U.S. military industrial complex? How can we engage in effective anti-war action against U.S. imperialism? Using the experience of organizing against Howmet Aerospace, a military subcontractor based in Pittsburgh, panelists will show how local movements can identify hundreds of of lesser-known subcontractors that participate in war profiteering and build effective movements to dismantle their power.
Speakers
MF
JG
JM
VW
Sponsors
avatar for BDS Pittsburgh
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism

10:00am CDT

Crisis in Venezuela: Socialist Perspectives
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
This session features contributors to the book Venezuela in Crisis, presenting Venezuelan socialist analyses of the country’s collapse and advancing an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-authoritarian critique of the Maduro regime. It will also assess the post–January 3 U.S. military intervention and the reconfiguration of power, sovereignty, and class relations in its aftermath.
Speakers
AB

Anderson Bean

Anderson Bean is a North Carolina–based activist and editor and contributor of the book Venezuela in Crisis: Socialist Perspectives from Haymarket Books, and the author of Communes and the Venezuelan State: The Struggle for Participatory Democracy in a Time of Crisis from Lexington... Read More →
GG

Gonzalo Gómez

Gonzalo Gómez is a Venezuelan socialist activist and writer who played a key role in the regroupment of Trotskyism in Venezuela and provided critical support to the Bolivarian Revolution during the Chavez era. He is a cofounder of both Aporrea and Marea Socialista, a current that... Read More →
ET

Emiliano Terán

Emiliano Terán is a sociologist from the Central University of Venezuela and has a master’s degree in ecological economics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is a PhD candidate in environmental science and technology at the same institution. He is also an associate... Read More →
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  International Politics

10:00am CDT

Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World's Most Powerful Industry
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
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
CR

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 →
JT

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
TBA
  Labor Movement

10:00am CDT

Labor at the Margins
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
While union representation in the US remains at an all time low, labor organizing is resurgent. But as the US economy shifts from an industrial to a high-tech and service economy, and as the working class confronts intensified forms of criminalization, the sites of worker agitation have expanded beyond the factory floor. In the process, workers traditionally at the “margins” of the labor movement—such as sex workers and formerly incarcerated workers—are reshaping the struggle for worker power and deepening our understanding of how capitalism exploits and punishes workers in the twenty-first century. Moderated by journalist Kim Kelly, this panel will hear from Maya (Sex Worker Organizing Project—Chicago) and Kat (Beyond the Bars) about their organizing and the ways the wider labor movement can learn from labor at the “margins.”
Speakers
KP
KK
T
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Labor Movement

10:00am CDT

Chicago's Educators and Families Defending Communities Against ICE
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
Chicago public educators and community members reflect on lessons learned on the front lines defending our schools and neighborhoods during Operation Midway Blitz. We united to protect our communities in brilliant acts of multi-racial solidarity, providing a blueprint for the kind of critical resistance demanded in an era of unfettered state violence.
Speakers
LG

Lisset G

Lizette G became involved with the southwest rapid response team during operation midway blitz and is now a key organizer at a day laborer hiring site in her neighborhood of Brighton Park. She is a mother to two CPS students.
KG

Kobi Guillory

Kobi Guillory was born in Atlanta and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a middle school science teacher on the South side and a CTU delegate. He is also a member of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and Freedom Road Socialist Organization
RI
KZ

Kathryn Zamarron

Kat Zamarrón teaches elementary school music and is a member of the Chicago Teachers Union and Caucus-of-Rank-and-File-Educators (CORE). She is a member of the union's Latine Caucus, PAC, and Executive Board. Outside of union activities, she is involved with community defense work... Read More →
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Migrant Justice

10:00am CDT

Attention Economics for Organizers: How Big Tech Hijacked Our Attention & How We’re Fighting Back
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
While problems of disinformation and distraction are systemic, "common sense" solutions are often about individual choice. There are important roles for publications, media makers, and movements to play in the struggle for our collective attention. We’ll unpack the attention economy for organizers, and examine how movement media makers are balancing meeting their needs and protecting their peace.
Speakers
SJ

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 →
CM

Cayden Mak

Cayden Mak is the publisher at Convergence Magazine and the host of Block & Build: Roadmaps for the Left. Prior to Convergence, Cayden spent nearly a decade in various roles at 18 Million Rising, including five years as Executive Director and two as Chief Technology Officer, developing... Read More →
DV
Sponsors
avatar for Convergence Magazine
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Organizing

10:00am CDT

Lessons of the Russian Revolution
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
The 1917 Russian Revolution was one of the 20th century’s most important events. Its early successes inspired workers internationally, but within a decade the revolution had degenerated, and the early gains were replaced with labor camps, show trials, and bureaucratic dictatorship. What lessons does this history hold for socialists today?
Speakers
PG

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.
SW

Suzi Weissman

Suzi Weissman is an editor of Against the Current and Critique. She is an award-winning journalist who hosts “Beneath the Surface” on Los Angeles’ KPFK radio, and the author of Victor Serge: The Course is Set on Hope.
Sponsors
avatar for Critique
avatar for New Politics
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Radical History

10:00am CDT

Political Education 2: Understanding Dialectics
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
This workshop will introduce dialectical materialism, giving insight into the Marxist theory of change. Dialectics is a useful framework not simply for its explanatory power; this “theory is a weapon”, honed by revolutionaries seeking to transform oppressive systems over generations and across the world. After establishing a baseline of understanding, we’ll deploy dialectics to better grasp the nature of the developments in the struggle for Palestinian liberation, especially focusing on the period of struggle since October 2023.
Speakers
SA

Samer Araabi

Samer Araabi, Arab Resource & Organizing Center/ Center for Constitutional Rights
TM

Thomas Mariadason

Thomas Mariadason is the Executive Director of the Center for Political Education
CO

Chika Okoye

Chika Okoye is the Lead Educator for the Center for Political Education
Sponsors
avatar for B-REAL
avatar for Center for Political Education
avatar for W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Socialist and Marxist Theory

10:00am CDT

Song for a Hard-Hit People: Building Anti-Racist Solidarity in Appalachia
Saturday September 5, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
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
BH

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 →
JS

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
TBA
  US Politics

12:00pm CDT

Cross-Walls Solidarity Against Carceral Infrastructure
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
Incarcerated and detained people have always played a complex role in the movement to end caging and free them all. This session brings together abolitionist organizers focused on permanently closing facilities without replacing them to discuss the process of building cross-walls solidarity beyond campaigns. Speakers will discuss how closure impacts those inside facilities, as well as lessons learned from responding to retaliation, censorship, and a constantly adapting carceral state.
Speakers
KD

Kendra Drysdale

Kendra Drysdale, California Coalition for Women’s Prisoners (FCI Dublin Fight)
BH

Berty Hernandez

Berty Hernandez, California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance (Shut Down Adelanto)
MM

Mon Mohapatra

Mon Mohapatra (Community Justice Exchange)
T
Sponsors
avatar for Community Justice Exchange
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Abolition

12:00pm CDT

Debates in Prison Abolitionist Theory and Practice
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
Scholars and organizers will discuss live questions of abolitionist theory and practice, from how to think about taking on police vs. ICE vs. the military (or county jails vs. prisons vs. warehousing projects) within this conjuncture of authoritarianism and imperial decline to the relationship between Marxism and prison abolition.
Moderators
AA
Speakers
AK
SS

Silky Shah

Silky Shah has been working as an organizer on issues related to racial and migrant justice for over two decades. Originally from Texas, she began fighting the expansion of immigrant jails on the US-Mexico border in the aftermath of 9/11. In 2009, she joined the staff of Detention Watch Network... Read More →
JN
ZA

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

12:00pm CDT

The Merciless Society: Incarceration, Dehumanization, and American Empire
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
In our age of carceral imperialism, the return of longer and more brutal punishments reveals the pretense of civilization slipping away. As mercy toward the marginalized is demonized by a steady diet of disinformation about crime and punishment, the worst-case scenarios are quickly becoming more and more possible unless we confront the merciless society head on.
Speakers
LM
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Abolition

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
SW
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Culture and Art

12:00pm CDT

Socialist Fiscal Strategy for the 21st Century: Dispatches from New York City’s New Era
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
Socialism is sweeping America’s cities, bringing urgent questions on socialist fiscal strategy. Join researchers with New York’s Fiscal Policy Institute to discuss the fiscal issues facing NYC’s socialist movement, from supporting and expanding the movement to tax the rich to combating the myth of capital flight.
Speakers
EC

Elizabeth Cooper

Elizabeth Cooper is the Housing Policy Analyst at the Fiscal Policy Institute. She received an MA in economics from the New School for Social Research. She is also the research coordinator for North Jersey DSA's electoral working group.
CF

Ciarán Finlayson

Ciarán Finlayson is Communications Director at the Fiscal Policy Institute. He is a student in the economics department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, and received an MA from the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, United K... Read More →
ZF

Zainab Firdausi

Zainab Firdausi works jointly at FPI and the Institute for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Yale writing a dissertation on US administrative state’s varying sources of political legitimacy between 1870 and 1930. Zainab... Read More →
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Economics

12:00pm CDT

Break the Board: Neoliberalism in Crisis and the Popular University as Abolition
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
This panel introduces the Board of Butchers framework, an abolitionist project in opposition to the neoliberal university, actualized through the pursuit of the Popular University. The panel further strategizes how academics and intellectuals can use their skills to effectively support the Palestinian liberation movement and the abolition of the university.
Speakers
A
A
F
L
Sponsors
avatar for National Students for Justice in Palestine
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Education Justice

12:00pm CDT

Sex for Pleasure: Controlling your Reproduction Under a Pro-Natalist Regime
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
In a post-Dobbs era, are restrictions on birth control next? Probably. Learn about alternative contraception methods in a hands-on workshop with a doula + herbalist. **this is not medical advice, educational in nature **
Speakers
EL

Emily Likins-Ehlers

Emily Likins-Ehlers is a full spectrum doula and educator in Illinois. They have been working with contraceptive plants and Fertility Awareness for over a decade.
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Gender-Sexuality-Liberation

12:00pm CDT

Class Struggle Infrastructure: Tenant Unions and Socialism
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
Under capitalism, housing is commodified — a primary site of extraction and exploitation of ordinary people. But the fundamental need for a home remains a shared human experience. From this contradiction the tenant struggle emerges: the fight for a dignified home against the profiteering landlords who control housing. Tenant unions are the infrastructure we use to transform isolated tenant fights into a collective class struggle. Come learn why socialism needs the tenant movement, why the tenant movement needs you, and how to get involved in tenant organizing where you live!
Speakers
avatar for Chicago Union of Tenants
Sponsors
avatar for Chicago Union of Tenants
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Housing Justice

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
TBA
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
RG

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 →
BL

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.
T
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Labor Movement

12:00pm CDT

Revolutionary Socialism from Below: Strategies to Build the Resistance
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
If liberation could come from the government, it can be taken away again by that government. But there is a different approach to building socialism—from the bottom up. Strategies for creating socialism from below aim to inspire the creative participation of the multiracial working class through mass protests, long-term democratic organizing in rank-and-file unions, neighborhood-level organizations, and other working-class institutions. Join us to discuss recent examples of such efforts and their critical role in resisting authoritarianism and advancing the revolutionary transformation of society toward ecosocialism.
Speakers
AA
KG
Sponsors
avatar for Tempest
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Left Strategy

