Socialism 2025: Full Schedule

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8:30am CDT

Morning Yoga

Friday July 4, 2025 8:30am - 9:30am CDT

Join us for a Vinyasa yoga session led by local yogi Angel. We’ll work to sync our breath and bodies to beginner’s poses with just enough challenge to get you out of your comfort zone. This 60-min flow is perfect for all levels. We will have mats available on a first come, first serve basis.

Morning yoga will take place outside on the grass, weather-permitting. (In case of rain, we’ll be in Regency Ballroom A.)

Friday July 4, 2025 8:30am - 9:30am CDT
TBA

Activity

10:00am CDT

No New Cages: Lessons from Organizers Resisting Carceral Infrastructure

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

The new, authoritarian, administration has promised to expand prison infrastructure, requiring remobilizations of efforts against expansion, construction, entrenchment, and net-widening. Alongside the release of a new resource on undertaking fights against carceral infrastructure, a panel of organizers who have organized against prisons, jails, detention centers, and cop cities will offer reflections and strategic recommendations on what these fights will look like in coming years.

Speakers

Zhandarka Kurti

Zhandarka Kurti is an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at Loyola University Chicago. She is the co-author of States of Incarceration: Rebellion, Reform and the Future of America’s Punishment System and editor of Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanit... Read More →

Mon Mohapatra

Mon Mohapatra (she/they) is a writer, organizer and artist originally from India, based on Canarsee Land (NYC) whose work involves building capacity for abolitionist organizing through political education, participatory research, and direct action. In particular, her work focuses... Read More →

Hannah Riley

Hannah Riley is a writer and activist based in Atlanta.

Stevie Wilson

Stevie Wilson (he/him) is a currently imprisoned Black queer abolitionist organizer and facilitator from Philadelphia. Wilson is the founder of the inside abolitionist study collective 9971 and is the founder of the abolitionist journal In the Belly. He is a columnist for the Abolitionist... Read More →

Sponsors

Community Justice Exchange

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

Abolition

10:00am CDT

BLM Under Trump: Where Do We Go from Here?

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

The second wave of the Black Lives Matter rebellion erupted in 2020 while Trump was president in reaction to George Floyd & Breanna Taylor’s murder by the police. Now that Trump is back in the White House where does the movement go from here?

Speakers

Robert Cuffy

Robert Cuffy is a member of the DSA Afrosocialist Caucus, a founder of the Socialist Workers Alliance of Guyana, and on the editorial board of New Politics.

Jessica Garraway

Jessica Garraway is an active member of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and a founding member of Black Cat Workers Collective.

Sponsors

New Politics

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

Black Liberation

10:00am CDT

Zine Making for Social Justice

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

Zines have long been an affordable, DIY method of sharing information and building community within social justice movements. Join this hands-on workshop to learn about the history of zine making, explore zine types and topics, and make your own political zine for distribution.

Speakers

Danielle Bullock

Danielle Bullock is a queer, Brooklyn-born artist, activist and public school educator. She is a union chapter leader and member of the MORE caucus of the UFT. She is also a member of the Tempest Collective.

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

Culture and Art, Intro

10:00am CDT

All You Fascists Bound To Lose: The Left’s Role During Repression

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

We are in a period of instability and suppression. The white Christian nationalist right, alongside their billionaire partners, have launched unprecedented assaults on hard-won rights and protections. Our duty is to undermine their neo-fascist agenda. This panel will explore how the Left in South Africa, India, and the U.S. resisted, and in some cases, overcame eras of right-wing repression.

Speakers

Steve Williams

Steve Williams is the National Secretary of North Star Socialist Organization. Trained as a community organizer, he worked for more than 20 years doing multi-racial grassroots organizing at POWER to win working-class power, alongside issues of anti-displacement, welfare and immigrant... Read More →

Amit S

Amit S is a long-time immigrant labor organizer and movement strategist. Amit S is a long-time immigrant labor organizer and movement strategist. He splits his time between India and the United States.

Hannah Sassaman

Hannah Sassaman is a leader with over 20 years of experience organizing for community power and tech justice. She built and won seminal campaigns expanding community radio, cementing affordable internet access, and accountability from Fortune 50 telecom corporations. She currently... Read More →

Sponsors

North Star Socialist Organization

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

Fighting the Right

10:00am CDT

Gender and the Rising Right

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

The far-right in the US and abroad has placed gender at the center of fascist politics, obsessing over trans rights, abortion, and the birthrate and attacking the very presence of the word gender in federal administration and universities. How does the right build its power through a focus on gender, and what is the role of gender in a resurgent left?

Speakers

Rae Garringer

Rae Garringer is a writer, oral historian, audio producer, and goat farmer based in southeastern West Virginia where they were raised. They are the author and editor of Country Queers: A Love Letter (Haymarket 2024) and the editor of To Belong Here: A New Generation of Queer... Read More →

Andrea J. Ritchie

Andrea J. Ritchie (she/her) is an abolitionist Black lesbian immigrant survivor who has been documenting, organizing, advocating, litigating and agitating around policing and criminalization of Black women, girls, trans, and gender nonconforming people for the past three decades... Read More →

Sophie Lewis

Sophie Lewis is a writer. Her books, Enemy Feminisms, Full Surrogacy Now, and Abolish the Family, have been translated into nine languages. Sophie grew up in France, half-British, half-German, but now lives in Philadelphia and teaches online courses on utopian theory at the Brooklyn... Read More →

Sarah Leonard

Sarah Leonard is the editor in chief of Lux.

TBD

Sponsors

Lux

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

Gender-Sexuality-Liberation

10:00am CDT

Deny, Defend, Depose: Health Struggle After Luigi

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

With the new administration, the federal government has been actively attacking healthcare funding for the poor and intensified its targeting of trans and disabled people and the immiseration of healthcare workers. Join us for a discussion of what the fight for health communism may look like under this new regime, and what strategies and forms of politics may help us move forward. With Death Panel co-hosts and co-authors of Health Communism Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant, joined by writer and organizer Vicky Osterweil.

Speakers

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.

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.

Vicky Osterweil

Vicky is a writer, worker and editor based in so-called Philadelphia. She is a founding member of CAW, a worker-owned collective journal of autonomy, arts and culture, as well as the author of In Defense of Looting (2020), and The Extended Universe: How Disney Killed the Movies and... Read More →

Sponsors

Death Panel

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

Health Politics & Disability Justice

10:00am CDT

⁠You Cannot Evict a Movement: Tenant Fights That Catalyze, Mobilize, and Win

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

“Transitional demands” are a strategy for mobilizing neighbors beyond individual housing issues by inviting deeply rooted connections and a collectivized consciousness. Learn from organized tenants from several tenant unions about organizing models for engaging in tenant-centered crisis response for black and migrant tenants in gentrifying neighborhoods.

