A collective process, born out of Latin American social movements, Naming the Moment is meant to help assess and analyze social and political environments towards the end of developing informed and effective organizing strategy. With Trump's return to power, a group of long-time organizers came together to engage in this process throughout this past year, engaging in intense discussion and collaborative writing. Several of those involved, including AK Thompson & Paul Messersmtih-Glavin, will share what this group has arrived at, while inviting participants to discuss subjects such as the characteristics of the current crisis, the nature of the ruling-class and grassroots coalition supporting Trump, the state of the left over the last thirty years, and strategies for beating the authoritarians and creating a new world.
Antonio Roman-Alcalá, Abundia Alvarado, Samiha Hamdi
Oriented in part by the forthcoming book by Antonio Roman-Alcalá on contemporary food movements in California, this session will include both the author and leaders from movements included in the book. The focus of the discussion will be strategies for organizing around food, farming, and reconnecting to the natural world, in the context of a rising fascist state and the fascism-enabling role of mainstream liberal politics. Against conventional reformist politics, newer food and farm movements — led by BIPOC and informed by radical lineages from Black, Indigenous, Marxist, anarchist, and intersectional perspectives — are advancing a radical North Star politics that moves beyond the existing social order, while pragmatically engaging both markets and state arenas. Come here about some of these strategies and share your own.
Tongo-Eisen Martin, Mike Dunn, Ananda Esteva, Jenny Worley
Fascists, authoritarians, and capitalists exploit existing prejudices and bigotries within marginalized communities to divide them and get them fighting among each other. They exploit these bigotries to disrupt their movements and their solidarity, and to reduce their effectiveness. In this workshop, several working-class writers will read excerpts from their books, and then discuss how their books address the bigotries and prejudices within particular marginalized communities, particularly in otherwise progressive communities, and how activists or characters in their books worked to overcome these bigotries. And they will discuss how these experiences apply to conditions today.
Aisha Nizar, Oakland People's Arms Embargo, Peter Olney, ILWU (retired), Sam Levens, Inlandboatmen's Union (IBU-ILWU) Gifford Hartman, Labor Studies Laney College
Building power for workers always involves building their agency and commitment. Such power is enhanced by a sophisticated understanding of production systems and logistics supply chains. This workshop will bring to bear the experiences of veteran organizers to identify choke points and key points of leverage that can enable workers to win. Historically, workers have used that power to stop arms from being sent to warzones, such as in 1980 when ILWU militants refused to send armaments to El Salvador or recently when millions of Italian workers and students went on strike, in solidarity with Gaza, to prevent weapons from being shipped to Israel.
Ansel, Cadelba, Felix, and Reilly
Four hospital workers and SEIU members will share firsthand accounts of grassroots organizing at a large public hospital. From leading a system-wide campaign to divest from weapons manufacturers, to organizing “Know Your Rights” trainings in response to ICE threats, to building cross-departmental networks that can - and did - defend from external attacks on the workforce, these workers are demonstrating how to transform their workplace through collective action. Their efforts offer a powerful example of how workers can build organization and solidarity on the job - even in difficult conditions.
Ruby Dee Philippa, Steve Moriarty, Stephanie Mendez
With the donation of the Maximum Rock n Roll music library to Rutgers University archive, a grass roots youth culture espousing DIY counterculture and punk ethos entering perimenopause and aging out of relevance internationally, the punk movement which challenged the music industry since the 1970’s has matured, but not faded away. Print magazines, like Razor Cake and hundreds of podcasts have revived the message. Festivals like Punk in The Park with shows featuring reformed bands like, Dead Kennedys, TSOL, and Black Flag draw three generations of punk music fans hungry to carry on resistance against the Patriarchy. Musicians instrumental in the DIY punk music scene with decades of experience are writing about the old days as a fame work for younger generations to organize bands and communities focused on social justice, inclusion and anti-fascist work. The discussion featured editors from Razor Cakes, Gilman Street Collective in Berkeley, musician turned authors from Tribe 8, Bottle Rockets, Mudhoney and The Gits. The panel will discuss how music created inspiration and charged the revolutionary spirit of youth culture during the past five decades.
Steps to Stand Strong and Build Collective Safety in the Shadow of the “Antifa” Order
Learn about the legal mechanisms behind Trump’s repression works, breaking down the use of expanding “emergency” powers, the relationship of recent prosecutions of protestors, to justify the repurposing of statutes to deploy the national guard and military domestically.The last 30 minutes will transition to participants editing two collaborative community readiness documents, where participants can share resources on collective safety strategies that reduce risk in order to sustain and embolden organizing.