12:00pm CDT

What Is the Muslim Left?
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
From Malcolm X and the Black Radical Tradition to anti-imperialist organizing after 9/11, Muslim leftists have shaped US movements while remaining illegible to the broader left. Is the Muslim left a coherent political tradition or a coalition of incompatible projects? Speakers stake out distinct positions on religion, racialization, and revolutionary strategy.
Speakers
EA

Eman Abdelhadi

Eman Abdelhadi is a scholar, organizer and writer. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago, writes a column for In These Times Magazine and is co-author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072, a sci-fi novel... Read More →
T
Sponsors
avatar for Acacia Magazine
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Left Strategy

12:00pm CDT

Migra Watch Training for Illinois Residents
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
For more than a year, PUÑO has been building collective power to protect Chicago’s immigrant communities through a variety of trainings and connecting Chicagoans to their local rapid response group. At this training organizers will lead attendees on how to document and record ICE activity, as well as how to combat ICE terror in our communities.
Speakers
DM
Sponsors
avatar for PUÑO
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Migrant Justice

12:00pm CDT

Che’s “New Man” and The Bodhisattva Revolutionary
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
This panel will examine Che Guevara's concept of the "New Socialist Man" (person) and argue for the necessity of cultivating a revolutionary subjectivity through struggle. Using the lens of Buddhist meditation, it will explore how we can elevate consciousness through love, interdependence, and service to others in the world--creating a truly communist subjectivity in the process.
Speakers
BO

Breht O’Shea

Breht is the host of Rev Left Radio, Co-Host of the Red Menace podcast, author of an upcoming book put out by the left wing publisher Iskra Books titled "A Letter to Young Revolutionaries", a founding member of Socialist Night School (a community based political education program... Read More →
Sponsors
avatar for Rev Left Radio
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Radical History

12:00pm CDT

Socialism, Liberation Theology, and the Black Church: Lessons from Black Socialist Preachers Past and Present
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
Taking inspiration from James Cone’s “The Black Church and Marxism: What Do They Have to Say to Each Other” (1980), this session will explore the organizing of early Black socialist Rev. George W. Woodbey and discuss perspectives on liberation theology, the Black church, and socialist organizing today. (49 words)
Speakers
AR

Andrew Reginald Hairston

Andrew Reginald Hairston is a Black socialist who lives and works in the American South. He serves in leadership at Ebenezer Third Baptist Church in Austin, TX and attends ACTS Community Baptist Church in Oklahoma City.
CH

Charles Holm

Charles Holm is a ‘white’ abolitionist-socialist based in Nebraska and has a PhD in Black Studies from Texas. A former union organizer in Atlanta, he is currently an adjunct instructor in northwest Iowa and is writing a book about George W. Woodbey.
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Religion & Spirituality

12:00pm CDT

AI Extractivism: Global Systems, Local Processes
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
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
SS

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 →
VC
MC

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 →
FE
Saturday September 5, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Science and Tech

1:30pm CDT

Socialist Horizon Meet-up
Saturday September 5, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
TBA
Socialist Horizon is an independent class struggle organization with branches and members across the U.S. Socialist Horizon is a member of the United Left Platform and is the U.S. section of the International Socialist League.  Socialist Horizon meet-up with conference attendees will discuss the group's political orientation and collaboration with other Socialist groups, as well as prospects for mass organizing and socialist intervention in the coming year.  
Saturday September 5, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
TBA
  Meet-up

3:00pm CDT

Land and Abolition
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
Based in concrete struggles throughout what Milton Santos provocatively called “used territory,” this talk traces abolition's emergence as an aspirational totality sprouting from cracks in urbanization and agrarian upheavals.
Speakers
RW

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

3:00pm CDT

Solidarity Across the Walls and Beyond: Conversation on Inside/Outside Collaborations
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
This session is an invitation for abolitionist organizers on the outside to take steps to ensure imprisoned people are part of the movement to abolish the prison industrial complex. Join formerly imprisoned educators and organizers Stevie Wilson and James Kilgore for a conversation on the importance and potential of genuine collaborations between people in prison and their comrades on the outside. This session will also feature reflections from two members of the 9971 abolitionist study group who are currently imprisoned at SCI Dallas in Pennsylvania.
Speakers
NB
EF
JK
MM

Mon Mohapatra

Mon Mohapatra (Community Justice Exchange)
SW
Sponsors
avatar for Community Justice Exchange
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Abolition

3:00pm CDT

Ocean Deep Solidarity: Reparations, LANDBACK, and Collective Liberation
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
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.
Speakers
DA

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 →
MH

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 →
CM

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 →
JM

Justin Morgan

Justin Morgan (he/him) is the Applied Narrative Research Analyst at the BLIS Collective. He is a doctoral candidate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he researches the convergence of health equity, participatory research, community power, and politics. Justin... Read More →
RS

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
avatar for BLIS Collective
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Anti-colonial Politics

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
DC
RL
Sponsors
avatar for Pilsen Community Books
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Culture and Art

3:00pm CDT

Resisting Attacks on Schools, from Gaza to Chicago
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
This panel looks at K-12 schools as sites of imperial violence and attacks on knowledge, including scholasticide in Palestine and repression in the U.S. Demystifying the Anti-Defamation League’s assaults on antiracist teaching, this session grounds us in the knowledge needed to organize our schools — for Palestine, against racism, and with our communities.
Speakers
EG

Emmaia Gelman

Emmaia Gelman is the author of The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State (UC Press, 2026) and co-editor of The Anti-Defamation League: A Critical Reader (Pluto Press, 2026). She is the director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism.
NL

Nora Lester Murad

Nora Lester Murad is a writer and activist. She is the author of the award-winning young adult novel, Ida in the Middle, editor of I Found Myself in Palestine (2020) and co-author of Rest in My Shade (2018). Nora writes commentary for outlets including Mondoweiss, The New Arab, Markaz... Read More →
T
Sponsors
avatar for Chicago Educators for Palestine
avatar for DropTheADL from Schools
avatar for Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Education Justice

3:00pm CDT

Funding Until It’s Free: Building a Movement for Tomorrow While Fundraising for Today
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
A conversation with members of direct aid funds in Chicago discussing strategies related to fundraising for and providing direct services in our times. A conversation reflecting on charity vs solidarity and ways to fight for and build a better world while meeting people’s needs now.
Moderators
MC
Speakers
LK
QS
EG
Sponsors
avatar for Chicago For Abortion Rights
avatar for Lux
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Gender-Sexuality-Liberation

3:00pm CDT

Trans Care in the Age of Health Fascism (Health Fascism Series)
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
The struggle over trans healthcare is one of the clearest expressions of how medicine, incarceration, and borders are intertwined. As the US and Britain increasingly govern through prohibition, austerity, and criminalization, the reach of policing and punishment has rapidly expanded—both inside and outside the prison walls. Vicky Osterweil, S. Lamble, and Beatrice Adler-Bolton will discuss the carcerality of the anti-trans panic, its centrality to health fascism, and what abolition can teach us about defending care beyond the limits of the state.
Speakers
BA

Beatrice Adler-Bolton

Beatrice Adler-Bolton is a disabled and chronically ill agitator and independent researcher. She is the co-author of Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto (Verso, 2022) and a co-host of the Death Panel podcast.


SL

S. Lamble

Lamble is a community organizer and Professor of Criminology and Queer Theory at Birkbeck, University of London, and the author of Unsafe: The Carceral Roots of the Anti-Trans Backlash. Their work explores questions of gender, sexuality, and justice with a focus on feminist and abolitionist... Read More →
VO

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 →
Sponsors
avatar for Death Panel
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Health Politics & Disability Justice

3:00pm CDT

Connecting with Coworkers to Form Your Union
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
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
AA
AB
AD
RS
DT
Sponsors
avatar for EWOC
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Labor Movement

3:00pm CDT

All Socialism, No Government: An Introduction to Anarchist Theory and Strategy
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
Anarchism is often the least understood branch of socialism. Anarchists walk a revolutionary path separate from the brutality of state systems, whether social democratic or Stalinist. Join us to discuss how anarchists are organizing and building toward a directly democratic world without capitalism, the state, and systemic oppression.
Speakers
HB

Heb Braggs

Heb Braggs is a writer, artist, and organizer in Chicago, Illinois. 
BE

Ben Eager

Ben Eager is an independent academic and activist in Chicago, Illinois.
JJ

Jeremy Jewitt

Jeremy Jewitt is a tenant organizer in Chicago, Illinois. 
JG

Juan Gonzalez Valdivieso

Juan Gonzalez Valdivieso is a law student, organizer, and writer in Queens, New York City
Sponsors
avatar for Black Rose / Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Left Strategy

3:00pm CDT

Black Left Feminism and the Fight Against Fascism: Lessons and Assignments
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Speakers
BR
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Left Strategy

3:00pm CDT

How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
Masked federal agents are kidnapping and killing our neighbors, on the streets and behind the bars of hundreds of detention centers across the country. In spite of the decades-long growth of immigrant detention, communities have been fighting back against camps—and winning. Join award-winning journalist and translator John Washington and community advocate Johannes Favi as they discuss the community-led fights to shut down these camps.
Speakers
JW

John Washington

John Washington is a journalist covering the border, climate change, democracy, and more. He has written for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Intercept, and other outlets. He is the author of The Case for Open Borders and The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum... Read More →
JF

Johannes Favi

Johannes Favi is a nationally recognized community leader, human rights advocate, and founder of Caged Dreams, a nonprofit organization advancing healing, leadership, and educational opportunity for immigrant communities. His work bridges lived experience, public policy, and community engagement... Read More →
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Migrant Justice

3:00pm CDT

Bridging the Gap: Building Intergenerational Organizing Power
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
This pop-ed skills share will explore ways to build strong intergenerational organizing by challenging adultism and reimagining what shared leadership can look like. Together, we'll explore the transition from youth to young adult organizing, unpack how adultist perspectives can be unintentionally reproduced, and discuss how we can build movements rooted in trust, collaboration, and shared power.
Speakers
EG

Essence-Jade Gatheright

Essence-Jade Gatheright is a CFS Youth Organizer
ML

Mari Lee

Mari Lee is a CFS High School Youth Organizer
Sponsors
avatar for Chicago Freedom School
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Organizing

3:00pm CDT

The Revolutionary Legacies and Lineages of Grace Lee Boggs
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
This workshop is an introduction to the life and thoughts of this Detroit-based Chinese-US American labor organizer, Black Power activist, and leftist Asian American icon. We will explore how her revolutionary legacy continues to inform visionary projects in Detroit and global movements. Drawing from the lessons I’ve learned over two summers in Detroit, together we will envision what a visionary, place-based, relational organizing could look like for your local context.
Speakers
LL

Lily Luo

Dr. Lily Luo is a scholar, organizer, and artist based in New York City and working at the University of Connecticut. She recently successfully defended her dissertation titled “Learning to Transform: The Revolutionary Legacies and Lineages of Grace Lee Boggs” at the University... Read More →
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Radical History

3:00pm CDT

How the Left Takes on AI Will Determine the Future
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
How we respond to AI may define the next decade of organizing. This debate, originally featured at Take Back Tech III, stages opposing perspectives on whether to seize control of or abolish AI systems. Designed to model principled disagreement and sharpen strategic thinking on technology, ownership, and power.
Speakers
SC

Sasha Costanza-Chock

Sasha Costanza-Chock (she/they/ella/elle) is a researcher and designer who works to support community-led processes that build shared power, dismantle the matrix of domination, and advance ecological survival. They are a nonbinary trans* femme. Sasha is known for their work on networked... Read More →
SH

Sarah Hamid

Sarah T. Hamid is Director of Strategic Campaigns at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She brings over a decade of experience as a community organizer working at the intersection of technology, warfare, and punishment-based criminal and border systems. In 2018, she co-founded the... Read More →
TP

Tawana Petty

Tawana Petty, also known by her poetry stage name Honeycomb, is a mother, social justice organizer, poet, author, facilitator and keynote lecturer.