Speakers

Stephen Gurney

Stephen Gurney is a friend, sibling, partner, educator, tenant organizer and lover of the hot weather. He has been organizing with the BED-Tenant Union in Brooklyn since 2022, during which he has taken part in several building and neighborhood based organizing campaigns across Brooklyn... Read More →

Amadi Ozier

Amadi Ozier has been a tenant organizer since 2020. They currently work with Madison Tenant Power in Madison, WI, and have previously worked with the Crown Heights Tenant Union in Brooklyn, NY. They have worked on several successful, high-profile neighborhood-level crisis responses... Read More →

Khadija Haynes

Khadija Haynes is Trinidadian-born Afro-Caribbean woman poet and writer. As an organizer with the Communist Party USA & Young Communist League, Brooklyn Eviction Defense, Crown Heights Tenant’s Union, Sisters In The Struggle, and Flatbush Tenant’s Coalition, Khadija Haynes... Read More →

Trevor-Anastacio Ortega

Trevor-Anastacio Ortega has been a tenant organizer since 2021. Currently working with the Puget Sound Tenants Union as the Secretary of the Capitol Hill Local, they focus on building sustainable sites of the working class struggle through the organization of reproductive labor. Previously... Read More →

Sponsors

Autonomous Tenant Union Network

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

Housing Justice, Intro

10:00am CDT

Bottom Up for Liberation: An Anti-Imperialist Strategy for our Movement

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

We are an emerging cadre formation of social movement leftists, growing out of the LeftRoots process. Too often internationalism is an obligatory footnote to local and electoral struggles--but for us, anti-imperialism is essential to our daily and long-term work to win ecofeminist socialism, from our communities to the world.

Speakers

Sal Ami

Rebecca John

Carl Redwood

Sara Roschdi

Sponsors

Bottom Up for Liberation

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism

10:00am CDT

Indigenous Grounded Solidarity, Then and Now

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

This lecture explores a materialist ethic of solidarity between the Dene of the Northwest Territories (Canada) and the people of Palestine via a political economy of oil and extractivism. It looks at the origins of the 1973 Oil Crisis and e!ects, examining Indigenous resistance to extractivism spanning from Palestine and the Middle East to the proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline in the Canadian Northwest Territories.

Speakers

Glen Coulthard

Glen Coulthard is an associate professor in First Nations and Indigenous Studies and in the Department of Political Science. Glen has written and published numerous articles and chapters in the areas of contemporary political theory, indigenous thought and politics, and radical social... Read More →

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

Indigenous Liberation

10:00am CDT

Putin’s Anti-War Political Prisoners in Russia

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

This panel examines Putin’s repression of critical voices, those who have publicly opposed his war of aggression against Ukraine. Boris Kagarlitsky, the well-known Marxist critic of Putin's regime, is currently serving a five year sentence in a penal colony for "justifying terrorism" – a charge stemming from a satirical comment about the Crimean bridge explosion. While Kagarlitsky’s case has drawn international attention, many other leftwing critics remain imprisoned in obscurity, often held in appalling conditions.

Moderators

Suzi Weissman

Suzi Weissman: Professor Emeritus of Politics, Saint Mary’s College of California, author of Victor Serge: a Political Biography; editorial board member of Against the Current and Critique, host of Beneath the Surface on KPFK Los Angeles, and the Jacobin Radio podcast; Board... Read More →

Speakers

Ksenia Kagarlitskaya

Ksenia Kagarlitskaya, daughter of Boris Kagarlitsky, founder and organizer of the international festival in support of political prisoners "Freedom Zone". pruesha@gmail.com

Boris Kagarlitsky

Boris Kagarlitsky, Prominent Russian leftist public intellectual; longtime critic of Kremlin policy; author of numerous translated works and host of popular YouTube channel; imprisoned under Brezhnev, Yeltsin and now Putin. Arrested in 2023 for a satirical social media post, he is... Read More →

Grusha Gilaeva

Grusha Gilayeva, managing editor of Russian socialist antiwar website Posle, operating in exile. posle.media@gmail.com

Simon Pirani

Simon Pirani historian, activist, and energy researcher writing on Russia and Ukraine. Author of Change in Putin’s Russian and the forthcoming Final Speeches to the Court; blogs at peoplenature.org... Read More →

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

International Politics

10:00am CDT

Showdown in Germany: The Left Party and the Fight Against Fascism in 2025

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

In the March elections, the Left Party made a surprising comeback. At the same time, the far-right AfD is now leading in the polls - especially among workers and low-income voters. With the new Merz government pushing austerity and militarization, the urgent question is: how should the left in Germany respond to this political landscape?

Speakers

Speaker from marx21 Germany

TBD

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

International Politics

10:00am CDT

The Use of Political Education in Union Campaigns

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

While the urgent needs of organizing and fighting the boss naturally take top priority for union organizers and committees, political education of workers in struggle is a crucial but hard to prioritize investment that can turn committee leaders into committed trade union or even socialist activists for the long haul.

Speakers

Dylan Maraj

Alvin Gaine

Ira Pollock

Ira Pollock has been working at and organizing at Amazon warehouses in the NYC area for 6 years. Ira was a leader in Amazonians United and now the Logistics Workers League, an organization of logistics workers and allies dedicated to bringing a class struggle perspective and political... Read More →

Sponsors

Logistics Workers League

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

Labor Movement

10:00am CDT

Build & Fight: A Strategy to Meet the Moment

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

The Build and Fight strategy is being applied in Jackson, MS. It emphasizes creating autonomous, cooperative institutions (Build) while simultaneously engaging in organized resistance against oppressive systems (Fight). It promotes grassroots economic self-determination, dual power, and mass mobilization to challenge capitalism, white supremacy, and ecological destruction, fostering a just transition. We engage electoral politics on our terms, completely independent of the two corporate parties.

Speakers

Kamau Franklin

Kamau Franklin is the founder of Community Movement Builder, a Black, member-based collective of community residents and organizers. Kamau has been a dedicated community organizer for over thirty years and is a former practicing attorney, beginning in New York City and now based in... Read More →

Kali Akuno

David Cobb

Johanna Epke

Sponsors

Build and Fight

Community Movement Builders

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

Socialist Strategy

10:00am CDT

Building Durable Power: Lessons from Jewish Voice for Peace

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

What does it take to absorb and consolidate a membership base after periods of uprising & mass mobilization? Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organizers will share their reflections on nitty gritty topics like: creating effective leadership structures, building stronger strategic alignment across a national base, developing concrete organizing skills and capacities with grassroots member-leaders, navigating anti-organizational left tendencies, and practicing principled struggle in response to disagreement.

Speakers

Shelby Handler

Shelby Handler is a writer and staff organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace, based on Duwamish land in Seattle, WA.

Michael Wolfe

Michael Wolfe is a chapter organizer for the Midwest and Mountain region on staff with Jewish Voice for Peace, based on Kaw, Jiwere, Nutachi, and Wahzhazhe land in Kansas City, Missouri.

CP

CP is the Sr. Membership Organizer at Jewish Voice for Peace.

