Socialism 2025: Full Schedule

4:30pm CDT

Power Lines: Building a Climate-Labor Justice Movement

Thursday July 3, 2025 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT

While corporate elites have long pitted climate and labor movements against each other, labor organizers are fighting against these divisions and organizing for green agendas aligned within material benefits to the working class. Hear from organizers and researchers building worker power alongside decarbonization at the scale and pace required.

Speakers

Lauren Bianchi

Lauren Bianchi, Chicago Teachers Union, teacher and leader of climate justice caucus.

Jeff Ordower

Jeff Ordower has been a community and labor organizer for the last 30 years all across the US. He has spent the last few years working at the intersection of climate and labor, both as a co-founder of the Green Workers Alliance and former North America Director for 350.org... Read More →

Marcie Pedraza

Marcelina Pedraza has been a union electrician for 26 years and is currently a member of UAW Local 551 at Ford Chicago Assembly Plant. She is a lifelong Chicago resident and community organizer passionate about environmental and workers’ justice, and as Board President of the Southeast... Read More →

Sponsors

Climate and Community Institute

Thursday July 3, 2025 4:30pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA

Climate Justice

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

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

What's at Stake: Organizing for Climate Armageddon

Saturday July 5, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT

TBA

We are in the midst of a climate upheaval. The world is burning, and we must act. This panel will discuss what is at stake and how our side can respond to the crisis. The discussion will address Indigenous sovereignty, climate refugees, and public power and will explain why just ending fossil fuels alone is insufficient for a better world.

Speakers

Ashley Dawson

Ashley Dawson is Professor of English at the Graduate Center / City University of New York and the College of Staten Island. He is the author of several books on key topics in the environmental humanities, including People’s Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons, Extreme Cities... Read More →

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.

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... Read More →

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 →

Sponsors

CounterPunch

Saturday July 5, 2025 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
TBA

Climate Justice, Intro