The Socialism Conference is a four-day conference bringing together thousands of socialists and radical activists from around the country to take part in discussions about social movements, Marxism, abolition, working-class history, and the debates and strategies for organizing today. Every year, the Socialism conference aims to be a place where activists can share lessons from their struggles—from the BDS campaign for Palestine to the fight for gender liberation, from strike organizing and support to the struggle to stop the destruction of the planet, the fight against racism, and more. Socialism 2025 took place in Chicago over July 4th weekend, July 3-6. Recordings from many sessions at Socialism 2025 will be released here. Socialism 2026 will take place in Chicago, September 4-7, 2026. Learn more: socialismconference.org
Rae Garringer and Dao X. Tran speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025.
Join author Rae Garringer and editor Dao X. Tran for a conversation about lessons learned through the twelve-year journey of the Country Queers oral history project and podcast, culminating in the book Country Queers: A Love Letter (Haymarket, 2024). We’ll talk about community-based oral history work, queer and trans resilience and resistance in rural communities, and the lessons that rural Appalachian and southern country queers have to teach us all about taking care of one another across political difference, in the end times of fascism and climate catastrophe.
The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, September 4-7, 2026. Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org.
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow Haymarket on podcast platforms for regular event recordings, book talks, political analyses and poetry readings!
Arun Kundnani speaks in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by Verso Books.
Drawing lessons from a long tradition of anticolonial, anti-imperialist, and Marxist intellectuals and movements, Arun Kundnani will discuss how racism and capitalism are indivisible parts of one global system. And unless we can see the whole, we'll never know how to fight.
The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, September 4-7, 2026. Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org.
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow Haymarket on podcast platforms for regular event recordings, book talks, political analyses and poetry readings!
Robert Cuffy and Jessica Garraway speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by New Politics and the Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus.
The second wave of the Black Lives Matter rebellion erupted in 2020 while Trump was president in reaction to George Floyd & Breanna Taylor’s murder by the police. Now that Trump is back in the White House where does the movement go from here?
The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, September 4-7, 2026. Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org.
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow Haymarket on podcast platforms for regular event recordings, book talks, political analyses and poetry readings!
Kim TallBear speaks in this session recorded at Socialism 2025.
In this talk, Dr. Kim TallBear explains how the very ideas of sex and nature cut networked relations into manageable objects or “things” that help maintain colonial domination. She draws on the insights of critical Indigenous and sexuality studies to offer alternative ways of thinking and doing intimacy.
The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, September 4-7, 2026. Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org.
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow Haymarket on podcast platforms for regular event recordings, book talks, political analyses and poetry readings!
Janene Yazzie and Ramzy Baroud speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by Pilsen Community Books.
As the world witnesses a live-streamed genocide, we face burning questions of how to combat fascism, white supremacy, religious fundamentalism, and settler colonialism. Two activists, authors, and scholars from Turtle Island and Palestine will discuss the long history of Indigenous resistance including the strategies and tactics that build solidarity and the possibility for a better world.
The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, September 4-7, 2026. Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org.
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow Haymarket on podcast platforms for regular event recordings, book talks, political analyses and poetry readings!
Kathryn Zamarrón, Margaret Palmquist, Loreen Targos, Colin Smalley, and Lindsey Muniak speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by In These Times.
The Trump administration is carrying out a comprehensive assault on the public sector, with federal workers and their labor unions on the frontline. How do these attacks fit into much longer arcs of austerity, privatization, and the defanging of organized labor? This panel brings together public sector workers from several different areas who are organizing not only to fight the decimation of our existing public infrastructure, but to build and advance a vision of a civil society that actually works for the public good, with rank & file workers leading the way.
The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, September 4-7, 2026. Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org.
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow Haymarket on podcast platforms for regular event recordings, book talks, political analyses and poetry readings!
Sarah Schulman and Sarah Leonard speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025.
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.
The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, September 4-7, 2026. Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org.
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow Haymarket on podcast platforms for regular event recordings, book talks, political analyses and poetry readings!
Lauren Bianchi, Jeff Ordower, and Marcie Pedraza speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by the Climate and Community Institute.
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.
The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, September 4-7, 2026. Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org.
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow Haymarket on podcast platforms for regular event recordings, book talks, political analyses and poetry readings!
Rae Garringer, Beth Howard, Shawn Sebastian, and Stephen Smith speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by Rural Defenders Union and SURJ.
What can the Left learn from rural organizers about strategy, innovation, and courage? What will it take for progressives to truly invest in working class rural organizing and see rural people as a critical part of winning the world we need? Join co-founders and members of the Rural Defenders Union, a network of isolated, under-resourced, anti-authoritarian rural efforts who are fighting a wide range of live authoritarian threats, for a conversation about the political landscape of rural America, the powerful antiauthoritarian organizing happening, and the opportunity we have to invest in growing it.
The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, September 4-7, 2026. Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org.
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow Haymarket on podcast platforms for regular event recordings, book talks, political analyses and poetry readings!
Myaisha Hayes, Irna Landrum, Alli Finn, and Cinthya Rodriguez speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by Kairos Action.
Tech billionaires claim AI will save us—but decades of community experience tell another story. Governments and corporations use AI to extract our data and labor, and justify life-and-death decisions about our lives, especially Black, brown, and working class communities. Our taxes subsidize these harms, as the wealthiest corporations on the planet profit. Our session will cover what's missing in debates about AI, break down the power structures behind AI systems, and highlight opportunities for organizing and alternatives.
The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, September 4-7, 2026. Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org.
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow Haymarket on podcast platforms for regular event recordings, book talks, political analyses and poetry readings!