Sponsors

Jewish Voice for Peace

Friday July 4, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

Socialist Strategy

12:00pm CDT

Fighting Carceral Infrastructure to End Mass Incarceration

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

TBA

Participants will learn tactics and strategies from campaigns against carceral infrastructure, including jails, prisons, and police training facilities. Panelists will also discuss how their work ties into the broader movement to end mass incarceration and other struggles for justice.

Speakers

Micah Herskind

Micah Herskind is an organizer, writer, and law student at Harvard Law School. He is a co-editor of No Cop City, No Cop World: Lessons from the Movement (Haymarket Books, 2025), and has written for outlets including New York Magazine, Scalawag, MSNBC, Teen Vogue, Inquest, and Race... Read More →

James "Jimmy" Soto

James "Jimmy" Soto is a community organizer, artist, prisoner advocate, writer, and future JD candidate. He was wrongfully convicted and was released after serving 42 years. He is a paralegal at Northwestern University Pritzker's School of Law in the Community Justice and Civil... Read More →

Avalon Betts-Gaston

Avalon Betts-Gaston is a Chicago native, non-licensed attorney, ordained minister, and passionate advocate to dismantle and change current systems while building a system of care and accountability focused on humane justice and harm reduction, not just punishment. She is the first... Read More →

Alicia Brown

Alicia Brown is a community leader and currently co director of Final 5 Campaign. She is a restorative justice practitioner, circle keeper, and abolitionist. She enjoys writing and was recently published in the “Envisioning Justice Curricular Concepts Resource Guide, Incarcerated... Read More →

Sponsors

Institute to End Mass Incarceration

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA

Abolition

12:00pm CDT

Climate Action to Transform Our World

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

TBA

We live under an economic system which pursues profit above all else, and which heavily contributes to the climate crisis. Tackling it requires us to understand and confront the roots of poverty, racial inequality, and capitalist exploitation. Climate justice offers the real possibility of huge leaps towards racial and economic equality, connecting many issues into one movement for collective liberation.

Speakers

Kylie Cheung

Kylie Cheung is the author of four books on gender and politics, including Coercion: Surviving and Resisting Abortion Bans with Pluto Press. Cheung’s most recent book on gender-based violence, Survivor Injustice, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. She is... Read More →

Mikaela Loach

Mikaela Loach is a climate justice organizer, speaker, and the author of Climate Is Just the Start. She is the co-director of the AWETHU School of Organising and co-hosts the YIKES podcast.

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA

Climate Justice, Intro

12:00pm CDT

Gulf to Gaza: No Sacrifice Zones

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

TBA

BIPOC communities along the Gulf South have long been treated as sacrifice zones by corporations like Chevron and Valero who have also been instrumental in fueling genocide in Palestine. This panel will explore what it means to build solidarity in communities often overlooked and seldom seen as crucial sites of struggle.

Speakers

Chloe Torres

Chloe Torres is a lifelong Corpus Christian who has been organizing around environmental justice in the region for nearly a decade. She is a member of Corpus Christi DSA and has spoken across the state of Texas and across Europe where she has played a vital role in strengthening a... Read More →

Jenny Espino

Jenny Espino was born and raised in Corpus Christi and has been organizing in the Gulf South for nearly two decades. She is a member of Corpus Christi DSA and the Gulf South to Gaza Collective. She has spoken at conferences such as the Socialism Conference, the Southwestern Marxism... Read More →

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA

Climate Justice

12:00pm CDT

How to Democratize Everything

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

TBA

If you’re a socialist, what do you know about democratic planning? Socialism isn't bigger state bureaucracies, endless meetings, or even turning out votes. Instead, it is empowering ordinary people to have a greater say over the institutions that affect us all. Join social theorist Michael A. McCarthy to explore how the working class can be empowered by introducing new forms of democracy into our most important investment decisions.

Speakers

Michael A. McCarthy

Michael A. McCarthy is the Director of Community Studies and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of Dismantling Solidarity (Cornell) and The Master's Tools (Verso). He is also an editor of Critical Sociology and a member of... Read More →

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA

Economics, Intro

12:00pm CDT

Blocking the Right, Building the Base: The Work of Left Unity in 2025

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

TBA

How can organizers take on bold, strategic work to strengthen left-led base building within a broad anti-fascist united front? Our panelists debate the “build” component of a shared “Block and Build” strategic orientation, drawing on their experience in different sectors of the socialist, social movement, and labor left.

Speakers

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. Duhalde has worked in both labor and electoral action and is a public advocate... Read More →

Montague Simmons

Montague Simmons is a community organizer, movement builder and strategist. A native of St. Louis, Montague has worked to build movements locally and nationally that are rooted in building Black political power and self-determination, advancing the leadership of oppressed nationalities... Read More →

Jayanni Webster

Jayanni Webster is a member and national leader of North Star Socialist Organization. As a southern-based organizer, she has 15+ years of experience in labor, housing, and community organizing. She is a committed social-movement leftist, Black feminist, and internationalist.

Bennett Carpenter

Bennett Carpenter is a queer Southern trainer, movement strategist, and member of the National Executive Committee of Liberation Road. They've run campaigns to win participatory budgeting and community based alternatives to policing, elect movement candidates to local and state office... Read More →

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. His other work has included organizing with... Read More →

Sponsors

Convergence Magazine

Liberation Road

Rising Majority

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA

Fighting the Right

12:00pm CDT

Rethinking Antifascism

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

TBA

A conversation with veteran anti-fascists about what it means to scale-up an anti-fascist movement when the forces we're fighting have taken the power of the state.

Speakers

Andrea J. Ritchie

Ari Bloomekatz

Ari Bloomekatz is Executive Editor at In These Times. He was previously the Managing Editor of Rethinking Schools and Tikkun magazines, and spent several years as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. Follow him @bloomekatz... Read More →

Shane Burley

Shane Burley is a journalist and filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author, co-author, and editor of four books, including Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism (Melville House, 2024) and Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press, 2017). His work has been featured in NBC News, Al Jazeera, Jewish Currents, The Daily Beast, Jacobin, The Baffler, Yes! magazine and the Oregon Historical Quarterly. Follow him on Twitter @shane_burley1 and Instagram @shaneburley... Read More →

Michael Staudenmaier

Michael Staudenmaier is a veteran of many anti-fascist, anti-imperialist, and anarchist projects over the past quarter century, including work with ARA Chicago in the 1990s and 2000s. He is the author of Truth & Revolution: A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization, 1969–1986... Read More →

Kelly Hayes

Kelly Hayes is a Menominee author, organizer, movement educator and photographer. She is the host of Truthout‘s podcast Movement Memos and co-author of the book Let This Radicalize You, with Mariame Kaba. Kelly also is also the creator of Organizing My Thoughts, a weekly newsletter... Read More →

Rick Perlstein

Rick Perlstein is the author of a four-book series on the rise of conservatism in America. The first, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, won the Los Angeles Times Book Award in 2001. The second, third, and fourth made the New York Times bestseller... Read More →

Sponsors

In These Times

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA

Fighting the Right

12:00pm CDT

Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

TBA

Mental health is a political issue, but we often discuss it as a personal one. How is the current mental health crisis connected to capitalism, racism, and other social issues? In a different world, how might we transform the ways that we think about mental health, diagnosis, and treatment? This session will situate mental health as an urgent political concern that demands deeper understanding from the left.