Petty is the founding Executive Director of Petty Propolis, Inc., an artist incubator which leverages poetry, literary and literacy workshops, anti-racism facilitation, political education and community-centered initiatives in pursuit of data and digital justice and racial and environmental... Read More →
ER

Edith Romero

Edith Romero is originally from Honduras; she grew up in a banana town in the north coast of Honduras and moved to New Orleans to begin her higher education. Edith holds a Master’s in Healthcare Management and has experience in community health, Latinx health, reproductive justice... Read More →
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Science and Tech

3:00pm CDT

Propaganda Printmaking
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
From the Reformation through the modern day, printmaking has served as a powerful tool of political propaganda. In this workshop, participants will be inspired by a brief history of eye-catching works of social justice printmaking, and will learn the process of making a relief print on paper or fabric to express a political message.
Speakers
DB
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Skill Sharing

3:00pm CDT

Political Education 3: Slavery, Colonialism, and Primitive Accumulation
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
Capitalism has never been just an economic system, but has instead always relied on the use of violence, law, and the state in a process Marx described as "so-called primitive accumulation," which reaches its height in colonialism and slavery. This participatory workshop will provide an introduction to this concept and its ongoing relevance, and guide a collective mapping of its relevance for the present.
Speakers
GM
CR
AS
Sponsors
avatar for B-REAL
avatar for Center for Political Education
avatar for W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School
Saturday September 5, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Socialist and Marxist Theory

5:00pm CDT

Fighting the Surveillance Apparatus: Connecting ALPRs to Larger Networks of Policing & How to Build Past Them
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
Panel discussion to contextualize the current anti-surveillance organizing landscape & build momentum towards utilizing local budget fights to take back resources currently going to policing/surveillance. Afterwards facilitators will lead a workshop so folks can connect across regions and build towards an anti-alpr or budget campaign.
Speakers
AK

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.
TH

Tynetta Hill-Muhammad

Tynetta Hill-Muhammad (they/them) is an MPH candidate in the Community Health Sciences division at the School of Public Health and works on projects centered on policy and public health initiatives that aim to create meaningful impacts for Black, queer, and women communities, in particular... Read More →
NH

Navjot Heer

Navjot Heer (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist and organizer of south asian-panjabi immigrant descent whose work spans architecture, urban planning, design, oral history, and more. they have supported local and national abolitionist campaigns, such as stop shotspotter in chicago... Read More →
NP
BC
Sponsors
avatar for Lucy Parsons Lab
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Abolition

5:00pm CDT

Prison Papers in Action: Activating Archives with Walls Turned Sideways
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
Join Walls Turned Sideways to learn about their current exhibition, Prison Papers: Organizing Inside/Outside Solidarity. We will do a brief presentation about the history of the penal press, solidarity publishing, and the legacy of print media as a tool for organizing across walls. This will be followed by small group readings and discussions of publications such as No More Cages, Prison News Service, Anarchist Black Dragon, The Abolitionist, and others and a hands-on collage activity!
Speakers
MS
CA
Sponsors
avatar for Walls Turned Sideways
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Abolition

5:00pm CDT

Building the People's Embargo for Palestine: Strategy, Assessment, and the Path to Freedom During the Time of Genocide
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
Last year, the Palestinian Youth Movement launched the People’s Embargo for Palestine (PEP), a grassroots campaign uniting the international movement for arms embargo under a single banner: by intervening in the weapons supply chain, we can stop the genocide on Gaza. Sharing powerful campaign lessons from the U.S., and Europe, this session will share key insights into the PEP’s strategy and framework while equipping participants on how to identify local targets and take on PEP in their locales.
Speakers
T
Sponsors
avatar for Palestinian Youth Movement
avatar for People's Embargo for Palestine
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Anti-colonial Politics

5:00pm CDT

War, Capitalism, and Navigating the Climate Crisis
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
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
JF

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 →
TT

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
avatar for CounterPunch
avatar for Pilsen Community Books
avatar for Science for the People
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Climate Justice

5:00pm CDT

The US and China: Imperial Rivalry in a Multipolar World
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
“Chimerica” is over. The twin titans of neoliberal globalization are now at loggerheads over everything from trade to high tech, geopolitical alliances, and military hegemony over the Asia Pacific. Today’s global slump, exacerbated by Trump’s disastrous war in Iran, has heightened this imperial rivalry. This panel will examine the roots of the conflict, its trajectory, and how the left can build international solidarity from below against it.
Speakers
TC

Tobita Chow

Tobita Chow is an organizer based in the Chicago area. He researches progressive strategy, great power conflict, and international climate politics. Tobita was the founding Director of Justice is Global.
AS

Ashley Smith

Ashley Smith is co-author of China in Global Capitalism and has written in numerous publications including Truthout, New Politics, Against the Current, and many other online and print publications.
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Economics

5:00pm CDT

They Called Us Non-Compliant: The (Sedated) History of Psychiatric Resistance
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
Drawing on the history of psychiatric survivor movements, specific acts of resistance, and the long use of pathology narratives to discredit organizers across liberation movements, this session explores: how do we recognize psychiatric resistance when we've been trained not to see it? And what does solidarity look like once we do?
Speakers
SB

Sarah Broas

Sarah Broas (they/them) is a white, queer, Disabled and Mad careworker. They are a writer, artist, advocate, and organizer focusing on Mad Liberation and psychiatric abolition. Their own experiences of psychiatric survivorship guide their approach, vision, and practice of community-based... Read More →
SL

Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu

Stefanie Lyn Kaufman Mthimkhulu (they/she) is a Mad, Disabled, multidisciplinary care strategist/worker, educator, psychiatric survivor, and healing practitioner. They are a white, queer, non-binary person of Puerto Rican and Ashkenazi Jewish descent, rooted in lineages of Disability... Read More →
HS

Heena Sharma

Heena Sharma (they/she) is a nonbinary, disabled, mentally ill South Asian lesbian striving towards abolitionist futures that center survivors of violence. A lifelong New Yorker, Heena has worked on the margins of decolonial political education, radical accompaniment and solidarity... Read More →
Sponsors
avatar for Project LETS
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Health Politics & Disability Justice

5:00pm CDT

“As Goes the South”: Building Multiracial Working-Class Solidarity in the South for a Socialist Future
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
As W.E.B. DuBois said “As goes the South, so goes the nation.” Ruling class and authoritarian forces have always prioritized organizing the South as a way to hold power over the entire nation. If we are to defeat authoritarianism and win a socialist future, we must organize a multiracial working-class base in the South.
Speakers
BH

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 →
CK

Chris Kutalik

Chris Kutalik, a native Texan, is the former Democratic Socialists of America communications director, transit union officer, and editor/director of Labor Notes. He currently works as Showing Up for Racial Justice communications director and is (busy) father of four.
JS

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 →
Sponsors
avatar for SURJ
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Left Strategy

5:00pm CDT

Movement Lawyering in Times of Retrenchment
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
Using lessons from "Lawyering for Liberation: A Toolbox for Movement Lawyers", this session explores how lawyers can support and sustain powerful movements, emphasizing the importance of power building and radical imagining in today’s context. As we face unique threats posed by growing authoritarianism, this need has never been more urgent.
Speakers
LO

Leena Odeh

Leena Odeh, Exec. Director, First Defense Legal Aid
CS

Christian Snow

Christian Snow, Exec. Director, Law 4 Black Lives (L4BL)
MW

Morgan Wilson

Morgan Wilson, Partnerships Director, L4BL
Sponsors
avatar for Law 4 Black Lives
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Left Strategy

5:00pm CDT

The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
Radical historian Howard Zinn changed the way Americans think about their history, but his life itself is a lesson in radical commitment. From the Great Depression to WWII to the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam war, he was part and parcel of the social movements that shaped our world. Join Dave Zirin, author of a new critically-praised book about Howard Zinn’s incredible life and author and actor Brian Jones (who played Marx in Zinn’s one man play ‘Marx in Soho’) for a conversation about the life of Howard Zinn and what his vision and work mean today.
Speakers
BJ

Brian Jones

Brian Jones is the author of Black History Is for Everyone
DZ
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Radical History

5:00pm CDT

The Young Lords Speak: Building Revolution on the Streets of Chicago
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
In their field jackets and signature purple berets, the Young Lords mobilized their community for liberation and against gentrification, poverty, racism, and police brutality. Join historian Jacqueline Lazu and Chicago 33rd Ward Alderperson Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez as they explore how the Young Lords grew into one of the most dynamic revolutionary community organizations of the late 1960s and early ’70s.
Speakers
JL

Jacqueline Lazú

Jacqueline Lazú is a professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at DePaul University and the author of numerous scholarly articles on the Young Lords in Chicago.
RR
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Radical History

5:00pm CDT

When Socialists Turned to the Factory Floor
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
In 1971 the International Socialists relocated the organization's center to Detroit and pivoted its priority activity to organizing in industry. The experiences of IS members who "industrialized" provided lesdsons that remain highly relevant for socialists in today's workplaces, unions and rank and file movements.
Speakers
CC
JW
Sponsors
avatar for Solidarity
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Radical History

5:00pm CDT

Spirit of Justice
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
What is freedom struggle beyond resisting political systems and improving material conditions? This program, organized by Spirit of Justice - a new spiritual home outside of traditional religion for people committed to freedom - explores this question. Through live music, collective ritual, artistic expression, and intimate dialogue, we will celebrate, grieve, and be inspired to not only change the world but to transform ourselves.
Speakers
NF
MA
RN
Sponsors
avatar for Spirit of Justice
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Religion & Spirituality

5:00pm CDT

The False Choice Between Identity Politics and Class Struggle
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
Does building mass political coalitions against the right require us to abandon issues specific to minorities of the population? For many centrists and even some on the left, such a sacrifice has become the new common sense. But history and on-the-ground organizing show a left that ignores the differences within the working class will never build power.
Speakers
MM
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Socialist and Marxist Theory

5:00pm CDT

Standing Up to the National Security State: Collective Defense against Political Repression
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
This panel brings together movement targets of Trump Administration repression and representatives of defense committee from the Minnesota 15, the Michigan 9, 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
TA
T
Sponsors
avatar for United Left Platform
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  US Politics

5:00pm CDT

Who Moves America: Film Screening and Discussion
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 7:00pm CDT
TBA
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.
Speakers
YB
Saturday September 5, 2026 5:00pm - 7:00pm CDT
TBA
  Labor Movement

