Socialism Conference

Nancy Hiemstra speaks in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by Pluto Press. While immigration detention is central to Trump's mass deportation plans, the U.S. detention system has been growing for decades. In addition to private prison operators, a whole range of companies and local governments are cashing in. As detention capacity increases, so do webs of economic...

Adam Vander Tuig and Joy James speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by the Highlander Center. What are the “rebel chores,” the everyday educational, political, and spiritual commitments, that make revolutionary lovers? Often dismissed, what is the right relationship between spirituality and liberatory struggle? Can one be revolutionary without being religiou...

This session was recorded at Socialism 2025 and sponsored by National Students for Justice in Palestine. Positioning universities as features of imperialism’s superstructure, we give an assessment of the Student Intifada’s strategy, tactics, and its impact on advancing the broader anti-Imperialist struggle. We’ll define the historic tasks of the Palestinian student movement and the Left as we cont...

Boots Riley and Jesse Hagopian speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. Join filmmaker, rapper, and activist Boots Riley for a conversation with author and teacher Jesse Hagopian on the role of art in contemporary capitalism and what it means to be an artist on the left. Boots Riley's latest cinematic productions include the show  I'm a Virgo , the film  Sorry to Bother You , an...

Benjamin Bartu, Nathan Kim, Erin McElroy, and Tracy Rosenthal speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project and Landlord Tech Watch. In this workshop, members of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project and Landlord Tech Watch will share methods that they use to map corporate landlords in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well techniques fo...

Ndindi Kitonga, Ricado Jacobs, and Peter Hudis speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by International Marxist-Humanist Organization. Frantz Fanon is renowned as one of the most important decolonial theorists of the twentieth century. As part of commemorating his 100th birthday, this panel will explore how his work speaks to today’s struggles against settler c...

Leigh Claire La Berge speaks in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. At the end of the last century, predictions about the destructive potential of the Y2K bug were everywhere. As the clocks ticked closer to the prophesied end-times, Capitalism—then in the rapturous throes of a global tech bubble—did what it does best: created a whole cottage industry of consultants dedicated not to preventing...

Adam Vander Tuig, Ben Lorber, Crystal Silva-McCormick, and Annie Wilkinson speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by Political Research Associates. In our dystopian conjuncture Christian Zionism, Christian nationalism and End-Times technofascism work together to further genocidal aggression in Palestine alongside the entrenchment of authoritarian repression in...

Dean Spade and Beatrice Adler-Bolton speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by Death Panel. In a world unraveling under capitalism, climate catastrophe, and state violence, how do we build real care and solidarity? Dean Spade will discuss approaches to survival and resistance explored in his books Love in a F*cked Up World, Mutual Aid, and Normal Life—breaking...

Ashley Dawson, Joshua Frank, Silky Shah, and Janene Yazzie speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by CounterPunch. 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...

Zhandarka Kurti, Jarrod Shanahan, and Jack Norton speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. Join scholars and organizers Zhandarka Kurti and Jarrod Shanahan for a damning account of mass incarceration that reveals how progressive forces in New York City appropriated the rhetoric of social movements and social justice to promise “downsized” and “humane" jails. The story at the heart of thei...

Tobita Chow, Carmen Phanuelle Delgra, Ashley Smith, and JM Wong speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. Donald Trump’s regime has abandoned Washington’s grand strategy of superintending global capitalism for an America First imperialism targeting China first and foremost. This panel will explore the nature of the rivalry, its impact on the Asia Pacific, why the international left should...

Ezekiel Richardson, Hana Masud, and Caesar Thompson speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. Healthcare disparities exist around the world, some are a product of the profit driven healthcare industry, others are due to colonial occupation. Hear a panel of healthcare activists discuss the connections as well as how we can struggle to change it for the better. The next Socialism Conference...

Hector Rincon, Jorge Mújica, and Jazmin Tlaxcala speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by Workers' Voice. 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. The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, S...

Elizabeth Todd-Breland and Jesse Sharkey speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. 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 t...

Danielle Bullock and Eric Maroney speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. Trump and the MAGAtized Republican Party have taken advantage of voters’ anxieties and created a sense of panic surrounding transgender issues. However, what remains less clear are the reasons why these appeals resonate with certain voters, what drives this particular political reaction, and how the Left can effect...

This session was sponsored by B-REAL Academy, Center for Political Education, Claudia Jones School, KC Defender, Highlander Center, and W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School. While the fight for spaces within colleges and universities continues, this moment underlines the urgent need to build and expand counter-hegemonic political education on the left to confront and resist the right and put forward a c...

This session was sponsored by B-REAL Academy, Center for Political Education, Claudia Jones School, KC Defender, Highlander Center, and W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School. 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...

This session was sponsored by B-REAL Academy, Center for Political Education, Claudia Jones School, KC Defender, Highlander Center, and W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School. 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 a...

This session was sponsored by B-REAL Academy, Center for Political Education, Claudia Jones School, KC Defender, Highlander Center, and W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School. Marxism isn't just about applying concepts to the world, it's about analyzing the world around us in a materialist way: looking at the way things are made, where and how people live, and who holds the power. This workshop will provi...

Maria Gabrielle, Renette Bradley, Matthew Nursey, and Nicole Murray speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by DSA. 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. The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, September 4-7, 2026. L...

Eric Blanc and Jasson Perez speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. At a bleak moment in US politics, the labor movement provides a rare source of hope. What are the main lessons of the bottom-up unionization surge that has swept the United States since 2021? And how can this grassroots labor momentum be continued under the new Trump administration? The next Socialism Conference will be...

Brian Kwoba and Robin D.G. Kelley speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. Hubert Harrison, the “father of Harlem radicalism,” blazed a trail for Black organizers in the Socialist Party. His Liberty League of Negro Americans catalyzed the rise of Marcus Garvey and the largest international organization of Black people in history. And he defended free love. Because of his radicalism, howev...

Pranay Somayajula speaks in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. 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 ra...

This session was sponsored by Marx21 Germany. 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? The next Socia...