Speakers

Micha Frazer-Carroll

Micha Frazer-Carroll is the author of Mad World and a columnist at the Independent. She has previously edited for gal-dem, the Guardian and Blueprint, a mental health magazine that she founded. Micha has also written for Vogue, HuffPost, Huck and Dazed. She was nominated for the Comment... Read More →

Sponsors

Pluto

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA

Health Politics & Disability Justice, Intro

12:00pm CDT

Socialism and the Long March of the Left in Mexico

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

TBA

The historical Left present in Mexico 2025 is linked to a project of Socialism and participate of the promotion of the Fourth Transformation in Mexico, inside and outside the MORENA party, close to the Lopez Obrador and Claudia Sheinbaum governments. Its trajectory dates back to 1968 and includes the organization LEFT UNITY.

Speakers

Arturo Ramos

Arturo Ramos is a Mexican retired professor from UNAM and the Autonomous University of Chapingo, as well as a university unions leader and socialist activist since 1978.

Maria-Teresa Lechuga

María-Teresa Lechuga is a Mexican professor at UNAM, a unionist and socialist activist since 2000.

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA

International Politics

12:00pm CDT

Debt is a Labor Issue: Unions and Debt Abolition

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

TBA

In this interactive session audience members will develop a robust analysis and critique of debt and discuss campaigns for debt abolition led by organized labor. Organizing for better wages and benefits is to organize against debt. To organize for debt abolition is to strengthen the power of the working class.

Speakers

Jasson Perez

Lindsey Muniak

Lindsey Muniak is an organizer with the Debt Collective, where she leads national efforts to abolish medical debt, interrupt patterns of financialization in healthcare, and bring those who have experienced the failures of our profit-driven healthcare system into the fight for its... Read More →

Jason Wozniak

Jason Wozniak is associate professor and Coordinator of the Transformative Education and Social Change program at West Chester University. He is a researcher and organizer with Debt Collective, and Founder and Co-Director of The Latin American Philosophy of Education Society (LAPES... Read More →

Jeannine Woods

Jeannine Woods has been an educator for over 20 years. She currently serves as a District Organizer and a Functional Vice President on the Executive Board of the Chicago Teachers Union. Jeannine is also a member of the Illinois State Educator Preparation and Licensure Board (SEPLB... Read More →

Sponsors

Debt Collective

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA

Labor Movement

12:00pm CDT

From the River to The World

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

TBA

This panel explores Palestinian resistance as an exit from state-sanctioned repression, linking struggles in the ‘belly of the beast’ to global anti-imperialism. Speakers explore arms embargo efforts, labor organizing, criminalization under international law, and the evolving world order, foregrounding material conditions and lived experiences fueling resistance.

Speakers

Malak Afaneh

Malak Afaneh is a civil rights attorney at the Aboushi Law Firm and the Director of the Palestine Center for Public Policy. Before joining the Palestine Center for Public Policy, Afaneh received her J.D. from UC Berkeley Law and has a Bachelor of Arts in Politics and Middle Eastern... Read More →

Helyeh Doutaghi

Helyeh Doutaghi is scholar of international law and geopolitical economy. Her research explores the intersections of the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), encompassing Marxian and postcolonial critiques of law, sanctions, and international political economy. Dr... Read More →

Taylor Fox

Taylor Fox is an attorney, researcher, and longtime organizer with the movement for Palestinian liberation. She currently works on providing movement defense through the Right to Reject Zionism Coalition and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.

Rifqa Falaneh

Sponsors

The Palestine Center for Public Policy

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA

Palestine

12:00pm CDT

Literacy is the Foundation of a Revolution!: The Radical History of the 1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

TBA

This panel explores the radical history of Cuba’s 1961 Literacy Campaign as a socialist project aimed at mass education, national liberation, and anti-imperialism– ending illiteracy in just 124 days. We examine its grassroots mobilization, youth leadership, and its impact on global literacy movements and socialist thought.

Speakers

Sohini Das

Sohini Das is a NYC-based community organizer, Bronx elementary art teacher, and PhD researcher committed to abolitionist education justice, anti-imperialism, and solidarity with the Cuban revolution.She organizes with Black, immigrant, and working-class NYC youth and families through... Read More →

Yaania Bell

Born and raised in Harlem, NYC, Yaania Bell is an emerging documentarian and multimedia artist with a passion for community building and archiving. In high school, Yaania was a tutor and avid student organizer, co-founding the StudentsOfColorMatter coalition out of Fieldston circa... Read More →

Kayla Wiliams

Kayla Williams is a Brooklyn-born organizer with roots in Jamaica, dedicated to using her strategic and technical skills in the battle for justice, equity and liberation. As a core member of Rose from Concrete, a Brooklyn based mutual aid organization, Kayla serves as a partner... Read More →

Shaquille Williams

Shaquille Williams is a researcher and educator from Brooklyn, New York, dedicated to social justice and equitable access to education and technology. Through Rose from the Concrete (RFC), he supports initiatives that drive sustainable development locally and globally. Also a member... Read More →

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA

Radical History

12:00pm CDT

Political Education 2: Slavery, Colonialism, and Primitive Accumulation

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm 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

B-REAL Academy

CPE

KC Defender

Du Bois Movement School

Claudia Jones School

Sponsors

B-REAL Academy

KC Defender

Claudia Jones School

Center for Political Education

W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA

Socialist and Marxist Theory, Intro

12:00pm CDT

The Left and the Family: A Roundtable

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

TBA

How should the left relate to the family? Socialist analysis makes clear that the nuclear family form is an inherently repressive, racist, and hetereo-sexist institution that functionally reinforces and reproduces capitalism. But what does this mean for our organizing, especially when the family form remains a potent organizing structure for many everyday people, and when the Right constantly positions itself as a party of “family values”? Is a politics of family abolition in tension with a leftist family agenda focused on policies like universal preschool, child tax credits, and more? Join us for a roundtable on the left and the family

Speakers

Eman Abdelhadi

Eman Abdelhadi is a scholar, organizer and writer in the movement for Palestinian liberation.

TBD

Olivia Katbi

Olivia Katbi is the co chair of Portland DSA and a long time organizer with the BDS Movement.

Katie Gibson

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA

Socialist Strategy

12:00pm CDT

The Dig LIVE: Notes on The New Regime

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

TBA

An expansive analysis of the unfolding American political conjuncture. How should we analyze the reorganization of American politics under the fascist authoritarian regime of MAGA 2.0? How can the left move forward when years of struggle have left us far short of real organized power? How should we think of coalitions with liberals at a time when we are too weak to govern by ourselves but mainstream Democrats have endorsed colonial genocide? A live recording of The Dig podcast.