6:30pm CDT

United Left Platform Meet-up
Saturday September 5, 2026 6:30pm - 8:00pm CDT
TBA
The United Left Platform, a coalition of six U.S.-based Socialist groups (Tempest, Solidarity, Workers’ Voice, Speak Out Socialists, International Marxist Humanist Organization, Socialist Horizon) was founded at the 2025 Socialism Conference in Chicago.  The ULP has worked over this past year to create a non-sectarian space for socialist organizing, self-defense, and political intervention.  The ULP meet-up will share its accomplishments and hold a public conversation with conference attendees about prospects for building out a broader space for mass organizing and socialist intervention in the coming year. 
Saturday September 5, 2026 6:30pm - 8:00pm CDT
TBA
  Meet-up

8:00pm CDT

Neighbors Get Ready: Forging New Solidarities and Defeating ICE
Saturday September 5, 2026 8:00pm - 9:30pm CDT
TBA
When ICE goose-stepped into our cities to raid and terrorize, regular people from all walks of life forged new solidarities to throw them out. Join activists from the front lines of the struggle to defend our neighbors for a plenary on getting organized and ready for what’s coming.
Speakers
SS

Silky Shah

Silky Shah has been working as an organizer on issues related to racial and migrant justice for over two decades. Originally from Texas, she began fighting the expansion of immigrant jails on the US-Mexico border in the aftermath of 9/11. In 2009, she joined the staff of Detention Watch Network... Read More →
T
Saturday September 5, 2026 8:00pm - 9:30pm CDT
TBA
  Migrant Justice
 
Sunday, September 6
 

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
SK

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 →
VP

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

10:00am CDT

Fighting for Trans Liberation in the Midwest: Organizing Under Hostile State Governments
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
As Midwestern states escalate attacks on transgender people, organizers are building networks of resistance and care. This panel explores strategies for fighting back in hostile political environments—through coalition building, local organizing, and community infrastructure—and asks what it will take to win real liberation.
Speakers
DE

Dr. Emerson Cram

Dr. Emerson Cram is a public educator & community storyteller located in Iowa City, Iowa. Their research, teaching, and advocacy focus on historical linkages between disability, sexuality, and race in environmental planning, and how stories of the past get in the way of cultural... Read More →
VF

V Fixmer-Oraiz

V is the first transgender County Supervisor in Iowa. While they built their first campaign around inclusive economic development, V has found themselves working to advance human rights and better protect LGBTQ+ indivuals while championing racial and social justice. 
RS

Rev. Sean McRoberts

Sean is an interfaith leader in Iowa who withdrew from their denomination in 2018 due to the tension of being a trans person and religous leader in a homophobic denomination. They are now the Director of Operations and Development at Sacred Collective, "a place of belonging for spiritual... Read More →
MR

Mandi Remington

Mandi Remington is a Johnson County Supervisor and organizer in Iowa working on trans rights and reproductive justice. A former Medicaid recipient and parent of transgender youth, she also organizes around healthcare and basic needs while working to expand community-based public safety... Read More →
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Gender-Sexuality-Liberation

10:00am CDT

Care Networks, Abolition, and the Fight Against Border Policing (Health Fascism Series)
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
Our violent border regimes produce illness, debility, and death while destroying the relationships that people rely on to survive. Families are separated, communities destabilized, and care networks fractured through the constant threat of detention. Silky Shah and A. Naomi Paik discuss border policing as a counterinsurgent attack on health, and how to defend and rebuild collective care in an era of escalating state repression and criminalization, from Prarieland, to the Minnesota 15, to the US State Department’s call for a new Red Scare.
Speakers
BA

Beatrice Adler-Bolton

Beatrice Adler-Bolton is a disabled and chronically ill agitator and independent researcher. She is the co-author of Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto (Verso, 2022) and a co-host of the Death Panel podcast.


AN
SS

Silky Shah

Silky Shah has been working as an organizer on issues related to racial and migrant justice for over two decades. Originally from Texas, she began fighting the expansion of immigrant jails on the US-Mexico border in the aftermath of 9/11. In 2009, she joined the staff of Detention Watch Network... Read More →
Sponsors
avatar for Death Panel
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Health Politics & Disability Justice

10:00am CDT

Refusing Erasure: Justice, Accountability and Historical Memory in the War on Terror
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
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
MA

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 →
MH

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 →
SA

Sanaa Ansari Khan

Sanaa Ansari Khan is a Washington, D.C.–based attorney with two decades of experience advancing Muslim civil rights and digital rights at organizations including CAIR, Muslim Advocates, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Her work focuses on combating discrimination... Read More →
RJ

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
avatar for Muslim Counterpublics Lab
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism

10:00am CDT

Russian Neofascism: Imperialism Abroad & Repression at Home
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
Vladimir Putin responded to democratic uprising in Russia’s former empire by repressing domestic dissent and launching an imperialist war on Ukraine. In a discussion of their new book, Russia’s New Imperialism, Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev will be joined by Robert Brenner and Daria Saburova to examine Putin’s neofascist project, Ukraine’s struggle for self-determination, and today’s inter-imperial rivalries.
Speakers
RB

Robert Brenner

Robert Brenner, professor Emeritus UCLA, editor at New Left Review, author of Economics of Global Turbulence
IB

Ilya Budraitskis

Ilya Budraitskis, co-author of Russia’s New Imperialism
IM

Ilya Matveev

Ilya Matveev, co-author of Russia’s New Imperialism
DS

Daria Saburova

Daria Saburova, researcher at Central European University, editorial board member of Commons
Sponsors
avatar for Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  International Politics

10:00am CDT

The Old Being Reborn: The Revival of Socialist Organizations in US and Belgium
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
What is the throughline between the Belgian Worker’s party and the Democratic Socialists of America? British socialist, Joe Todd and DSA member David Duhalde will examine the new DSA and Belgian Workers Party's structures over the past decade, their developments and differences. This panel will reflect on the historical labor, electoral, and factional dynamics, of the Socialist party that have led us to today.
Speakers
DD

David Duhalde

David Duhalde is a lifelong democratic socialist organizer who has held positions in both the Democratic Socialist of America and its sister nonprofit the DSA Fund at the staff and volunteer leadership levels. He is an author on numerous topics including DSA history, which have appeared... Read More →
JT

Joe Todd

Joe Todd is a researcher, organiser and political strategist. He writes on left parties for the Guardian, Novara Media and his Substack, and co-hosts the top 50 UK podcast Life of the Party. He is the author of "Between Autonomy and Control," a comparative study of the Belgian Workers... Read More →
Sponsors
avatar for RLS
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  International Politics

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
TBA
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
SF
GM

Griffin Mahon

Griffin Mahon is a DC-based union organizer and a cochair of DSA's National Labor Commission.

JT
Sponsors
avatar for May Day Strong
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Labor Movement

10:00am CDT

Protecting Our Own: Shifting from State Intervention to Community Care in Crisis Times
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
ICE agents are using family separation tactics central to US state violence. In this interactive workshop on "family policing" participants will examine real-world manifestations and analyze emerging resistance strategies. Workshop will share the tools to build a paradigm shift from "mandated reporting"—which fuels state intrusion—to "mandated supporting.”
Speakers
JL

jaboa lake

jaboa lake phd, is a sister, auntie, neighbor, former foster youth, organizer, and liberation researcher. jaboa’s work has centered liberation of oppressed people and solidarity across movements through using research as a tactic within grassroots strategies. jaboa’s work has... Read More →
EM

Erica Meiners

A writer, an educator and an organizer, Erica R. Meiners lives in Chicago and works with others on a range of ongoing mobilizations for liberation.
SP

Shannon Perez-Darby

Shannon Perez-Darby is a founding member of the Accountable Communities Consortium and a member of the Mandatory Reporting is Not Neutral core group.  Shannon Perez-Darby centers queer and trans communities of color while working to address issues of domestic and sexual violence... Read More →
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Left Strategy

10:00am CDT

Documenting Transformative Justice: Building Knowledge Bases for Community Accountability Strategies
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
This introductory session to Transformative Justice (TJ) explores three key questions centering TJ documentation and knowledge bases: 1) How can our movements build knowledge given the challenges of documenting the intimate, confidential, and often divisive and high risk nature of interpersonal harm? 2) How do we responsibly share learnings based on on-the-ground TJ situations in a heightened climate of social media call-out, political repression, and surveillance? 3) How do we draw from and make knowledge accessible across a broad range of communities, cultural practices, literacies, and languages? The session will feature intentions that guide and lessons gained from these collaborative projects, offering a collective space to discuss shared visions and concrete strategies to build TJ and broader abolitionist knowledge bases.
Speakers
SH

Shira Hassan

Shira Hassan (Just Practice Collaborative)
MK

Mimi Kim

Mimi Kim (Creative Interventions)
DL

Deana Lewis

Deana Lewis (Just Practice Collaborative)
IW

iLL Weaver

iLL Weaver (Emergence Media)
Sponsors
avatar for Creative Interventions
avatar for Emergence Media
JP
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Organizing

10:00am CDT

The Forgotten History of the Civil Rights Movement’s Fight for Economic Justice—and Why It Matters Today
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
Martin Luther King Jr.’s call for a “radical redistribution of political and economic power” offers a way to challenge the growing power and influence of the authoritarian right. Come hear historians in conversation about a lesser-known side of the civil rights movement — and its relevance to fighting Trumpism today.
Speakers
BJ

Brian Jones

Brian Jones is the author of Black History Is for Everyone
NM

Nancy MacLean

Nancy MacLean, William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University and author of Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace
JT

Jeanne Theoharis

Jeanne Theoharis, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and author of King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr. 's Life of Struggle Outside the South
ET

Elizabeth Todd-Breland

Elizabeth Todd-Breland, Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois Chicago and co-author with the late Karen Lewis of I Didn't Come Here to Lie: My Life and Education
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Radical History

10:00am CDT

Trust in God and Keep the Powder Dry: A Short History of Leftwing Religious Non-Nonviolence
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
While religion makes leftists squirm and liberals fetishize nonviolence, those at the center of liberatory armed struggles and insurrection attempts in the U.S. have often been deeply religious people. Their religiosity, however, is usually disparaged or ignored. This introductory-level popular education session brings this forgotten history into focus and explores what’s at stake.
Speakers
AV

Adam Vander Tuig

Adam Vander Tuig was born and raised in rural Nebraska, works as Faith-Based Educator and Researcher at the Highlander Center in East Tennessee, and teaches courses on theology and class war at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. He organizes with NE Faith for Palestine... Read More →
Sponsors
avatar for Highlander
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Radical History

10:00am CDT

From Exploitation to Replacement? Workers in the New Political Economy of AI
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
In this workshop, we’ll use Marx’s analysis of political economy to understand how "AI" technologies—such as chatbots and image generators—rapidly accelerate worker exploitation and shift the relations of production between capital and labor. Participants will discuss how "AI" is reinscribing the conditions for technofeudalism and how workers are resisting the harms of automation, workplace surveillance, and algorithmic management.
Speakers
AH

Alex Hanna

Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR)
NK

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.
TM

Thomas Mariadason

Thomas Mariadason is the Executive Director of the Center for Political Education
CO

Chika Okoye

Chika Okoye is the Lead Educator for the Center for Political Education
Sponsors
avatar for Center for Political Education
avatar for Distributed AI Research Institute
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Science and Tech

