Socialism Conference

Sergio González, Silky Shah, John Washington, and Angélica Cházaro speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by Detention Watch Network. Historically, border enforcement has been a tool of repression and intimidation. While the current administration has shown a cruel escalation in its attacks on the immigrant community, this panel will trace back the roots of th...

Robin D.G. Kelley speaks in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. Aimé Césaire cut through 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 powerful struggles against colonialism, from the 20th century to today. The next Socialism Conferen...

Noura Erakat, Linda Sarsour, Abdel Razzaq Takriti, Rabbi Brant Rosen, and George Abraham speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. Even amidst Israel’s ongoing genocidal war, the courage and steadfastness of Palestinians have awakened a global solidarity movement. Join us to discuss the rich history of the Palestinian liberation movement, the state of the resistance to Israel and US imperi...

Mandy Medley, Mary Zerkel, and Clarence White speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. This session was sponsored by Pilsen Community Books. This session will discuss the importance of building community organizing spaces in support of our movements. Longtime organizers will examine the challenges of creating third spaces while also looking back at the ways they strengthen our communities...

brian bean, Kristen Godfrey, Natalia Tylim speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. This session was sponsored by Tempest. A presidential election between Trump and whoever the Democrats thrust upon us is the latest expression of deepening social, political and constitutional crisis. What does it mean to understand these elections through the prism of the pressing need to organize and bui...

Ilan Pappé speaks in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. The radical Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and a new edition of Ten Myths About Israel, will critically assess the myths and reality behind the state of Israel. From the false equation of Judaism with Zionism, to lies about Gaza, to the two state solution and more, equipping ourselves with hist...

Emily Drabinski and Mariame Kaba speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. This session was sponsored by Social Justice Initiative. The public library is an example of the world we want. Everything from books and media to cake pans and garden tools are held in common and shared equitably, expanding the public good and access to it. This is precisely why libraries are under attack, and why...

Sai Englert speaks in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. This session was sponsored by Pluto Books. Rich with their unique histories, characteristics, and social relations, Indigenous struggles across the world are connected by the shared enemy they face: settler colonialism. In this session, Sai Englert argues that settler colonial forms of domination and accumulation played a central role...

Jonah Olsen and Hialy Gutierrez speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. We will discuss the radical potential and challenges of cooperatives to transform conditions both within their walls and within the communities in which they are embedded. We argue that, through practices responsive to and rooted in community context and socialist relations, cooperatives can contribute to community r...

Silky Shah, Harsha Walia, and Amna Akbar speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. This session was sponsored by Detention Watch Network. As calls to abolish ICE, prisons and policing, and borders gain urgency in the U.S. and abroad, so too does the need to understand how these systems necessitate and sustain each other. Silky Shah and Harsha Walia, in conversation with Amna A. Akbar, will...

Furonda Brasfield, Michelle Smith, Tiara Cooper, and Cherrell Brown speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. This session was sponsored by Noose to Needle - 8th Amendment Project. The South leads the way in racial oppression and injustice. This panel will explore how Southern organizers are fighting state sanctioned violence and murder and promote collective liberation by working across v...

Mon Mohapatra, Victoria Law, Tracy Rosenthal, and Beatrice Adler-Bolton speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. This session was sponsored by Death Panel. This session will explore how the rhetorics of “care,” support, and empathy are often deployed to expand and reinforce carcerality—to make carcerality appear innocuous, or even an expansion of social welfare and public health. Mon Moha...

David Albright, Magdaleno Rosales, Ines Alcazar speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. This session was sponsored by LA Tenant's Union. What kinds of formations and practices do tenants unions need to develop in order to become deeply-rooted in poor and working-class immigrant neighborhoods? Members of the largest dues-funded tenants union in the country will discuss their organizing mo...

Rossana Rodríguez, Verónica Tirado, Eric Ramos, and Jonathan Nagy speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. This session was sponsored by 33rd Ward Working Families. A talk about the fight for structures of care in Chicago from the perspective of government workers delivering direct services, from the Alderperson who leads the fight for Treatment not Trauma and from movement folks who lead...

Renee Bracey Sherman, Regina Mahone, and Brittany Mostiller speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. Lawmakers have weaponized abortion restrictions against people of color since the 1800s, creating cycles of poverty and perpetuating racist and xenophobic stereotypes. Join Renee Bracey Sherman and Regina Mahone for a discussion on their research about why abortion liberation is key to bui...

Rebecca Vilkomerson, Alissa Wise, Beth Howard, and Pranay Somayajula speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. A powerful source of resistance to systems of domination and violence comes from within the very communities that are used to justify and uphold those systems. The past decades have seen impactful solidarity organizing of Jews against Zionism, Hindus against Hindutva and white peo...

Tom Ladendorf and Miikka Jaarte speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. Marx’s critique of political economy puts forward groundbreaking theories of freedom and unfreedom that are crucial for understanding capitalism and the capitalist state. We argue that socialists today should take up Marx’s critique of the market and his analysis of the dominating power of capital and capitalists. Th...

Liz Oliva Fernandez, Helen Yaffe, August Nimtz, and Anthony Quezada speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. This session was sponsored by Chicago Cuba Coalition. Washington’s designating Cuba a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” prevents nearly all Cuba’s international commerce. Meanwhile U.S. sanctions against Venezuela, Nicaragua, and others arguably hurt working people rather than leaders –...

Rob Larson speaks in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. Most of humanity’s unfixable problems arise from its small, awful ruling class. Labor exploitation, climate change, monopoly, bubbles, the extinction crisis, financial crashes, tyrannical workplaces—all this, all this, is for the benefit of a tiny class of remote ruling class bastards. Save a slot in your SocCon plans for a playful cras...

Johanna Bozuwa, Thea Riofrancos, Brandon Mancilla, Elise Joshi, and Ashik Siddique speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. This session was sponsored by Climate and Community Institute and DSA. Five years ago, the Green New Deal transformed climate organizing. It’s time to take stock of successes, setbacks, and strategy. How can we confront the climate crisis at scale while advancing int...

Damon Williams, Daniel Kisslinger, Oscar Sanchez, Cheryl Johnson, and speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. This session was sponsored by Respair Media. Join the creators of Help This Garden Grow, an audio docuseries about Environmental Justice visionary Hazel Johnson, as they explore their care-based media praxis that supports radical transformation and divests from despair and death-...

Dr. Santiago Slabodsky, Rabbi Alissa Wise, and Iskander Abbasi speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. From New York to Cape Town, London to Los Angeles, Muslims and Jews are at the forefront of confronting Zionism – whether in its Christian, Jewish or Islamic iteration. This movement of faith-based Jewish-Muslim solidarity is a direct challenge to Zionism’s attempt to normalize oppressi...

Sam Kimball speaks in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. This session will open with a concise history of the Arab Spring Revolutions since 2011, and their continuing aftereffects. Kimball will discuss foreign interventions, the Arab Left, and trends and developments of struggle, referencing the likes of Achcar and Gopal. Tunisia and Libya will be two focus cases, with the histories of Egypt...

René Christian Moya, Ryan Doerfler, Sharlyn Grace, and Corinne Blalock speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. This session was sponsored by The Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project. Law may not save us, but can it be an effective site of struggle? How should movements for socialism and abolition use law effectively? This panel will consider the role of law in the United States in lef...

Linda Sarsour, Rachel Gilmer, and Lama Alhasn speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024. This session was sponsored by Dream Defenders. A decade ago, “from Ferguson to Palestine, occupation is a crime,” rang out at protests around the United States. This acknowledgement of shared struggle came from an enduring commitment against colonial domination by Black and Palestinian revolutionaries,...