Speakers

Robin D.G. Kelley

Robin D. G. Kelley is Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. He is the author of Hammer and Hoe, Race Rebels, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, and Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, among other titles. His writing... Read More →

Gabriel Winant

Gabriel Winant is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago, a member of the executive council of AAUP/AFT Local 6741, a member of the Dissent editorial board, and author of The Next Shift... Read More →

Asli Ü. Bâli

Dan Denvir

Friday July 4, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT
TBA

US Politics

1:30pm CDT

Letter Writing to Incarcerated Comrades

Friday July 4, 2025 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT

TBA

Do you want to build connections with imprisoned comrades, but don’t know where to start? Spend your lunch hour learning the political importance of and best practices for letter writing to prisoners. Participants will have the opportunity write postcards during the session with guidance and support from formerly imprisoned people. Bring a friend, or two!

Friday July 4, 2025 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
TBA

Skill Sharing

3:00pm CDT

Caregiving Toward Abolition: Workshop and Story Circles

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

Caregiving is an integral part of movements for liberation. In this moment of rising fascism, it's especially crucial to uplift this care work, including care for children. Supporting young people and each other in concrete, material ways, day to day and hour to hour, is an essential component of resistance. In this workshop, we will engage with these themes, informed by the anthology We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition. We'll also offer an opportunity to be part of a circle in which we'll share stories of caregiving in a supportive space.

Speakers

Nadine Naber

Kim Wilson

Maya Schenwar

Maya Schenwar is director of the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism and board president of Truthout. She is the co-editor of We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition and co-author of Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms, among... Read More →

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Abolition

3:00pm CDT

“Texas is infamous for its taste for death:” Lethal Practices in the Lone Star State

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

Texas is the U.S.’s lead executioner. Its use of the death penalty has decreased, but the descriptive profile of those who are executed remains the same. This session will examine the racial lineage tied to Texas’s death penalty, and strategies to strengthen the death penalty abolition movement.

Speakers

Tony Ford

Howard Guidry

Tania Siddiqi

Obie Weathers

Sponsors

Texas People's Tribunal

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Abolition

3:00pm CDT

The Role of Black Media Under Fascism

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

What is the role of Black media under fascism? This is one of the questions we would like to invite others to consider at this year's conference. We hope to delve into a discussion about what we see as our responsibility as an independent, Black-led publication and as part of movement media in this era of rising censorship. Moreover, we question what Scalawag can do to help push that agenda forward.

Speakers

Da'Shaun Harrison

Da'Shaun Harrison is a trans theorist and Southern-born and bred abolitionist in Atlanta, Georgia. They are the author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, which was awarded the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction, among several... Read More →

Tea Troutman

Ko Bragg

Aurielle Marie

Sponsors

Scalawag

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Black Liberation

3:00pm CDT

Beyond Climate Despair: Rebuilding a Revolutionary Left in the Face of Catastrophe

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

For many, despair has become the only honest response to our converging climate and political catastrophes. Yet too much is at stake to settle for fatalism or any flimsy, cost-free hope. At this late date, nothing short of revolution in some form will salvage the possibility of a better world. How can our movements forge a new and durable revolutionary-left politics sustained by a radical resolve and solidarity?

Speakers

Wen Stephenson

Wen Stephenson is a veteran journalist and climate-justice activist, a correspondent for The Nation, and author of Learning to Live in the Dark: Essays in a Time of Catastrophe (Haymarket).

Batul Hassan

Batul Hassan is the Labor Director at the Climate and Community Institute, where she works closely with member scholars and movement allies to develop policy and research that builds the case for transformative, racially-just climate action.

Anthony Rogers-Wright

Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate/environmental liberation and racial justice advocate and practitioner, a writer, and policy expert who resides in the Midwest of the United States with his family and mischievous cats “Evil” Ernie and Malachai "the Mayhem... Read More →

Ray Acheson

Ray Acheson is the Director of Reaching Critical Will, the disarmament program of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and a member of global coalitions including the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and Stop Killer Robots. They are author of Abolishing... Read More →

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Climate Justice

3:00pm CDT

You Are Not a Loan: Debtors' Assembly

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

Join Debt Collective, the nation’s first union of debtors, in an empowering debtor’s assembly where participants will share their lived experiences with debt, releasing the shame that we are taught to feel when in debt and instead finding solidarity with one another against the system denying us the means to live. Everyone is welcome - whether or not you are debt-burdened since debt impacts entire communities, not just individuals. The session will culminate in a call to join our movement to abolish student, medical, and rent debt and to fight for an economy that works for the many instead of the few.

Speakers

Emily Birnbaum

Emily Birnbaum is a family nurse practitioner who spent the first five years of her practice in primary care. She is now back in school studying psychiatry as she has found her greatest passion in medicine to be in mental health. She is currently organizing with the Debt Collective... Read More →

Richelle Brooks

Dr. Richelle Brooks is a momma, an educator, organizer with Debt Collective and the founder of ReThink It – an organization dedicated to providing resources to mitigate the harm of systemic racism. She is an author and speaker, with a specialized interest in the ways Black Women... Read More →

Sponsors

Debt Collective

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Economics, Intro

3:00pm CDT

Labor and the Struggle for Higher Education

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

Repression of student protests on campuses and existential defunding threats from the White House have combined to change the face of higher education and call into question its very future. Join us for a discussion of the current state of the movement to save and transform higher education through the power of labor and community activism.

Speakers

Jason Wozniak

Chenjerai Kumanyika

Chenjerai Kumanyika teaches nonfiction audio journalism and podcasting at New York University. He is the co-creator, co-executive producer and co-host of Uncivil, a podcast on the Civil War and is the creator and host of the new podcast, Empire City, an eight-part narrative series... Read More →

Gabriel Winant

Sherry Wolf

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Education Justice

3:00pm CDT

Green Social Housing

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

Rent is through the roof! Join tenant and housing organizers to discuss how tenant power and publicly-owned municipal social housing can solve the cost-of-living crisis.

Speakers

Renette Bradley

Renette Bradley is a tenant organizer with several grassroots organizations, and is part of Housing Justice for All. She has been a member of DSA since 2023, as a member of the NYC-DSA Housing Working Group, the Green Social Housing Organizing Committee, and working on the Good Cause... Read More →

Matthew Nursey

Matthew Nursey is an Organizer & Policy Advocate with Housing Justice League, based in Atlanta GA, and is a co-chair of Atlanta DSA.

Sebastian FG

Sebastian FG is a staff organizer for the North Carolina Tenant Union supporting the Triangle Tenant Union in Raleigh, NC and a member of the national DSA Housing Justice Commission steering committee. Originally from Colombia, he leads the HJC's weekly language exchange project to... Read More →

Nicole Murray

Nicole Murray has been organizing for better transit and housing in New York City DSA since 2019. She currently sits on the organizing committee of their “House the Future” aka Green Social Housing campaign, and co-chairs the national Green New Deal Campaign Commission which supports... Read More →

Sponsors

DSA

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Housing Justice

3:00pm CDT

An Injury To One Is An Injury To All: Intergenerational Reflections on International Solidarity

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

This workshop will offer an intergenerational conversation and reflection on international solidarity. Speakers ranging from 60s and 70s activists to present day freedom fighters will highlight what solidarity looked like in the days of the anti-Vietnam war movement and Black Power, why this solidarity declined after 1990, and consider how the current resurgence of support for Palestinian freedom and rebellions of migrants and incarcerated individuals can contribute to a global left front against fascism.