10:00am CDT

The Deadly Tech Exchange: How Tech Companies are Profiting from Genocide and Anti-Immigrant Violence
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
In this workshop we will map the network of US and Israeli companies and investors fueling the world’s first AI-powered genocide in Gaza, and delve into the revolving door of tech and capital between Silicon Valley and Israel’s “Silicon Wadi.” We’ll discuss the destructive impacts of the Deadly Tech Exchange for communities in the US, Palestine, and beyond, and offer action steps for fighting back through cross-movement campaigning.
Speakers
IM

Izzy Mustafa

Izzy Mustafa is the Co-Executive Director at Adalah Justice Project, a Palestinian-led organization focused on campaigns that challenge militarism, big tech, and systems of oppression while supporting labor organizing and building broad coalitions for justice and liberation.
ER

Edith Romero

Edith Romero is originally from Honduras; she grew up in a banana town in the north coast of Honduras and moved to New Orleans to begin her higher education. Edith holds a Master’s in Healthcare Management and has experience in community health, Latinx health, reproductive justice... Read More →
ES

Eric Sype

Eric Sype, US National Organizer, 7amleh. Eric fights for Palestinian human rights as 7amleh’s National Organizer in the U.S. He holds a Master of Development Practice from the University of California, Berkeley, where he researched the impacts of technological advancements on decolonizing... Read More →
Sponsors
avatar for Adalah Justice Project
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Science and Tech

10:00am CDT

Protecting Our Neighbors: DIY Community Defense Street Tactics from Midway Blitz
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
Adapted from street tactics popularized by the leading edges of anti-police struggles, this participatory training outlines several tactics community members can use to intervene and protect their neighbors from abduction. Trainers will first demonstrate these tactics, after which participants will practice in pairs and in full-group mock street situations.
Speakers
avatar for G.R.I.P.
Sponsors
avatar for G.R.I.P.
Sunday September 6, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Skill Sharing

12:00pm CDT

Why Socialism Requires Abolition
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
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
ZA

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. 
KG

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 →
RW

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 →
VT

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
TBA
  Abolition

12:00pm CDT

Palestinian Revolutionary Thought and the Prisoners’ Movement
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
What lessons does the Palestinian left offer today? This session explores the history of prison writing in Palestine and key texts from the Palestinian left. Panelists will situate this discussion in relation to recently translated texts by Palestinian revolutionaries, including Ahmad Qatamesh and Walid Daqqa.
Speakers
DA

Danya al-Saleh

Danya al-Saleh developed her commitment to Palestinian community and youth education while organizing in the Palestine movement in North America. She has contributed as an editor to translation projects of Palestinian literature into English. Danya’s writing has been published in... Read More →
JA

Jenan Awaida

Jenan Awaida is a long-time community organizer in the Palestine movement based in Southern California. Her work has focused on grassroots mobilization, political education, Palestinian cultural programming, and coalition-building. She has contributed to national initiatives for the... Read More →
RH

Ribhi Hussein

Ribhi Hussein is a Palestinian-American born in San Francisco. He spent much of his life living in Ramallah, until recently. He was active as a student organizer at Birzeit University, where he graduated from the Department of Sociology. He recently published a piece about interrogation... Read More →
Sponsors
avatar for People's Center for Palestine
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Anti-colonial Politics

12:00pm CDT

Black History is for Everyone
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
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
BJ

Brian Jones

Brian Jones is the author of Black History Is for Everyone
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Black Liberation

12:00pm CDT

Sumud in Praxis: Teaching for Solidarity from Turtle Island to Palestine
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
Teach Palestine and the Xicanx Institute for Teaching & Organizing collaborated to provide teachers support in the face of state repression on teaching Palestine and build broader international solidarity. Our panel will share experiences from institutes that take place on the US-Mexico border, and support participants in bringing lessons to their communities.
Speakers
AF

Anita Fernández

Dr. Anita Fernández has been a high school teacher, a professor and teacher educator for over 20 years. Her teaching, scholarship, activism and organizing have been in the areas of racial justice, decolonizing pedagogies, Chicanx/Latinx movements and Ethnic Studies. After the 2012... Read More →
ZA

Zeiad Abbas Shamrouch

Zeiad Abbas Shamrouch is a Palestinian refugee from Dheisheh Refugee Camp in the West Bank and executive Director, Middle East Children’s Alliance. He is the co-founder of the Ibdaa Cultural Center in Dheisheh. Zeiad is also a filmmaker, journalist and educator who has worked with... Read More →
SS

Samia Shoman

Samia Shoman, Ed.D,  is a Palestinian-American educator and administrator in the San Francisco Bay Area and the co-coordinator of the Middle East Children's Alliance Teach Palestine Project.  She has spent the past 26 years of her career in public education promoting racial and... Read More →
JW

Jenine Wehbeh

Jenine Wehbeh is an educator-organizer, circle-keeper, and former Middle School Social Studies teacher and union delegate, with extensive experience in Critical Ethnic Studies and K-12 education, and co-coordinator, Teach Palestine Project of the Middle East Children’s Alliance... Read More →
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Education Justice

12:00pm CDT

Weaponizing Antisemitism: An Interactive History
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
In a moment where pro-Israel watchdogs are weaponizing antisemitism to attack organizers, students, educators, public schools, and the broader infrastructure of the left, this session will explore the historical roots of how antisemitism began to be weaponized against the left in the late 1960s through a participatory mixer.
Speakers
AS

Adam Sanchez

Adam Sanchez is the managing editor of Rethinking Schools. He is also the editor of Teaching a People's History of Abolition and the Civil War and a forthcoming book about teaching Reconstruction. He is a co-editor of Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices.
Sponsors
avatar for Rethinking Schools
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Fighting the Right

12:00pm CDT

Unsafe: The Carceral Roots of the Anti-Trans Backlash
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
The 21st century “gender wars” have been driven by a powerful and seductive narrative: that safety can be secured through exclusion, surveillance, and the policing of difference. These punitive logics have gained momentum across the political spectrum, fueling an anti-trans backlash and distorting the meaning of safety itself. Join S. Lamble and Sophie Lewis as they challenge the toxic ideas at the heart of this backlash, and put forward a vision of safety built on collective care and radical solidarity.
Speakers
SL

S. Lamble

Lamble is a community organizer and Professor of Criminology and Queer Theory at Birkbeck, University of London, and the author of Unsafe: The Carceral Roots of the Anti-Trans Backlash. Their work explores questions of gender, sexuality, and justice with a focus on feminist and abolitionist... Read More →
SL

Sophie Lewis

Sophie Lewis is a writer, utopian, feminist, and ex-academic scholar based in Philadelphia, hailing originally from the UK, France, and Germany. She is the author of Femmephilia, Enemy Feminisms, Abolish the Family, and Full Surrogacy Now. Lewis’s essays and articles appear routinely... Read More →
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Gender-Sexuality-Liberation

12:00pm CDT

Resisting MAHA & Building Environmental & Reproductive Justice
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
Gender oppressed people are raising questions about standard reproductive health interventions’ inability to address environmentally induced issues. In response, MAHA is organizing people to reject medical treatment and embrace individualistic “natural remedies.” This session explores how the Left can combat dis/misinformation while addressing environmental racism and reproductive oppression, in service to building a revolutionary alternative.
Speakers
JC

Judith Clerjeune

Judith Clerjeune, (She | Li [Haitian Kreyol ]), moun Fond-Des-Blanc, is a Black Haitian immigrant. Judith has called the South home since moving to the United States in 2004. Judith’s work is grounded in the hope and resolution that we can and must build another world, one free... Read More →
DS

Dr. Sydney Curtis

Dr. Sydney Curtis is a Black feminist scholar, educator, and leader. She contributes relational, spiritual, and Black feminist perspectives in postsecondary education, the nonprofit sector, and community-based organizations by leading programs, publishing critical scholarship, and... Read More →
AN

Abhinaya Narayanan

Abhinaya Narayanan, MD, MPP is a family physician, abolitionist, reproductive justice advocate, and organizer with the People’s Care Collective based in Los Angeles, CA. She received her medical degree from UCLA, Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard, and completed residency... Read More →
BP

Briana Perry

Briana Perry (she/her) is a Black Southern feminist with over a decade of movement building experience in racial justice and reproductive justice. Briana comes to this work as a former teacher, as it was during her time teaching that she became involved in local organizing efforts... Read More →
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Health Politics & Disability Justice

12:00pm CDT

Intro: Harm Reduction and Solidarity with Unsheltered Neighbors
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
The rise of racialized capitalism has caused a rise in homelessness, primarily affecting marginalized groups. This session discusses how gentrification, private property, privatization of social services, and rugged individualism perpetuate homelessness, and the experience of the unhoused, focusing on harm reduction.… and what is to be done?
Speakers
RS
LB

Luna Bender

Luna Bender is a born and raised Chicagoan studying to become a public librarian. She spent early childhood in communal housing and is determined to form and maintain stronger communal support wherever she goes. 
AA

Andrew Atkinson Bernd

Andrew Atkinson Bernd is an independent Chicago-based researcher and analyst focusing on systemic inequalities, food systems, and geographic socio-economic disparities. Andrew’s work is rooted in building solidarity with the lumpenproletariat population; specifically, people experiencing... Read More →
AG

Alexa Gold

Lexie Gold is an advocate, outreach volunteer, and interdisciplinary scholar. Her research and writing works at the intersection of Gender & Women’s Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, Rhetoric & Discourse. Specifically thinking about the subtle ways in which power operates. As an... Read More →
LM

Lucy Morales

Lucy Morales is an advocate and disruptor of systems, specifically focused on dismantling the inequitable systems at the cross-section of homelessness, neoliberal policies, and forced migration. Lucy identifies as Chicana, indigenous tauramaura/mechica, raised in Chicago.  
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Housing Justice

12:00pm CDT

Cuba Under Siege: A Round Table Discussion
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
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
T
JM

Justine Medina

Justine Medina, participant in Nuestra América international convoy to Cuba, Cuban Americans for Cuba, former VP Amazon Labor Union
HY

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;
Sponsors
avatar for Chicago Cuba Coalition
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  International Politics

12:00pm CDT

The State of Worker Organizing in the South and the Southern Workers Assembly
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
The level of organization of workers in the U.S. South is at a crossroad. This crossroad meets at the current motion of workers who are finding ways to wage struggle alongside various social movement formations and the necessity of building a unified front. The unification of these movements into an advanced worker’s movement is necessary. This session will explore the role of the Southern Workers Assembly within this struggle.
Speakers
JP
AA
DB
MG
Sponsors
avatar for Southern Workers Assembly
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Labor Movement

12:00pm CDT

Psychic Militancy
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
This talk argues that in the face of accelerating fascism, we need to take seriously that our psyche is contested space, learn to track psychic intrusions that aim to settle and reconfigure our psychic province and interiority, and most importantly, learn to remain antagonistic to this violence through psychic militancy. Lara Sheehi discusses her new book to distill the mechanics of psychic militancy and how we might engage in refusals against these intrusions and their politically demobilizing work.
Speakers
LS

Lara Sheehi

Lara Sheehi is a Research Fellow at the University of South Africa's Institute for Social and Health Sciences, a licensed clinical psychologist, and the host of the Psychic Militancy podcast. Lara’s work focuses on psychoanalysis, the psychic refusals central to liberation struggles... Read More →
Sponsors
avatar for Pluto Press
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Left Strategy