Dominique Conway, Erica Woodland, Mansa Musa, Ward Churchill
This session is a dialogue with activists about the legacy of former political prisoner Marshall "Eddie" Conway's legacy. We will explore the impact and relevancy of the FBI's counter-intelligence program for current movements, and how Conway's work positions us to get free now.
Molly Goldberg, SF Anti-Displacement Coalition; Katelynn Cao, tenant organizer and strategist; Erin McElroy, co-founder of Anti-Eviction Mapping Project and author of Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions in Postsocialist Times
Real estate and tech capitalists, including CEOs of prominent tech companies, form a key element of the far-right coalition mounting an authoritarian takeover of the country. What organizing strategies are proving effective in the fights against tech capital and their private equity backers? We’ll hear stories from the frontlines of tenants taking on these battles, and actually winning, here in the Bay Area. We’ll discuss what we can learn about how to wage the national struggle against fascism from focusing on local organizing against the real estate and tech agenda.
Guillermina Castellanos, Rachel West, Francisco Herrera -Fundacion Caminante
This bi-lingual panel will address the unjust criminalization of sex workers, immigrants and domestic workers and racist immigration laws that separate children from their mothers or primary caregivers. Organizing for money and resources for mothers, not detention, deportation or imprisonment. What we are up against and what gains we have made.
Wilder Zeiser, Amari Owens, Delphine Brody, Dan Kabella
This panel will spotlight the campaign to remove the private prison operator GEO Group from 111 Taylor Street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, site of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, and to transform it into a community-owned space. Organizers from the Compton’s x Coalition will share how they’re confronting authoritarianism through zoning appeals, direct action, and just transition organizing rooted in trans, abolitionist, and decolonial frameworks. The conversation will explore how land use, privatized incarceration, and state violence intersect, and how targeted communities are building power to steward urban space for collective liberation.
Rowan Saoirse, Malkia Cyril and more Toshio Meronek
We live in a moment defined by the authoritarian politics of repression and extermination. Transgender lives are in the crosshairs of an emboldened far right agenda to remake society along rigid and violent lines of gender oppression.In this panel, trans radicals will discuss how we can navigate this historical moment, what kind of material struggles can facilitate our survival , and how we can build radical left wing social movements that put trans/gender liberation at their center, as the right puts our extermination at theirs.
Rachel Bruhnke, Nadya Williams, Michael Novick, Bill Hackwell
The Cold War Truth Commission is a compilation of Testimonies, both by renowned activists and scholars, and also direct victims of the U.S's Cold War purge of the Left in the name of "anti-communism". The Panel will consist of the book's editor, as well as several Bay Area residents who are featured in the book. After panelists share, the public will be encouraged to take the mic to tell their own Testimonies of having been red-baited for their progressive work. As the MAGA base today still cries "communism!", we will together unravel the true purpose of the U.S. Cold War: To crush social programs, peace. labor, and anti-racist efforts both at home and abroad. If those values are "communist", we ask, then what is an "anti-communist" stand for?
Kim Stanley Robinson, Eileen Gunn, Gary Phillips, Jonathan Lethem, Charlie Jane Anders, Nick Mamatas, James Tracy
This panel is a celebration and discussion of Terry Bisson's new posthumous book, The Outspoken and the Incendiary: Interviews with Radical Speculative Fiction Writers, which is a collection from PM Press's award-winning Outspoken Authors series. Featuring Kim Stanley Robinson, Eileen Gunn, Gary Phillips, Jonathan Lethem, Charlie Jane Anders, and Nick Mamatas, with an Introduction by James Tracy, this "who's who" of authors will discuss the importance of politically charged fiction and writing against authoritarianism and reminisce about the incendiary life and career of Terry Bisson (1942–2024).
Charmaine Chua, No Harbor for Genocide & Workers in Palestine
Samer Araabi, Arab Resource and Organizing Center
Vish Soroushian, UAW Local 2320, East Bay DSA
Jocelyn De Sena, SEIU Local 1021, Oakland People for an Arms Embargo
Palestinian trade unions have called on workers everywhere to unite to end Zionist supremacy and ethnic cleansing by halting the sale and funding of arms to Israel immediately. While the global response has not been sufficient to stop the current genocide in Gaza, certain tactical interventions have demonstrated that international labor is capable of achieving meaningful advancements in BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions). This discussion will examine concrete examples of community-labor coalitions that have significantly impeded Israel's ability to engage in indiscriminate war, including successful Bay Area campaigns on divestment and blockades against Israeli shipping companies, and how these campaigns are instructive for guiding the labor movement as a force against Zionism and occupation moving forward.
Amelia Kirby, Jack Norton, Rachel Herzing
Drawing from their essay by the same name (https://hammerandhope.org/article/fascism-abolition), members of the Yarrow Institute for Organizing and Analysis (formerly Institute for Abolitionist Accompaniment) will engage participants in a discussion about why it is essential to understand how the punishment systems maintains and accelerates rising fascism and will offer lessons to be learned from organizers fighting for the abolition of the prison industrial complex.