Moderators

Mon Mohapatra

Speakers

Safear Ness

Safear Ness (they/them) is a formerly incarcerated abolitionist, released from Pennsylvania State Prison in 2023. Their lineage is traced through Indigenous peoples (Apache Chiricahua), Spanish colonizers, and white settlers. They still organize against the PIC with incarcerated comrades... Read More →

Bill Ayers

Bill Ayers is the author, most recently, of When Freedom is the Question...

James Kilgore

James Kilgore is a Building Community Power Fellow at Community Justice Exchange. He is an activist and writer based in Urbana IL. He is the author of seven books, including the award-winning Understanding Mass Incarceration. He lived in Southern Africa for 18 years where he worked... Read More →

Dawn Harrington

Dawn Harrington, National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls & International Network of Formerly Incarcerated Women.

Sponsors

Community Justice Exchange

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism

3:00pm CDT

Public Workers and the Public Good

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

The Trump administration is carrying out a comprehensive assault on the public sector, with federal workers and their labor unions on the frontline. How do these attacks fit into much longer arcs of austerity, privatization, and the defanging of organized labor? This panel brings together public sector workers from several different areas who are organizing not only to fight the decimation of our existing public infrastructure, but to build and advance a vision of a civil society that actually works for the public good, with rank & file workers leading the way.

Moderators

Lindsey Muniak

Speakers

Kathryn Zamarrón

Margaret Palmquist

Loreen Targos

Colin Smalley

Sponsors

In These Times

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Labor Movement

3:00pm CDT

Migrant Sex Workers Against Fascism: Lessons from 150 Years of Resistance

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

Travel bans, ICE abductions and deportations of green card holders are nothing new for migrants in the sex industry. But their lives and struggles also offer us a blueprint for resisting surveillance, criminalization and the “good immigrant” vs “bad immigrant” division. Instead they inspire us to transform fear and uncertainty into creativity, power, empathy and noncompliance.

Speakers

Yves Tong Nguyen

Yves Tong Nguyen (they/she/he) is a Vietnamese queer trans disabled abolitionist organizer and cultural worker who is currently organizing with Red Canary Song and Survived & Punished NY, and formerly organized with Free Them All 4 Public Health and other formations. They are personally... Read More →

Chanelle Gallant

Chanelle Gallant is a movement writer, organizer, strategist and consultant and co-author of Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice (Haymarket Books, 2024). She co-founded the Migrant Sex Workers Project, SURJ-Toronto and has provided training and advocacy... Read More →

Elene Lam

Elene Lam is an activist, artist, community organizer, educator, human rights defender and the coauthor of Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice. She has fought for sex worker, migrant, gender, labor and racial justice for over 20 years. She is the founder... Read More →

Emi Koyama

Emi Koyama is a multi-issue social justice activist and writer synthesizing feminist, Asian, survivor, dyke, queer, sex worker, intersex, genderqueer, and crip politics, as these factors, while not a complete descriptor of who she is, all impacted her life. She is the Coordinatrix... Read More →

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Migrant Justice

3:00pm CDT

The Palestine Crisis in Liberal Institutions and the Trump Moment

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

Liberal institutions’ ability to respond to Trump's assault on civil society has been hampered by their own deep contradictions on Palestine. Jewish Currents reporters Alex Kane and Mari Cohen will discuss the political and cultural forces pushing these institutions to comply with a pro-Israel agenda and whether Trump’s moves have prompted any reflection.

Speakers

Alex Kane

Alex Kane is the senior reporter at Jewish Currents.

Mari Cohen

Mari Cohen is the associate editor at Jewish Currents.

Sponsors

Jewish Currents

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Palestine

3:00pm CDT

Revolutionary Socialist Youth Organizing in the 1970s: The Red Tide and the Battle to Free Gary Tyler

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

In 1976, high school students of the Red Tide newspaper campaigned to free Gary Tyler, a 16-year-old Black political prisoner on Louisiana's death row. In the process, they forged a multiracial, working-class youth organization of the International Socialists. Half a century later, Gary and several Red Tide veterans reflect on this history and its lessons for today.

Speakers

Gary Tyler

Arnita Dobbins

Kyle Hopkins

Michael Letwin

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Radical History

3:00pm CDT

Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

Join historian Emily Callaci for a timely exploration of an often overlooked movement for economic and social justice: the Wages for Housework movement demanded wages for domestic labor as a starting point for remaking the world as we know it. Drawing on the campaign's 1970s roots in the US, Italy, and Britain, Callaci will discuss the revolutionary potential of this radical movement and its lessons for today's feminist organizers.

Speakers

Sarah Leonard

Sarah Leonard is the editor in chief of Lux.

Emily Callaci

Emily Callaci is professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she teaches courses on African History, Decolonization, Reproductive Politics and Global Feminism. Her most recent book is Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise.

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Radical History

3:00pm CDT

Collective Liberation through Sex Education: How Sex Education Should be at the Root of All Organizing Spaces

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

At the root of organizing is education, not just formal, but skill-sharing and radical understanding. Sex education must be foundational, covering pleasure, racial medical history, gender, advocacy, relationships, violence prevention, and harm reduction. This session will help organizers understand these roots and the necessity of intersectional thinking in our movements.

Speakers

Elhom Karbassi

Elhom Karbassi (she/her) is a first-generation Iranian-American from Savannah, GA. She grew up with an abstinence-only, Bible Belt sex education which led to shame, confusion, and harm when she started exploring her sexuality. This drove her to want to ensure other all folks have... Read More →

Thalía Chicojay

Sponsors

Sexpectations Chicago

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Skill Sharing

3:00pm CDT

Political Education 3: Abolition & Reconstruction Today

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

The brief period following the Civil War set the stage for where we find ourselves today. Instead of rebuilding American society as a multiracial democracy, the Reconstruction project was defeated by white terrorism, and instead of equality, we got Black Codes, convict leasing, Jim Crow, police, and prisons. This participatory workshop will collectively map the current legacies of Reconstruction's failure and reframe contemporary abolitionist struggles around the positive project of building a new world.

Speakers

Nneka Azuka

Talia Charidah

DJ Graves

Geo Maher

Chris Rogers

Ant Smith

Sponsors

B-REAL Academy

Center for Political Education

Claudia Jones School

KC Defender

W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Socialist and Marxist Theory, Intro

3:00pm CDT

“The Same Old Tools Don’t Work Here”: The Role of Rural Organizing in Defeating Authoritarianism

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

What can the Left learn from rural organizers about strategy, innovation, and courage? What will it take for progressives to truly invest in working class rural organizing and see rural people as a critical part of winning the world we need? Join co-founders and members of the Rural Defenders Union, a network of isolated, under-resourced, anti-authoritarian rural efforts who are fighting a wide range of live authoritarian threats, for a conversation about the political landscape of rural America, the powerful antiauthoritarian organizing happening, and the opportunity we have to invest in growing it.