12:00pm CDT

The Muslim Left, NYC, and Zohran Mamdani’s Victory
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
The historic victory of Afro-Asian Muslim socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in NYC in 2025 was won in part by the NYC Muslim community, which mobilized in mass and has birthed an anti-imperialist ecosocialist Muslim Left. This panel will share and explore the ideological and organizational underpinnings of this new political formation as well as reflect upon the messy grappling with contradictions that comes with building counter-hegemonic power.
Speakers
IA

Iskander Abbasi

Iskander Abbasi, PhD scholar of Islamic liberation theology and ecosocialism at Fordham University.
AD

Asad Dandia

Asad Dandia, local Muslim activist, Brooklyn Borough Historian and radical NYC tour guide leader.
AK

Aber Kawas

Aber Kawas is a Palestinian-American organizer from NYC. She has worked in community and movement organizations fighting for racial and economic justice across NYC and the country since she was a teenager.
T
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Left Strategy

12:00pm CDT

Documenting Actions, Activism, and Activists’ Lives: Strategies for Preserving Personal and Organizational Archives
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
This workshop will include tips, strategies, and discussion on preserving analog and digital documentation of our own lives as activists and the work of our organizations in unprecedented times. We will also discuss privacy, anonymity, donating material to archives and libraries, and its future use for scholarship and restorative justice.
Speakers
KS

Kate Stewart

Kate Stewart is the Curator of the Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements at the Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas. She has worked as a librarian and archivist for twenty years, including managing oral history projects such as the Civil Rights History Project... Read More →
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Organizing

12:00pm CDT

Organizing 101: a Black Youth Project 100 Joint
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
Help! I don’t know where to start! Don’t worry we got you! We will put you through three acting scenarios in small groups that will help build the basis of your organizing journey! Join Byp100 in building more rounded organizers and preparing for a world we want to live in.
Speakers
DK
BM
Sponsors
avatar for Black Youth Project 100
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Organizing

12:00pm CDT

The Present State of People’s History
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
This panel will present on the historiography of “people’s history” and the landscape of contemporary projects (outside of the academy) dedicated to documenting specific movement history and regional radical histories. The members of the panel will be drawn from a nascent group, the People’s History Network, that has started to take shape over the last several months to promote and expand the documentation of the history of the left. Our panel will explore the various methodologies at work in distinct recent projects of left public history, and will draw lessons from practical comparisons.
Speakers
IS

Isaac Silver

Isaac Silver is a socialist activist and independent archivist/historian based in Chicago.
PC
MR
Sponsors
avatar for Left in the Bay
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Radical History

12:00pm CDT

Socialize the Grid: Data Centers and Translocal Organizing
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
Data centers have become a ubiquitous element of the political and social lexicon. While local wins are encouraging and inspiring, the need for translocal organizing models is necessary to fully socialize grid networks as part of the larger push for 100 percent publicly owned power and stopping data center proliferation.
Speakers
DC
JE
AK
IW
Sponsors
avatar for Black Alliance for Peace
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Science and Tech

12:00pm CDT

Rosa Luxemburg and Frantz Fanon on Imperialism—Its Lessons for Today
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
While Luxemburg and Fanon are rarely discussed together, placing them in dialogue provides important insights into how anti-imperialist struggles relate to efforts to develop alternatives to capitalism. Both viewed imperialism as a global system that was integral to racialized capitalism, and their perspectives on how to overcome both speak to today’s challenges.
Speakers
AA

Alex Adamson

Alex Adamson focuses on decolonial philosophy, Marxism, and queer, trans, and feminist philosophy. He is a community organizer in the Greater Boston area and currently working on a co-authored book with Juliana Gleeson titled Dyke Dialectics. Recent and forthcoming publications include... Read More →
PH

Peter Hudis

Peter Hudis is the general editor of The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, of which six volumes have appeared so far, and is co-editor of The Rosa Luxemburg Reader. He is author of Frantz Fanon, Philosopher of the Barricades, Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism, and... Read More →
NK

Ndindi Kitonga

Ndindi Kitonga, a black activist in LA originally from Kenya who is founder of Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid, an abolitionist housing network. She has also been active in BLM and related community organizing.
Sponsors
avatar for International Marxist-Humanist Organization
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
  Socialist and Marxist Theory

12:00pm CDT

Necessary Trouble: Movement-Building since the Financial Crisis
Sunday September 6, 2026 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA
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
AH

Alex Hanna

Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR)
SJ

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 →
CK

Chenjerai Kumanyika

Chenjerai Kumanyika is an Assistant Professor at NYU Journalism and Program Director of the Urban Journalism Workshop. He specializes in narrative audio journalism at the intersection of race, history, and media critique. He is co-creator and co-host of Uncivil (Gimlet Media) and... Read More →
YM

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
TBA
  US Politics

3:00pm CDT

Redefining Family: Intro to Family Abolition and Creating Abundant Care
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
What does family abolition look like through a Black feminist lens? In this introductory workshop, we envision a world in which care is universally accessible and not reliant on the private family. We engage radical imagination to bring this post-capitalist vision to life with a creative exercise and group discussion.
Speakers
AA

Alanah Armstead

Alanah Armstead (she/her) is a research and writing fellow at Kuluntu Reproductive Justice Center and a recent graduate from Yale University with a BA in the History of Science and Medicine and MPH in Social and Behavioral Sciences. Outside of advocating for Black maternal health... Read More →
MH

Marin Hart

Marin Hart (they/them) is a writer, organizer, and research fellow at Kuluntu Reproductive Justice Center. Currently residing in Portland, Oregon, Marin owes much of their reproductive justice education to the kick-ass advocates of the South. Marin got their bachelor's degree in Gender... Read More →
Sponsors
avatar for Kuluntu Reproductive Justice Center
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Abolition

3:00pm CDT

Three Generations in the Struggle for Socialism and Black Liberation
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
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
JH

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 →
MH
GL
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Black Liberation

3:00pm CDT

Organize or Burn: Sewer Socialism for Climate Survival in the 21st Century
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
“Sewer socialists” transformed Milwaukee into a thriving working class city a century ago, and today Zohran Mamdani is raising expectations as a socialist mayor of New York City. How are socialists across American cities organizing collective action to fight the climate crisis, defend immigrants, and expand democracy for all?
Speakers
AS

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 →
CT

Cihan Tekay Liu

Cihan Tekay Liu is an organizer with NYC DSA, and lecturer at City College of New York. She served as NYC-DSA’s electoral working group’s recruitment co-chair in 2025, overseeing the recruitment of the slate that won the 2026 primaries. 
KB

Kelsea Bond

Kelsea Bond is serving as a member of the Atlanta City Council for District 2 since 2026. They are the first Democratic Socialist of America to be elected to the Atlanta City Council.
AB

Alex Brower

Alex Brower is alderman of District 3 Common Council in Milwaukee, the first open socialist elected to sit in City Hall since 1960, is an advocate for public utilities, tenants rights, and public education, and is a member of Milwaukee DSA.
Sponsors
avatar for DSA
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Climate Justice

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
MM
Sponsors
avatar for Haymarket Books
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Culture and Art

3:00pm CDT

The Politics of Debt: Organizing in the Age of Finance
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
As finance capital continues to reshape working class life, people are increasingly forced into debt to make ends meet. What is the political landscape of debt today, and how should we respond at the level of action? How has financialization shifted leverage across different sites of struggle, and what new contradictions or vulnerabilities has it produced for capital? Debt Collective organizers working on healthcare, education, and housing debt will discuss their work and the politics of debt in the current conjuncture.
Speakers
BB
RC
LM
Sponsors
avatar for Debt Collective
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Economics

3:00pm CDT

Bodies, Bodies, Bodies
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
In the last five years we’ve seen the rise of a right-wing vision of body modification, from looksmaxxing with peptides, extreme diets, and jaw breaking to the rise of so-called “Mar-a-Lago face.” These trends are entwined with the MAHA movement, substituting the perfection of the self for universal care. An increasingly medicalized cosmetics industry pushes invasive procedures as nearly mandatory for cis women. Meanwhile, the same people who engage in extensive body modification in the name of preserving traditional gender ideals are keen to deny surgery and hormones to trans people, and anyone seeking a non-normative gender presentation. What can we make of this contradiction, and what can we learn from the ways that fascist politics play out on the body itself?
Speakers
AS
T
Sponsors
avatar for Lux
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Gender-Sexuality-Liberation

3:00pm CDT

Turn Illness Into A Weapon: Autonomous Health Organizing in Times of Rising Fascism (Health Fascism Series)
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
What happens when we cannot wait for institutions to care for us? Across the world, people are building free clinics, harm reduction projects, childcare networks, food distribution programs, and street health teams outside the boundaries of formal institutions—creating the things that people need to struggle and stay alive. This panel brings together organizers involved in three US based autonomous survival programs to discuss what they’ve learned about building and sustaining creative and durable infrastructures of care, and why even the smallest experiments matter in a time of deepening crisis.
Speakers
ZR
BA

Beatrice Adler-Bolton

Beatrice Adler-Bolton is a disabled and chronically ill agitator and independent researcher. She is the co-author of Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto (Verso, 2022) and a co-host of the Death Panel podcast.


TB

Tea Burns

Tea Burns (ARCNYC) is a nurse, propagandist, and first aid instructor with ARCNYC. Action Readiness Collective NYC (ARCNYC) is a revolutionary skill sharing group committed to spearing knowledge and skills throughout NYC movement spaces. Our goal is to unite various advanced sections... Read More →
T
Sponsors
avatar for Death Panel
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Health Politics & Disability Justice

3:00pm CDT

Inquilab Zindabad: Bhagat Singh and the Revolutionary Left during South Asian Independence
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
Mainstream narratives of the South Asian independence movement often erase radical figures like Bhagat Singh, who articulated critiques of colonialism, capitalism, and religion, and was unafraid to embrace a diversity of tactics - including “violent” struggle. This session will shine light on his underappreciated history, and why it still matters today.
Speakers
VM
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  International Politics

3:00pm CDT

Our International Struggles Cannot be Confined to the Capitalists’ National Elections
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
Under heightened imperialist rivalries, with global climate catastrophe and war destroying our world, the international issues we face cannot be solved within national borders. We are told that the elections are necessary to fight these issues and to counter the growing far right. But our everyday problems, like rising costs of living, can only be solved through collective class struggle. How do socialists trying to address these problems approach bourgeois elections knowing that our resistance must be international? How do we avoid the pitfalls of nationalism in a time of heightened nationalist rivalries?
Speakers
LR
JS

Jolene S

Jolene S, Speak Out Socialists
TT

Tom T

Tom T, Nouveau Parti Anitcapitaliste-Révolutionnaires (NPA-R)
Sponsors
avatar for Speak Out Socialists
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  International Politics

3:00pm CDT

Radicalizing Labor Unions: A Balance Sheet of Reform, Class Struggle, and Rank-and-file Movement-Building
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
Rank-and-file movements in labor unions have shaped the terrain of labor struggle in recent years. Some have served primarily as “reform” vehicles for a wing of the union bureaucracy, while others have anchored rank-and-file struggles on the shop floor with a reinvigorated class-struggle vision. UAW President Shawn Fain and Teamsters President Sean O’Brien represent the culmination of two prominent union reform movements in recent years, but their promise of increased militancy and new organizing has yielded mixed results. How can we build class-struggle unions capable of confronting the state and capital?
Speakers
avatar for Andrew Bergman

