Socialism 2025: Full Schedule

2:30pm CDT

Eugene Debs: From Rail Labor Organizer to Socialist Agitator – Lessons for Today

Thursday July 3, 2025 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT

After the 1894 Pullman Strike was violently crushed by the federal militia, Debs advocated for socialism to his dying day. Imprisoned for opposing US involvement in WW I, he received almost a million votes for president in 1920. What can we learn from Debs’ evolution and legacy?

Speakers

Mark Burrows

Mark Burrows: retired locomotive engineer, former Delegate for International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers - Transportation Division (SMART-TD) #1433; former Co-Chair of Railroad Workers United and current editor of their quarterly newsletter, The... Read More →

Guy Miller

Guy Miller: retired switchman, former member of United Transportation Union (now SMART-TD); a socialist since 1967; He’s contributed articles for several outlets, including New Politics, the International Socialist Review and Against the Current.

Allison Duerk

Sponsors

Railroad Workers United

Thursday July 3, 2025 2:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
TBA

Radical History, Intro

4:30pm CDT

Lessons from ACT UP for Today's Solidarity Movements

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

TBA

Everyone is under attack, and lessons from previous movements can stimulate our imaginations and the creation of new strategies and tactics. The successes of ACT UP (The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) 1987-1993, are not a blueprint, but they can inform our thinking. Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard interviewed 188 surviving members of ACT UP, NY over 18 years and cohered their work into Jim's film UNITED IN ANGER: A History of ACT UP, and Sarah's book LET THE RECORD SHOW. Schulman will summarize the context, successes, and the tactics that worked and lead a conversation about how we can best understand this material in light of today's crisis.

Speakers

Sarah Schulman

Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, and AIDS historian. Her honors include a Fulbright in Judaic Studies and an Guggenheim in Playwriting. The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity (Thesis/PenguinRandom) is her 21st book. Sarah holds an endowed... Read More →

Natalie Adler

Natalie Adler is an editor at Lux Magazine. Formerly, she was a lecturer at Columbia University where she was part of an organizing effort to unionize contingent faculty. Her first novel, Waiting on a Friend, is forthcoming from Hogarth in May 2026.

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

Radical History

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

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

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

1:00pm CDT

“Our Goal is to Dismantle the Whole Violent System”: Abolition Feminist Organizing in the 1970s

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

TBA

In this session, historian Emily Thuma will illuminate a world of feminist rebellion against a growing police and prison state in the 1970s. Drawing on the research for her book, All Our Trials, she’ll share how grassroots activists within and beyond the walls of women’s prisons forged a movement that understood incarceration as a purveyor of gender violence rather than its remedy. We’ll explore the key strategies, tactics, theories, and points of contention that defined this strand of 1970s feminism, with an eye toward lessons for today.

Speakers

Emily Thuma

Emily Thuma is currently the Haley Associate Professor of Humanities at the University of Washington Tacoma, where she teaches in the programs in politics, law and policy, and sexuality studies. She is the author of All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End... Read More →

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

Radical History