Speakers

Rae Garringer

Beth Howard

Beth Howard, Appalachian Peoples Union Director at Showing Up for Racial Justice and Rural Defenders Union (RDU) co-founder

Shawn Sebastian

Shawn Sebastian, Organizing Director at RuralOrganizing.org and RDU co-founder

Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith, Organizer at West Virginia Can’t Wait and RDU co-founder.

Sponsors

Rural Defenders Union

Showing Up For Racial Justice

Friday July 4, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Socialist Strategy

5:00pm CDT

Prison Made Us Militants: A Conversation with In The Belly

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

TBA

How does the work of prison and police abolition fit within a broader socialist movement? How can the left meaningfully engage incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people? How can we build strong movements where imprisoned people are leaders and comrades in the struggle? Join In the Belly for a conversation about prison organizing with currently and formerly incarcerated organizers, who will discuss movement building behind bars, inside-out organizing, prison repression and censorship, and more.

Speakers

Safear Ness

R. Ya'iyr Carter

R. “Ya’iyr” Carter is a currently incarcerated poet and essayist, working to dismantle the prison industrial complex from a cell in Pennsylvania. He is an editor for In the Belly, a revolutionary abolitionist magazine by and for incarcerated people and their communities.

Pierre Pinson

Sponsors

In the Belly

Study & Struggle

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA

Abolition

5:00pm CDT

Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

TBA

Join the poets behind “Heaven Looks Like Us,” a new collection of Palestinian poetry to explore the love, grief, and defiance that bridge borders, languages, and generations of Palestinians. Poetry readings will be followed by a conversation on the stories behind the poems—from translations, to archival discoveries to the difficulties of bringing in Gazan work in this moment—and the connections across a global Palestinian community.

Speakers

George Abraham

Tariq Luthun

Lamise Noor Shawahin

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA

Culture and Art

5:00pm CDT

Gender, Sexuality, Reproduction and the State: Fighting Back Against the So-Called Law

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

TBA

As the state intensifies its assault on gender, sexuality, and reproduction—criminalizing abortion, trans care, and pregnancy outcomes, dismantling government functions to fight "gender ideology," and defining "real women" under the guise of protection—how do we endure and resist? Under the shadow of a second Trump administration, the erosion of rights is not a glitch but a feature of a broader regime of privatization and control. Journalist Melissa Gira Grant, and authors Sophie Lewis and Beatrice Adler-Bolton discuss how today's attacks are part of a longer history of state repression, and how we can build resistance in an era of hyper-austerity and rising fascism.

Speakers

Sophie Lewis

Beatrice Adler-Bolton

Melissa Gira Grant

Melissa Gira Grant is a staff writer at The New Republic and the author of the books Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work (Verso, 2014) and the forthcoming A Woman Is Against the Law: Sex, Race, and the Limits of Justice in America (Little, Brown, 2026).

Sponsors

Death Panel

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA

Health Politics & Disability Justice

5:00pm CDT

Reviving the Bandung Spirit: Why Anti-Imperialism Still Matters

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

TBA

As U.S. empire decays and the world order becomes increasingly multipolar, internationalist solidarity is more important than ever before. In this talk, Pranay Somayajula will discuss the worldmaking legacy of the Third Worldist movement, and argue for the re-centering of genuine anti-imperialism as a core pillar of the Left's radical agenda.

Speakers

Pranay Somayajula

Pranay Somayajula is an Indian-American writer and organizer, based in Washington, DC. He currently serves as Organizing and Advocacy Director for Hindus for Human Rights. In his organizing and his writing, Pranay works to bring together diverse histories and struggles for justice... Read More →

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA

Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism

5:00pm CDT

State Violence and GI Resistance

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

TBA

From within and outside the machine there is a long history of GIs rebelling against US militarism and facism. Through an abolitionist framework, this discussion highlights the legacy and revolutionary power of GI resistance against the backdrop of military mobilizations to violently suppress people’s movements.

Speakers

Arti Walker-Peddakotla

Arti Walker-Peddakotla (she/they) is a William H. Hastie Fellow at University of Wisconsin Law, a 2022 Soros Justice Fellow, and former Oak Park Village Trustee. As a local elected official, and cofounder of community organizing group Freedom to Thrive Oak Park, Arti organized abolitionist... Read More →

Aaron Hughes

Aaron Hughes is an artist, curator, organizer, and anti-war veteran. He works collaboratively in diverse spaces and media to create meaning out of personal and collective trauma, deconstruct and transform systems of oppression, and seek liberation. Hughes works with a range of art... Read More →

Sponsors

About Face: Veterans Against the War

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA

Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism

5:00pm CDT

Demon Mineral: Film Screening and Discussion

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

TBA

Demon Mineral documents the Indigenous struggle for vital living space in the radioactive desert of the American Southwest. Join us for a screening of this important documentary, followed by a short discussion featuring filmmaker Hadley Austin and activists Janene Yazzie, Roger Peet, and Joshua Frank.

Moderators

Joshua Frank

Joshua Frank is an award-winning California-based journalist and co-editor of the political magazine CounterPunch. He is the author of Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America.

Speakers

Janene Yazzie

Janene Yazzie (She/Her), is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. She has over 12 years of experience as a community organizer and human rights advocate deeply rooted in local community issues. Beginning from her community Tsé si’ áni, in Diné Bikéyah, she has worked on the... Read More →

Hadley Austin

Hadley Austin is a filmmaker/director, producer, poet, photographer, and aerialist. She is, alongside Yoni Goldstein, one half of Formidable Entities.

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 helps to run the cooperative Flight 64 print studio in Portland. His work includes investigating the history and impact of the Shinkolobwe... Read More →

Sponsors

CounterPunch

Science for the People

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA

Indigenous Liberation

5:00pm CDT

I Didn't Come Here to Lie: The Life and Legacy of Karen Lewis

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

TBA

In 2012, Karen Lewis led the Chicago Teachers Union to a historic strike, challenging the city’s powerful mayor and paving the way for an unprecedented wave of teacher strikes in the decade that followed. Join us for a discussion and celebration of Karen's legacy and monumental impact on the labor movement today.

Speakers

TBD

Elizabeth Todd-Breland

Elizabeth Todd-Breland is the author of the award-winning A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s and an associate professor of history and affiliated faculty member in Black Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. She is a scholar... Read More →

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA

Labor Movement, Intro

5:00pm CDT

Workers Deserve More: DSA's National Labor Program

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

TBA

In 2024, DSA members joined their coworkers on the picket line for major labor actions across the University of California, and at Amazon and Starbucks nationwide. Along with these campaigns, we are organizing worker networks and fighting back with federal workers in the midst of broadside attacks on the working class. Join us to learn more about these efforts!