Dani Gabriel, Jessica Huang, Zachary Rogow,elizabeth meyer, Becky Thompson, Xochiquetzal Candelaria, Dima Hilal, Sriram Shamasunder, and Adrienne Torf, Ariel Lucky
This Unruly Witness was curated for people who see love as a life force, who seek a community that can sustain us, who know that “we are the ones we have been waiting for.” Celebrating the life and legacy of the poet activist June Jordan, this collection illuminates why we need Jordan more than ever.
The Howard Zinn Book Fair also salutes book co-editor and City College of San Francisco professor Lauren Muller (Rest In the Power of Poetry!)
Gerard Kosovich, Vero Majano, Erin McElroy, Fernando Marti
Left in the Bay has been working to complete a radical history map of San Francisco’s Mission district for Bolerium Books. Join them and other panelists unpacking the history of one of the City’s most storied neighborhoods.
Cayden Mak, Max Elbaum, Shabnam Banerjee-McFarland
The media system in general is at a crossroads: being pulled apart by private equity, ravaged by austerity, and squeezed by algorithmic suppression and AI slop, it’s harder than ever to thrive as a media maker these days. But the mission of the media also feels more urgent because of those pressures, and independent media is an important bulwark against the rising tide of authoritarianism. But merely being “independent” is not enough. Our shared commitment to building movement media is about building the informational and narrative power our movements need to strategize, struggle, and win against the far Right ascendant. In this intimate discussion between Max, Shabnam, and Cayden, we look to the past and look ahead: at the history of media consolidation; historic attempts to build alternative structures; and the challenges and opportunities we face as we strive to block authoritarian consolidation and build people power in our time and place.
Owen Hill, Jonathan Lethem, Summer Brenner, Gary Phillips,
Crime writers and editors discuss its connection to politics and current events. How is it useful? How does it work as an extended metaphor? Is "noir" fiction, cynical as it is, an effective strategy for political statement?
Garrett Felber, Molly Porzig, Bryant Arroyo,April Harris and Corey Devon Arthur
Discussing the necessity of cross-wall organizing to revolutionary struggle. This panel will use the life and legacy of anarchist political prisoner and jailhouse lawyer Martin Sostre, to discuss the ongoing challenges faced by incarcerated organizers and their comrades outside, as well as tools, tactics, and strategies for abolitionists today.
Evelyn Ferraro, Antonella Vitale, Benedetta Liccardo
This panel uses Jason Stanley’s work, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, to examine the broader politics of history in Italian transnational and diaspora studies. Recent battles over monuments, school curricula, and DEI initiatives reflect a coordinated effort to reshape collective memory, silence marginalized voices, and reassert dominant power structures. Within the context of Italian studies, the glorification of figures like Christoper Columbus or the marginalization of southern Italian or immigration history illustrates the ways in which narratives are selectively constructed to serve nationalist or assimilationist agendas. Positioned within the frameworks of Italian Diaspora and transnational frameworks, panelists invite participants to consider: Who controls historical narratives and how do these narratives serve political ends? And what are the consequences when history is distorted to justify oppression or silence dissent? The panel seeks to foster critical engagement with the current forces reshaping our understanding of the past and how we can challenge them.
Marc Lispi, Blanca Missé, Michael Hale
Under the Trump administration, we are witnessing a coordinated assault on public education at every level — from K-12 schools to colleges and universities. Budget cuts, book bans, attacks on curriculum, targeting of educators, going after undocumented students and families — this is all part of a broader authoritarian agenda to suppress dissent and impose a racist, reactionary ideology. Already, educators like, Dr. Tom Alter, a tenured professor of history at Texas State University, have been fired without due process, for political comments made not as educators, but as private citizens. Against these attacks, the response cannot be fragmented. Now more than ever, we need unity across the entire education sector: students, teachers, staff, parents, and faculty must organize collectively, from elementary classrooms to graduate programs, to defend our communities from these attacks, and fight for a free, inclusive, and quality education for all. Our struggles are interconnected, and only together can we fight back.
Carol Costa, Roger Harris, Gerry Condon, David Paul, Rick Sterling, Marilyn Langois
The Task Force on the Americas, a 39-year-old human rights activist organization, reports back on the positive examples of Latin American countries and grassroots movements offering a vision of a better world, resisting US imperialism .
Jonathan Rosenblum, Bia LaCombe & Dean Preston
How do working people use electoral politics to build movements and maintain their independence from big business and its money. We will draw on the experience of 2014-2024 when Seattle had an independent socialist city council person.