Andrew Bergman

Co-Chair, Unite All Workers For Democracy (UAWD)

NL
LM
MT
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Labor Movement

3:00pm CDT

Data Centers, Class Politics, and Socialist Strategy
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
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
NK

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.
AK

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.
JL
CS
YV
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Left Strategy

3:00pm CDT

Revolutionary Socialists and the Fight Against War and Authoritarianism
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
Organizers from the revolutionary and independent socialist left, from four different cities, share their experiences in helping build the broader anti-Trump movement while fighting for distinct strategies and perspective—based on the need for political independence, a strategic focus on social struggle and mass action, and democratic organizing—to defeat authoritarianism.
Speakers
NK

Ndindi Kitonga

Ndindi Kitonga, a black activist in LA originally from Kenya who is founder of Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid, an abolitionist housing network. She has also been active in BLM and related community organizing.
PM

Pepper Macias

Pepper Macias is a hotel kitchen worker, UNITE/HERE activist who is part of Unidad Latina en Accion.
M

Meg

Meg is a grassroots activist organizing in working class neighborhoods of Baltimore for ICE defense, climate justice, and and other political coalitions.
BM

Bill Mullen

Bill Mullen is a member of the national AAUP/Committee to Defend Tom Alter. 
KR

Kirstin Roberts

Kirstin Roberts is a Chicago teacher and socialist activist, long standing member of the CTU and active in May Day Strong Chicago. 
Sponsors
avatar for United Left Platform
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Left Strategy

3:00pm CDT

Neighborhood Organizing 101
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
Learn how to build a neighborhood rapid response network rooted in neighborly relationships. This workshop covers block organizing basics: connecting with neighbors, building communication channels, and responding to crises like evictions, ICE alerts, or other emergencies. Participants will also develop long-term plans for mutual aid and community defense.
Speakers
AO

Amadi Ozier

Amadi Ozier is a community organizer with Madison Tenant Power and Madison RR Community Defense focused on neighborhood-based mutual aid, tenant organizing, and grassroots response networks. Their work centers on building trusting relationships to manage neighborhood crises.
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Organizing

3:00pm CDT

Using Historical Ephemera for Political Education
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
Buttons of the Left preserves and curates buttons and other ephemera of working class resistance to tell the stories of our movements. This session shares case studies of exhibits and workshops, explores the project’s origins, and the challenges and opportunities of using tangible historical materials for political education.
Speakers
IS

Isaac Silver

Isaac Silver is a socialist activist and independent archivist/historian based in Chicago.
Sponsors
avatar for Buttons of the Left
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Radical History

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
TBA
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
AB

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 →
RJ

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 →
RJ

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
avatar for JVP
Sunday September 6, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA
  Religion & Spirituality

5:00pm CDT

Are All Cops Bastards?
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
While liberal objections to an ACAB approach may be expected, recently some surprising defenses of police forces in supposedly socialist states have emerged. This session will examine the role of police around the world and ask the question, is there really any such thing as a “revolutionary” cop?
Speakers
BB

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 →
AB

Anderson Bean

Anderson Bean is a North Carolina–based activist and editor and contributor of the book Venezuela in Crisis: Socialist Perspectives from Haymarket Books, and the author of Communes and the Venezuelan State: The Struggle for Participatory Democracy in a Time of Crisis from Lexington... Read More →
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Abolition

5:00pm CDT

Imagine a Future Without Family Policing!
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
The family policing (aka child welfare) system is designed to place marginalized families under intense state surveillance while it promotes a carceral logic that impedes social change. A growing movement calls for abolition: dismantling the system alongside the radical reimagining of a society that supports families and keeps children safe.
Speakers
DR
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Abolition

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
DM

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 →
VO

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

5:00pm CDT

Socialism Beats Fascism: Organizing for a Post-Trump America
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
Against Trump, how can we keep building antiwar and migrant rights movements? As social forces grow in the US behind the May Day movement, No Kings protests, and Minnesota’s general strike against ICE, what will it take to keep building movements from the streets to transform our whole political landscape?
Speakers
GM

Griffin Mahon

Griffin Mahon is a DC-based union organizer and a cochair of DSA's National Labor Commission.

EB

Eleanor Babaev

Eleanor Babaev is a member of DSA’s National Political Committee from NYC, and chair of the DSA’s Trump Admin Response Committee.
BB

Bol B

Bol is Political Action Coordinator of Twin Cities DSA. He has been a long time labor and electoral organizer in the Twin Cities area, and a DSA member since 2018.
EA

Eman Abdelhadi

Eman Abdelhadi is a scholar, organizer and writer. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago, writes a column for In These Times Magazine and is co-author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072, a sci-fi novel... Read More →
Sponsors
avatar for DSA
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Fighting the Right

5:00pm CDT

We Are Each Other's Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
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
MB
RK
T
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Gender-Sexuality-Liberation

5:00pm CDT

The Strike that Shook the Bay: San Francisco’s Historic 2026 Educator Strike and the Coming California Strike Wave
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
Earlier this year, United Educators of San Francisco led six thousand members out on the first SF public school strike in half a century. In a city seemingly dominated by big tech capital and real estate, and against the opposition of the leaders in the SF and California Democratic Party, UESF won a historic contract for teachers and the community. Join us for a discussion of how this strike was built through years of organizing, a big democratic bargaining team, and bold left-wing politics, and what’s next for California educators.
Speakers
YC

Yajaira Cuapio

Yajaira Cuapio is a school social worker and lead negotiator for UESF.
ID

Ilan Desai-Gellar

Ilan Desai-Gellar is a classroom teacher and regional picket captain in UESF.
AS

Alex Schmaus

Alex Schmaus is a special education instructional aide and COPE director for UESF.
Sponsors
avatar for United Educators of San Francisco
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Labor Movement

5:00pm CDT

Mass Labor Action in Defense of Immigrant Workers: Why We Need It and How We Can Get there
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
This panel brings together immigrant activists from San Jose and Los Angeles, a labor militant from Minneapolis, and a historian of the complex working class history in which radicals fought to create a powerful synergy between the unions and workers who have crossed borders.
Speakers
JA

Justin Akers Chacón

Justin Akers Chacón is an educator, activist, and writer in the San Diego-Tijuana border region, and is a member of Socialist Horizon. His works include No One is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the US-Mexico Border (with Mike Davis), Radicals in the Barrio: Magonistas... Read More →
LF

Lucia Flores

Lucia Flores is an organizer at Cal State University. She is a Mexican American daughter of immigrants who has been involved in community and student organizing for over a decade. 
VR

Victor Rodríguez

Victor Rodríguez has been active in the socialist movement for four decades. Since moving to the U.S. from his native South America more than 20 years ago, he has worked in factories in California and has been involved in union organizing and the fight for immigrants’ rights. Victor... Read More →
DT

Dan Troccoli

Dan Troccoli is a trade unionist, middle school teacher, and community activist in Minneapolis, MN. 
Sponsors
avatar for Workers Voice
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Migrant Justice

5:00pm CDT

People's Movement Assembly 101: Building Insurgent Democracies in the US South
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
People's Movement Assemblies (PMAs) are radical democratic organizing processes that translate collective resistance into concrete action. As US imperialism continues consolidating power globally, PMAs are where insurgent democracies can be cultivated. Learn from the Black Nashville Assembly how PMAs are being used to build participatory democratic power in the US South.
Speakers
DC

Denzel Caldwell

Born, raised, and organizing in Nashville, Denzel Caldwell is an organizer, economist, popular educator, and self- defense instructor dedicated to transforming the lives of Black folks in Nashville. Inspired by Vietnam War era Dr. King, he chose to study economics while at Morehouse... Read More →
Sponsors
avatar for Black Nashville Assembly
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  Organizing

5:00pm CDT

Unruly Subjects LIVE: A Reckoning with our Moment
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
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
RW

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 →
CK

Chenjerai Kumanyika

Chenjerai Kumanyika is an Assistant Professor at NYU Journalism and Program Director of the Urban Journalism Workshop. He specializes in narrative audio journalism at the intersection of race, history, and media critique. He is co-creator and co-host of Uncivil (Gimlet Media) and... Read More →
OO

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 →
Sunday September 6, 2026 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA
  US Politics

7:00pm CDT

Steal This Story: Film Screening and Discussion
Sunday September 6, 2026 7:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
Fiercely independent journalist Amy Goodman has spent three decades holding the powerful to account, reporting from war zones and the Democracy Now! newsroom. In Steal This Story, Please!, Oscar-nominated filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin craft a riveting portrait of journalism’s power – and peril – in an era of corporate control and political attacks on truth. (Film screening and Q&A)
Speakers
AG
TL
Sunday September 6, 2026 7:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
  Radical History

8:00pm CDT

Chicago IPO/Neighborhood Org Social
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
Looking for likeminded community in you neighborhood? Curious about political organizations in your area? Come connect with fellow Chicagoans building local movements!
Sponsors
avatar for 33rd Ward Working Families
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
  Meet-up

8:00pm CDT

Cultural Worker Meet-Up
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
If you are an artist or someone who is curious about realizing the revolutionary possibilities of art, please join us at the Cultural Workers Meet-Up. This will be a space where artists and creatives can exchange ideas about how to meaningfully connect their creative labor to organized struggle and discuss what it means to create with radical intent.
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
  Meet-up

8:00pm CDT

Democratic Socialists of America Meet-Up
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
Join Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for a Socialism Conference social! Members, interested members, and all comrades are welcome.
Sponsors
avatar for DSA
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
  Meet-up

8:00pm CDT

Library Workers Meetup
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA

Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
  Meet-up

8:00pm CDT

Movement Journalism as Anti-Fascist Resistance
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
It’s no surprise to movement journalists when billionaires take over mainstream outlets, layoff hundreds of workers and censor stories critical of an authoritarian government. For years, movement media makers have been ringing the alarm on the decades of corporate consolidation and harmful narratives that uplift those in power and further manufacture consent for state-sanctioned violence. For the 3rd year in a row, The Movement Media Alliance would like to host a meet-up and workshop where attendees can discuss how movement media is an essential part of anti-fascist movement building toolkit to make change happen and activate the broader public into organizing work.
Speakers
DH
CM

Cayden Mak

Cayden Mak is the publisher at Convergence Magazine and the host of Block & Build: Roadmaps for the Left. Prior to Convergence, Cayden spent nearly a decade in various roles at 18 Million Rising, including five years as Executive Director and two as Chief Technology Officer, developing... Read More →
MS
LW
Sponsors
avatar for Movement Media Alliance
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
  Meet-up, Subtype1, Subtype2

8:00pm CDT

Public Educators Meet-Up
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
Join this meet up to strategize and build solidarity with other teachers on the front lines of the struggle to fight the dismantling of public education under the Trump administration.
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
  Meet-up, Subtype 2