Speakers

TBD

Shay

Shay (they/them) is a barista in Cleveland with Starbucks Workers United and a member of DSA's National Labor Commission. They were hired and joined their store's organizing committee in December 2021, and their store at University Circle unionized in July 2022. DSA's Solidarity is... Read More →

Sarah Hurd

Sarah Hurd is a co-chair of three Democratic Socialists Of America’s National Labor Commission. She is a staff organizer for the Illinois Nurses Association where she has specialized in guiding healthcare workers through contract negations and member driven strikes.

Sponsors

DSA

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA

Labor Movement

5:00pm CDT

Nos Defendemos: Community Deportation Defense from Workplaces to Neighborhoods

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

TBA

Worker, tenant, and immigrant organizers discuss the need to organize to defend immigrants in our workplaces and communities and lessons from the attacks in the first six months of the Trump regime.

Speakers

Hector Rincon

Hector Rincon has been active in the socialist movement for four decades. Since moving to the USA from his native South America more than 20 years ago, he has worked in factories in California and has been involved in organizing unions and the struggle for immigrant rights. Hector... Read More →

Jorge Mujica

Jorge Mújica was one of the main organizers of the 2006 immigrant rights marches and co-author of “Voces Migrantes, Movimiento 10 de Marzo”. Jorge immigrated from his native Mexico to the United States in 1987 and was elected to the Mexican Federal Congress in 2021, representing... Read More →

Jazmin Tlaxcala

Jazmin Tlaxcala is a member of the Los Angeles Tenants Union. A Mexican American daughter of immigrants has organized in school and her community for over a decade.

Sponsors

Workers' Voice

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA

Migrant Justice

5:00pm CDT

Anti-Colonial Political Education: Amílcar Cabral and the PAIGC

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

TBA

Political or “militant” education was a central feature of the overall anti-colonial struggle in Guinea Bissau and Capo Verde, solidifying the roots of independence. This session will explore the extensive educational practices of Amilcar Cabral’s party, the PAIGC, which was designed to decolonize minds and raise national consciousness while rooted and supported by the realities and necessities of the community.

Speakers

Salon Kawakib speakers

TBD

Eman Abdelhadi

Eman Abdelhadi is a scholar, organizer and writer in the movement for Palestinian liberation.

Sponsors

Salon Kawakib

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA

Radical History, Intro

5:00pm CDT

Against Abandonment: DIY Approaches to Clean Air Justice

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

TBA

Ohio Clean Air Coalition will demystify key aspects of improving indoor air quality in the interest of maintaining disability justice in our collective spaces. Participants will leave the workshop with hands-on experience building air purifiers as well as technical knowledge to make tangible the invisibility of air and virus transmission.

Speakers

Sarah Doherty

Sarah Doherty is a white fat crip dyke artist/educator/organizer. She's organized for liberation and justice in multiple interconnected movements with fat, disabled, queer, trans, immigrant, regional, and university communities coast to coast, in the south and midwest. She loves pickles... Read More →

Sharon Kim

Sharon Kim is an organizer from Columbus, OH.

Sean Rule-Hoffman

Sean Rule-Hoffman is an audio engineer and community organizer with Ohio Clean Air Coalition. He uses science-based approaches to find practical and effective solutions to improving indoor air quality and reducing airborne virus transmission in Columbus, Ohio.

Sam Wrigglesworth

Sam Wrigglesworth is a disabled visual artist, writer, and educator currently based in central Ohio. In their practice and organizing, they are concerned with maintenance, collective power + care, and the body. They founded the Ohio Clean Air Coalition in 2024 after living with long... Read More →

Sponsors

Ohio Clean Air Coalition

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA

Skill Sharing

5:00pm CDT

Fighting Fragmentation: Building Cross-Sectoral Social Movements

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

TBA

Movement organizations often hesitate to engage beyond their immediate focus. This panel highlights organizers who expanded their efforts—a tenant union opposing a police training facility and a labor union joining the fight for a ceasefire in Gaza—demonstrating the power and necessity of a transversal approach to collective action.

Speakers

Bri M.

Yasser Munif

Felix T.

Sponsors

Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA

Socialist Strategy

5:00pm CDT

Hope at the Edge of the Abyss: The Case for Revolution

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

TBA

Amid genocide, Trump’s authoritarian onslaught, climate catastrophe, and the threat of fascism—we are living at the edge of capitalism’s abyss. This meeting will make the case for why revolution is not only necessary, but also why mass struggles of working class and oppressed peoples make it possible. Our approach to the immediate and defensive struggles of today is inseparable from our insistence that ending this nightmare requires the revolutionary transformation of society.

Speakers

TBD

Natalia Tylim

David McNally

David McNally is the Cullen Distinguished Professor of History and Business at the University of Houston and director of the Center for the Study of Capitalism. McNally is the author of seven books and has won a number of awards, including the Paul Sweezy Award from the American Sociological... Read More →

Sponsors

Tempest Collective

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA

Socialist Strategy

5:00pm CDT

Reclaiming the Future: Outer Space as a Site of Organizing and Imagination

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT

TBA

Failure of the left to engage with space as both a practical and imaginative realm has allowed the right to weaponize it for its own ends. Space underpins technologies affecting peoples’ daily lives, and space labor happens on Earth. Come learn why space matters for the left’s future… and present!

Speakers

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a theoretical physicist, occasional astrophysicist, and theorist of Black science studies at the University of New Hampshire. She is the author of The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (2021), The Edge of Space-Time... Read More →

Lucian Walkowicz

Lucian Walkowicz is an astronomer, movement artist, and educator based in Chicago. As co-Founder of the JustSpace Alliance, Walkowicz studies how outer space serves as the site where humanity crafts its futures, and works to make those futures more just (both in space, and on Earth... Read More →

Friday July 4, 2025 5:00pm - 6:30pm CDT
TBA

Socialist Strategy, Intro

6:30pm CDT

Songs for Liberation

Friday July 4, 2025 6:30pm - 8:00pm CDT

TBA

Join Songs for Liberation, a Chicago-based protest music collective, for a song circle and moment of inspiration and renewal. Sing songs of liberation struggles, past and present, to support the people of Palestine, resist imperialism and express our commitment to the local and global movements for the liberation of all people. Stay after the music to meet us and discuss how this model can be replicated.

This song circle will take place outside on the grass, weather-permitting. (In case of rain, we’ll be in Adler ABC)

Friday July 4, 2025 6:30pm - 8:00pm CDT
TBA

Culture and Art

8:00pm CDT

Fighting Fascism: Lessons from the Colonies

Friday July 4, 2025 8:00pm - 9:30pm CDT

TBA

Aimé Césaire cut through the mythologies to show that fascism in Europe was no anomaly, it was the boomerang effect of brutal European colonialism abroad coming home. The fight against fascism cannot be successful without understanding the powerful struggles against colonialism from the 20th century to today.

Speakers

Robin D.G. Kelley

Friday July 4, 2025 8:00pm - 9:30pm CDT
TBA

Fighting the Right