Socialism 2025: Full Schedule

4:30pm CDT

Art and Communism

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

TBA

Speakers

Boots Riley

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

Culture and Art

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

12:00pm CDT

Make a Community Constellation: Quilting Workshop

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

As the right continues to try and shrink our horizons of possibility, we can look to the cosmos as a way of radically resituating ourselves in our relationships to each other and our planet. Come join in making a quilt of community constellations, and give your radical imagination space to stretch its legs—no special skills required, all materials provided.

Speakers

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 12:00pm - 1:30pm CDT

Culture and Art

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

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

10:00am CDT

Free the Presses

Saturday July 5, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

The internet, for all its underground potential, has become almost entirely privatized, bordered, unfree. Words, in order to be printed, must be committed to paper; paper, in order to be read, must be passed from hand to hand. These gestures toward solidity and solidarity, necessitated by the form, re-inscribe its content. This panel featuring The New York War Crimes, WAWOG, and Radar Media answers the question: What is the role of print media in revolutionary struggle?

Speakers

TBD

Tracy Rosenthal

Tracy Rosenthal is a co-founder of the L.A. Tenants Union, a frequent contributor to the New Republic, and the author, with Leonardo Vilchis, of Abolish Rent (Haymarket, 2024). They are now on rent strike in New York City and also a co-host of the Death Panel podcast.

Sponsors

WAWOG

Saturday July 5, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

Culture and Art

1:00pm CDT

Logoff and Meetup: The Fight for Third Spaces in a Turbulent World

Saturday July 5, 2025 1:00pm - 2:30pm CDT

TBA

In the midst of a climate shadowed by cruelty, alienation and uncertainty, community-based organizing spaces have never been more crucial. Join longtime organizers to examine the challenges and joys of constructing and maintaining third spaces, different models of sustainable spaces, and the utility of these spaces for fostering solidarity to strengthen our movements.

Speakers

Mandy Medley

Casey O'Grady

Allyn Maxfield Steele

TBD

Sponsors

Haymarket House

Highlander Center

Pilsen Community Books

Saturday July 5, 2025 1:00pm - 2:30pm CDT
TBA

Culture and Art

5:00pm CDT

Emblems of Solidarity: Union Buttons and Labor History

Saturday July 5, 2025 5:00pm - 6:00pm CDT

TBA

Throughout the twentieth century, buttons have been an essential tool for organizing unions and campaigns. Learn more of this legacy through a guided tour by the curator of this exhibit containing historic pins and other items from the struggles of workers in the auto, food processing, and logistics industries.

Speakers

Isaac Silver

Isaac Silver is an activist in Chicago, Illinois and independent curator of historic materials from the working class and socialist movements.

Sponsors

Buttons of the Left

Saturday July 5, 2025 5:00pm - 6:00pm CDT
TBA

Culture and Art

9:00pm CDT

The Neo-Futurists present THE INFINITE WRENCH

Saturday July 5, 2025 9:00pm - 10:00pm CDT

The longest-running late-night show in Chicago, THE INFINITE WRENCH is thirty original plays in sixty minutes. Each play offers something different—funny, profound, topical, irreverent, musical—and all are truthful and tackle the here-and-now, inspired by the lived experiences of the performers.

Artists

The Neo-Futurists

Saturday July 5, 2025 9:00pm - 10:00pm CDT

Culture and Art

10:00am CDT

Let It Be a Tale: A Writing Space

Sunday July 6, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT

TBA

This session is for everyone—whether you consider yourself a writer (of any genre) or not. Join us as we take a moment to sit with what we’ve learned over the conference weekend and find words for our rage, heartbreak, love, grief, curiosity, steadfastness, and all that we’re carrying with us in this struggle for a better world.

Moderators

Nisha Atalie

Maria Isabelle Carlos

Sunday July 6, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am CDT
TBA

Culture and Art