8:00pm CDT

Radical Healthcare Workers and Friends Meet Up
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
We all know our healthcare system is rotten at its roots due to its profit centered motive. It can feel isolating working under increasingly precarious conditions with patients' lives in our hands. Patients suffer and we do too. But we must build networks of solidarity because it is only through our collective power that we can win the healthcare system we all deserve. Come meet radical healthcare workers, medical debt abolitionists and disability justice activists to connect, scheme and dream!
Sponsors
avatar for Debt Collective’s Healthcare Worker Solidarity Collective
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
  Meet-up

8:00pm CDT

Tech Worker Meetup
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
Join seasoned organizers who are building worker power across the tech industry, from the very first wall to wall union at Kickstarter to the massive solidarity union at Google. Chat about emerging strategy, hear highlights from the wider tech labor movement, and share tactics for common challenges like organizing remotely.
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
  Meet-up, Subtype1

8:00pm CDT

The South Meet Up
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
Are you from the South of the US? Join fellow conference participants from the South to meet each other, talk about your organizing, and make connections for future struggles!
Sponsors
avatar for Southern Workers Assembly
Sunday September 6, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm CDT
TBA
  Meet-up
 
Monday, September 7
 

10:00am CDT

The Roots of Punishment, The Seeds of Abolition: Organizing Against State Violence From the Ground Up
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
This panel examines the throughline from slavery, lynching, and incarceration to the modern death penalty. Featuring organizers working across the South, it centers impacted leadership, abolitionist strategy, coalition building, and collective care. Participants will leave with historical framing and practical tools to build durable movements against state violence.
Speakers
MS

ML Smith

ML Smith is the Founder/Director of Missouri Justice Coalition, and an international abolitionist and organizer for the rights of incarcerated persons. 
TC

Tiara Cooper

Tiara Cooper is the Executive Director of “In Defense of Black Lives,” and an organizer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF).
FB

Furonda Brasfield

Furonda Brasfield is the Director of Leadership Development at the US Campaign to End the Death Penalty and Coordinator of the Leaders of Color in the Death Penalty. 
Sponsors
avatar for U.S. Campaign to Abolish the Death Penalty
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Abolition

10:00am CDT

End the Genocide Behind Bars: Freedom for Palestinian Political Prisoners
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
Since October 2023, Israel has waged a genocide behind bars, systematizing and intensifying historic tactics of abuse and degradation against Palestinian prisoners, and turning prisons into death camp as part of Israels broader campaign to break the will of the Palestinian People. Palestinian Political Prisoners are the Compass of the National Struggle for Palestinian Liberation, the demand for their freedom must be amplified.
Speakers
NA
JA
Sponsors
avatar for Freedom for Palestinian Political Prisoners
avatar for Palestinian Youth Movement
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Anti-colonial Politics

10:00am CDT

A Shit Deal: Capitalism's Ecological Rift
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
The capitalist State has long been propped up by its capacity to compensate for wanton ecological degradation at home and abroad. No historical period illustrates this better than the nineteenth century Peruvian guano trade, as Europe's extractive agricultural practices threatened soil ecology, fueling their imperialist grip on the southern hemisphere.
Speakers
TC

T Callahan

T Callahan is a freelance science writer based in Chicago and author of The Stranded Asset on Substack. An editor of the forthcoming third edition of the Ecological Economics textbook and passionate advocate for eco-socialism, T strives to reveal capital's root-level complicity and... Read More →
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Climate Justice

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
WE

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 →
MV

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 →
RP

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

10:00am CDT

RePRESSion: Press Censorship in the Time of Fascism and Increasing Media Illiteracy
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
RePRESSion examines media censorship from South to South and how fascism, genocide, and incarceration intensify repression. This panel shares strategies for press organizing amid media consolidation, AI, and declining literacy—media and illiteracy. Panelists will center abolitionist publishing and amplify incarcerated writers’ perspectives on censorship from inside.
Speakers
SJ
DL
AS
TT
Sponsors
avatar for Scalawag
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Fighting the Right

10:00am CDT

Madness, Capitalism and Psychiatric Abolition
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
What do psychiatry and madness have to do with abolition? Join us for a grounding in the fundamentals of psychiatric abolition, from its earliest manifestations to the current resurgence of interest in toppling psychiatry’s entanglement with carceral laws and policies that detain, control, and punish in the name of care
Speakers
SL

Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu

Stefanie Lyn Kaufman Mthimkhulu (they/she) is a Mad, Disabled, multidisciplinary care strategist/worker, educator, psychiatric survivor, and healing practitioner. They are a white, queer, non-binary person of Puerto Rican and Ashkenazi Jewish descent, rooted in lineages of Disability... Read More →
LH

Leah Harris

Leah Ida Harris (she/they) is a mad writer whose work appears in The Progressive, Disability Visibility Project, Truthout. Their first book, NONCOMPLIANT: A FAMILY HISTORY OF THE ASYLUM (forthcoming, Haymarket Books) details violent history—and grim resurgence—of the asylum in... Read More →
NO

Nze Okoronta

Nze Okoronta (they/them) believes the crisis is not our people or our communities, but the systems that respond to them. They are known for work surrounding non-carceral peer respites, warmlines and hotlines, harm reduction and drug user support, Mad Pride and Mad Liberation, mutual... Read More →
JS

Jess Stohlmann-Rainey

Jess Stohlmann is an author, educator, activist, and death and care worker. She has spent nearly 20 years working at the intersections of research and practice in crisis, suicidology, and peer support. Jess combines academic expertise, living experience, and practical experience in... Read More →
Sponsors
avatar for Death Panel
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Health Politics & Disability Justice

10:00am CDT

Building a Rank-and-File Working Class Antiwar Movement Today
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
Drawing on lessons from the hidden history of US working class antiwar resistance in the Vietnam war and beyond to build a working class antiwar movement today.
Speakers
ML

Michael Letwin

A third-generation political activist, and a revolutionary socialist since the 1960s, Michael Letwin has participated in movements against the Vietnam War, apartheid South Africa, and U.S. imperialism in Iran, Central America, the Middle East, and around the world. In 1971, he was... Read More →
T
Sponsors
avatar for Labor for Palestine National Network
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism

10:00am CDT

The Left and the National Question: Building Solidarity without Exception
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
Imperialist powers from the US to Russia and China oppress nations and national minorities. That reality has put question of the left and the right of oppressed nations to self-determination back on the table. How can the left practice solidarity without exception from Palestine to Ukraine, oppose all great powers, and build internationalism from below?
Speakers
EA

Eman Abdelhadi

Eman Abdelhadi is a scholar, organizer and writer. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago, writes a column for In These Times Magazine and is co-author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072, a sci-fi novel... Read More →
RR

Reza Rezaian

Reza Rezaian, member of United Iranian Left, and former member of Printers Union of Tehran
SR

Simon Rodriguez

Simon Rodriguez, Venezuelan socialist, member of Partido Socialismo y Libertad, and author of Por Qué Fracasó el Chavismo
TV

Tanya Vyhovksy

Tanya Vyhovksy, Vermont State Senator, member of DSA, and Ukrainian American
Sponsors
avatar for The Ukraine Soilidarity Network (US)
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  International Politics

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
TBA
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
DB

David Backer

David Backer is a professor at Seton Hall University who studies debt and education.
SK

Sylvia Kidder

Sylvia Kidder is an organizer with The People's Lobby who has worked in municipal finance for a decade.
MR

Michael Reagan

Michael Reagan is a member of Black Rose / Rosa Negra.
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Left Strategy

10:00am CDT

How Communities Become Targets: Somalis in Minnesota and the Policing of Black Muslim Life
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
How do communities become targets? This session traces Somali migration to Minnesota through the lens of Operation Metro Surge. It examines how race, religion, and immigration status shape who is marked as “risk,” and how these structures expand, revealing how Black refugees are policed as threats while inviting reflection on resistance and belonging.
Speakers
SO
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Migrant Justice

10:00am CDT

Creating Emotional and Spiritual Support Groups for Activists
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
Kelly Hayes and Tanuja Jagernauth discuss Understory, an emotional and spiritual support group for activists they co-facilitate. Hayes and Jagernauth will also share a toolkit to help others organize their own groups.
Speakers
AD

Atena Danner

Atena O. Danner is a cultural worker who imagines Black liberation, engaged in boundless curiosity. Her poems range from kitchen-table specificity to expansive relatability, covering topics including neurodiversity, human connection, and collective liberation. Atena is also an experienced... Read More →
KH

Kelly Hayes

Kelly Hayes is a Menominee author, organizer, movement educator and photographer. She is the host of Truthout‘s podcast Movement Memos and the creator of Organizing My Thoughts, a weekly newsletter about politics and justice work. She is co-author of the book Let This Radicalize... Read More →
TJ

Tanuja Jagernauth

Tanuja Jagernauth is an organizer, circle keeper, writer, theater maker, and yoga educator. She is also a co-facilitator of Understory.
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Religion & Spirituality

10:00am CDT

Insurgent Spiritualities for Revolutionary Struggle
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
From Indigenous land defense to anti-slavery abolitionism to prison organizing and Stop Cop City, insurgent political spiritualities have been foundational to revolutionary struggles for another world. How do we train ourselves and our movements to discern and build upon the enduring unity of collective spiritual practice and political struggle?
Speakers
BH

Benji Hart

Benji Hart is an interdisciplinary artist, author, and educator.‍ Their words have appeared in numerous anthologies, including No Cop City, No Cop World (Haymarket Books, 2025), Constellations of Care (Pluto Press, 2024), And the Category Is… (Beacon Press, 2022), and the second... Read More →
JJ

Joy James

Joy James is Ebenezer Fitch Professor of Humanities at Williams College. She is the author of Resisting State Violence; Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics, Transcending the Talented Tenth and Seeking the Beloved Community. James has published numerous articles... Read More →
AK

Andrew Krinks

Andrew Krinks is a writer, educator, organizer, and movement builder working at the intersections of religion, racial capitalism, criminalization, abolition, and housing justice in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the author of White Property, Black Trespass: Racial Capitalism and the... Read More →
BT

Belkis Terán

Rev. Belkis Teran is the mother of Manuel "Tortuguita" Teran, a queer, non-binary, Venezuelan forest defender who was killed by Georgia State Patrol in January 2023. She is an ordained minister and the founder of the Tortuguita Healing Center, an integral, environmentalist project... Read More →
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Religion & Spirituality

10:00am CDT

Don't Be Afraid, Start A Radical Book Club With Your Friends!
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
In this workshop, the speaker will discuss how developing community book clubs help individuals of diverse backgrounds and experiences to understand dense or otherwise intellectually inaccessible theory by tackling work in a collective manner. This will lead to a deepening understanding of one's own politic, and will help develop their niche in organizing and community praxis. The group can also act as a method of circular accountability.
Speakers
LR

Luna Ramos

Luna Ramos (they/she) is a queer Afro-Cuban educator and writer based in Los Angeles. Though they identify as an anarchist, they strongly advocate for the need of diverse politics, beliefs, and strategies to spur radical systemic change. Their work in Cuban solidarity taught them... Read More →
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Skill Sharing

10:00am CDT

Neoliberalism, Fascism, Feudalism...or Socialism? What Lies Ahead
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
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
JB

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 →
NK

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.
EM

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 →
JZ

Justine Zhang

Justine Zhang is an assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. Her current research examines language technologies and their political investments.
Monday September 7, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA
  Socialist and Marxist Theory
 

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