Socialism 2019: Full Schedule

3:00pm CDT

Sex Work and Sex Trade: Policing in the Carceral State

SESTA/FOSTA has changed the landscape of how sex workers are able to relate to their work, reversing many of the positive ways the internet had increased independence. Not only interfering with work directly these draconian legislative measures have made harm reduction, like sharing information about safer practices with other people in the sex trade, illegal. Attempts to scapegoat sex workers for the ills of society are not new. From sexist laws about unaccompanied women in public, profiling of trans Black women as prostitutes by law enforcement using condoms as evidence, racist immigration policies, and carceralism are about controlling bodies and public space more than keeping anyone safe from "traffickers." Making sex work illegal makes all workers more vulnerable to threat from the state.

Speakers

Dominique McKinney

Carol Leigh

Carol Leigh has been an artist and sex worker activist since the late seventies when she coined the term 'sex work.' http://www.bayswan.org/sexwork-oed.html Leigh’s activism spans decades, as a COYOTE member, founding member of (Bay Area) ACT UP and SWOP, and co-founder of B... Read More →

Kelli Dorsey

Kelli Dorsey was born and raised in Wheaton, MD outside of the DC metropolitan area. This is where she learned harm reduction, how to organize and developed her radical analysis. She's participated in many aspects of the harm reduction community, organizing for people who trade sex... Read More →

Thursday July 4, 2019 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Clark B/C

Gender Liberation

7:30pm CDT

All-American Nativism: How to End the Bipartisan War on Immigrants

The Trump administration has escalated the war on immigrants, consciously whipping up and leveraging a racist, nativist populism. But today's war on immigrants was developed under the Obama, Bush and Clinton administrations. Mainstream immigration politics played a lead role in the demonization of "illegal immigrants," the scapegoating of migrant labor for the harms caused by mobile capital, and the construction of a gargantuan deportation pipeline linked into the core the carceral state—and thus, mainstream establishment politicians played a lead role in making Trumpism possible. This talk will examine that history and how Trump's barbarity has indeed heightened the contradictions, simultaneously deepening the hardship faced by immigrant communities and creating historic openings for the immigrant rights movement. The socialist left has a key role to play in this moment of establishment crisis by putting a radical defense of migrant worker rights at the center of anti-capitalist politics.

Speakers

Dan Denvir

Daniel Denvir is the host of The Dig, a podcast from Jacobin magazine, and the author of All-American Nativism, forthcoming from Verso. He writes about politics, criminal justice and immigration and, before stumbling into podcasting, was a reporter at the Philadelphia City Paper... Read More →

Thursday July 4, 2019 7:30pm - 9:00pm CDT
Clark B/C

Migrant Justice

9:30am CDT

Transfeminism and the Politics of Solidarity

Most feminists now agree that explicitly excluding trans people from feminists spaces and movements is the wrong thing to do, but what does including trans people in a feminist analysis look like? How can more intentional inclusion of trans people in feminist politics and movements strengthen feminism as a whole?

Speakers

Chris Legere

Friday July 5, 2019 9:30am - 11:00am CDT
Clark B/C

Gender Liberation

11:30am CDT

Housing Justice and Rent Control: An Organizer's Roundtable

Across the U.S., rents are rising, gentrification is rampant, and displacement rates are high. Campaigns for rent control have emerged as a response to this issue, and they’re a solid step on the way to truly just housing. On this panel, housing organizers from across DSA will discuss lessons from their experiences and take on the question of how the left can use the demand for rent control today to build toward a more robust and comprehensive demand for social housing in the future.

Speakers

Ryan Hall

Ryan Hall currently serves as co-chair of the Iowa City DSA and is a recent graduate of the University of Iowa in Environmental Planning and Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies. They are one of the founding members of the newly-formed Iowa City Tenants Union.

Allen Axelrod

Brian Sullivan

Sarah Richmond

Friday July 5, 2019 11:30am - 1:00pm CDT
Clark B/C

US Politics

2:00pm CDT

Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry

The work of African American playwright and author Lorraine Hansberry highlighted the struggles in the lives of Black Americans for dignity and liberation. Imani Perry examines Hansberry's life and work.

Speakers

Imani Perry

Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where she also teaches in the Programs in Law and Public Affairs, and in Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is a native of Birmingham, Alabama, and spent much of her youth in Cambridge... Read More →

Friday July 5, 2019 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT
Clark B/C

Black Liberation

4:00pm CDT

Birth Strike: Why Reproductive Freedom is Under Attack

The U.S. birth rate is plummeting as women conduct a spontaneous "birth strike" against conditions that include a lack access to child care, family leave and health care. Author Jenny Brown argues that U.S. women have not yet realized the potential of their bargaining position, but can use the low birthrate to push for expanded access to reproductive services and social programs.

Speakers

Jenny Brown

Organizer, National Women's Liberation

Jenny Brown is an organizer with National Women's Liberation and author of Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight over Women's Work just out in March from PM Press. She is co-author of this article and this article for Jacobin. She co-authored the Redstockings book, Women's Liberation and National Healthcare: Confronting the Myth of America, and is a former editor at Labor Notes... Read More →

Friday July 5, 2019 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT
Clark B/C

Gender Liberation

9:30am CDT

The Disability Politics of Marta Russell

The late author and activist Marta Russell wrote a number of groundbreaking essays on the nature of disability and oppression under capitalism, including the effects of capitalism on the living and social conditions of people with disabilities. Hear Keith Rosenthal, editor of a forthcoming collection of Russell's essays, discuss her life and work.

Speakers

Keith Rosenthal

Keith Rosenthal has written extensively on the topics of disability and socialism. He is the editor of a forthcoming book, Capitalism and Disability: Essays by Marta Russell (Haymarket Books, 2019). He lives in Syracuse, New York.

Saturday July 6, 2019 9:30am - 11:00am CDT
Clark B/C

Disability

11:30am CDT

Literature as a Tool for Abolition and Transformative Justice

“No more ashes. No more fires. Only love. And the unbridled urgency to build a world where the edges are imagined as the starting place for black liberation now and always.”
― Darnell L. Moore, No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America

Speakers

Darnell Moore

Darnell L. Moore is the author of No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America, an Editor-at-Large at CASSIUS (an iOne digital platform) and formerly a senior editor and correspondent at Mic. He is co-managing editor at The Feminist Wire and an editor of The Feminist... Read More →

Dao Tran

Saturday July 6, 2019 11:30am - 1:00pm CDT
Clark B/C

Culture

2:00pm CDT

Meet-Up: Abortion Defense

Saturday July 6, 2019 2:00pm - 3:00pm CDT
Clark B/C

Meet-Up

3:00pm CDT

Teachers Unions and Anti-Racist Struggle

As young people move into activism, what role do educators have in the Black Lives Matter movement and other social justice movements that take up fighting racism? How does supporting these movements play into the fight for stronger teachers' unions?
What’s the role of socialists in teachers unions in explaining and defending racial justice commitments?
How does anti-racist struggle relate to building union consciousness, school site solidarity, and
democratic, militant local, state, and national unions?
This panel discussion, featuring teachers and education activists, will explore the topic.

Speakers

Lois Weiner

Lois Weiner writes for a wide range of popular publications and scholarly journals aboutteachers’ work, urban education, and labor, focusing especially on teacher unionism.Her writing is informed by her two careers in education, the first as a career teacherand union activist and... Read More →

Gillian Russom

Angela Crawford

Tia Kurtisnger-Edison

Saturday July 6, 2019 3:00pm - 5:00pm CDT
Clark B/C

Labor

5:30pm CDT

Marxism and the Capitalist State: Socialist Theory and Strategy

The renewal of socialism in the United States has sparked renewed debate and discussion on socialist strategy in the advanced capitalist world. Once again, the relative weight of elections and mass struggle, and whether or not socialists can use (parts) of the existing state to effect a rupture with capitalism is being debated on the left. This talk will assess the Marxian theories of the capitalist state which inform different strategic orientations.

Speakers

Charlie Post

Charlie Post has been a revolutionary socialist since the early 1970s. He is active in the faculty union at the City University of New York and has written on the origins of capitalism, crisis theory, class consciousness and socialist strategy and history.

Saturday July 6, 2019 5:30pm - 7:00pm CDT
Clark B/C

Socialism & Marxism

8:00pm CDT

Meet-Up: Climate Justice Organizing

Saturday July 6, 2019 8:00pm - 9:30pm CDT
Clark B/C

Meet-Up

10:30am CDT

Sexual Violence and the State

While the question of interpersonal dynamics, particularly in workplaces and on campuses, has permeated discussions of sexual violence, less attention has been given to the question of the state. From the horrors committed by the United States in Abu Ghraib to the ways in which this country’s carceral system fails survivors and destroys the lives of Black, Brown, and working-class people, the state is not an adequate tool for addressing—and is often a perpetrator of—sexual violence in society. Legal frameworks don't recognize the complexities of desire, sex, and sexuality, nor of the violence of capitalism and oppression. But we’re still left with the sticky, unavoidable, and wholly significant question: In a world that was not built for the well-being of most of us, what does justice mean?

Speakers

Gender Liberation

Socialism 2019

3:00pm CDT

Dominique McKinney

Carol Leigh

Kelli Dorsey

7:30pm CDT

Dan Denvir

9:30am CDT

Chris Legere

11:30am CDT

Ryan Hall

Allen Axelrod

Brian Sullivan

Sarah Richmond

2:00pm CDT

Imani Perry

4:00pm CDT

Jenny Brown

9:30am CDT

Keith Rosenthal

11:30am CDT

Darnell Moore

Dao Tran

2:00pm CDT

3:00pm CDT

Lois Weiner

Gillian Russom

Angela Crawford

Tia Kurtisnger-Edison

5:30pm CDT

Charlie Post

8:00pm CDT

10:30am CDT

Rachel Caïdor

Deana Lewis

Camila Valle

Recently Active Attendees