Join members of the Beehive Collective for a special presentation, discussion storytelling, and movement art. The Beehive Collective has been active for over 25 years making art and engaging in popular education to challenge corporate colonialism. They are best known for creating intricately detailed pen and ink murals in collaboration with directly impacted communities over the course of many years. These graphics, rich with nature metaphors, become the centrepiece of educational campaigns aimed at cross-pollinating movements for social, economic, and environmental justice. One of these graphics, "The True Cost of Coal" has been adapted into a rhyming kids book.
Lynn Lewis, Benjamin Heim Shepard
The theme of the 2025 Howard Zinn Book Fair, “Fight Supremacy: Actions Against Authoritarianism”, looks to the past for insight into how we can effectively organize today. We draw inspiration from abolitionists, Indigenous resistance movements, organized labor, the Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, and LGBTQ+ Rights Movements, Occupy Wall Street, and the countless groups and individuals who continue to take to the streets in defiance of autocracy. With this in mind, Lynn Lewis and Benjamin Shepard propose a panel on ways to remember and connect movements, in order to learn from the past to inform our current and future organizing and movement building work. Oral history is a method to trace through lines between movements, ever-evolving from labor to civil rights, to housing and healthcare, to AIDS and queer, autonomous movements. We will share our work, rooted in activism and oral history, and engage participants to imagine what an oral history process would look like in their work. Building on his new book On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting: Oral Histories, Strategies and Conflicts, Shepard explores conflict and resolution as the lifeblood of social movements. How, and with whom, do we find lasting friendship, support, and joy in a world in need of so much repair
Steven Vittoria, award-winning filmmaker and author, discusses the transition from nonfiction historical & political books and documentary film to fiction that exposes uncomfortable truths, helping to suggest empathy and peace in a world that now more than ever desperately needs help from artists.
Antonio Roman-Acala,Kanoa Dinwoodie, Feral Heart Farm
Krysten Leach, Namu Farms
Nadia Barhoum, Thurayya Seeds
Navina Khanna, HEAL food alliance
Gavin Raders, Planting Justice
Vanessa, farm manager at SF’s Alemany Farm
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.
Chris Carlsson
Chris Carlsson presents the 2025 2nd edition of his unique historical guidebook to San Francisco's overlooked and forgotten histories. He will read from the new preface to the 2nd edition, "In the Wake of the Pandemic," which puts the recent pandemic in the context of a long history of public health politics in the city. He also analyzes the long history of tech booms in the city, and how likely the much-touted "doom loop" will reach a climax. In addition, a new chapter featuring unusual ecological hikes through San Francisco on unknown back trails through neighborhoods well off the tourist path will also be revealed.
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.
Carmelo Castro-Netsky and Julian Mithra
Be inspired to facilitate an accessible and inclusive community arts project through the case study of a mural developed and installed at the Ed Roberts Campus in South Berkeley, a hub for disability justice work. Through core principles, like slowness and emergent structure, attendees will accompany us through a circuitous path from concept to design to production to installation. The discussion harmonizes wisdom from community arts engagement (without a legacy of accessibility) and the collective wisdom from a cohort of artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities (who haven’t always been empowered in self-representation). What are the cognitive, creative, and construction tools that help interrupt capitalist demands for efficiency, expertise, or verbal communication? Join us to think critically about our relationship with each other and our bodies, nourishing the soil in which civic engagement grows by acquiring hands-on strategies for a site-specific project whose process and product are both accessible.
Aisha Mansour, Palestinian Youth Movement
Peter Olney, Organizing Director ILWU (retired)
Sam Levens, Inland Boatmen's Union
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 1981 when ILWU militants refused to send bomb parts 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 Schmidt, Felix Thomson, Raghav Goyal, Reilly Gardine
Four Highland Hospital workers and SEIU members will share firsthand accounts of grassroots organizing at Alameda County’s largest 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.
Dr. Joe Eis
All workshop participants will be part of making 1-3 person short guerilla theatre sketches. they will then go out into the general courtyard and perform them for the people there. No experience needed, no special clothing needed.
Sheela Ivlev
This participatory workshop draws from Occupational Therapy Disruptors: What Global OT Practice Can Teach Us About Innovation, Culture, and Community, a collection of 16 first-person stories I authored after interviewing therapists across Palestine, Uganda, Haiti, Aotearoa, and beyond. In each, community members resist supremacist systems—settler violence, medical colonialism, and structural neglect—through culturally grounded care, often with limited resources. Participants will engage with global stories, reflection, and discussion prompts to examine their own roles in systems of power, and leave with ideas for resisting authoritarianism through everyday care—whether in clinics, classrooms, nonprofits, or mutual aid spaces
Ariel Gore and Jessica Lawless
Following in the tradition of David Wojnarowicz, Audre Lorde, Leslie Feinberg, Dorothy Allison and so many more, we will look at memoir as a queer strategy of resistance against the violent systems designed to erase us. We think about writing and reading books as a radical act that creates intimate spaces of solidarity while fighting against the complicity required by the systems that profit from our suffering. We will read from our recent memories that weave together personal loss with structural critique—one examining queer love against the cancer industrial complex, one tracing a path through three decades of left activism and the connections between interpersonal violence and institutional oppression—we'll consider: How to fight supremacy while also trying to survive it; Writing as an historical record and vehicle for imagining a liberatory future; Grief and love as forms of resistance; Maintaining our humanity within dehumanizing systems; Interconnected creative practices (visual art, writing, culinary arts, music etc) as an anchor for surviving the end of empire. The session will be moderated include participatory discussion with time to write, draw, and color as a temporary affinity group.
Laura Scherling, EdD
Bruce Neuberger
Postcards to Hitler tells the story of a Jewish family in Munich living as close neighbors to the demagogue who becomes the Nazi Führer—Adolf Hitler. In a story passionately told by one of their descendants, the narrative begins as Benno Neuburger, a modest German land investor from Munich, and Anna Einstein, daughter of a cattle dealer, meet at a seder in Laupheim and soon marry. The year is 1907, a relatively prosperous, optimistic time for German Jews, and there is little hint that this good fortune might soon unravel. Of all the Jews in Europe, Germans like the Neuburgers feel most secure.When, on a warm July day in 1914, an assassination strikes an “obscure” Balkan corner of the continent, the news passes through Munich’s beer-gardens like a cold wind. Far from a fleeting chill, what follows is the time of prolonged bloodshed known as World War I, followed by a period of German humiliation, resurgent revolution, and a brief left-led democratic interlude in Munich. What might have been a site of socialist experimentation instead becomes the epicenter of German fascism, and as Benno and Anna and their extended families cling with vain hope to a peaceful resolution, their beloved haven degenerates into a state of racialized madness. A bloody pogrom is chased by a second world war, followed by evictions, “resettlements” and far worse, sounding an inescapable knell despite desperate and defiant acts of resistance.
Bruce Neuberger
Postcards to Hitler tells the story of a Jewish family in Munich living as close neighbors to the demagogue who becomes the Nazi Führer—Adolf Hitler. In a story passionately told by one of their descendants, the narrative begins as Benno Neuburger, a modest German land investor from Munich, and Anna Einstein, daughter of a cattle dealer, meet at a seder in Laupheim and soon marry. The year is 1907, a relatively prosperous, optimistic time for German Jews, and there is little hint that this good fortune might soon unravel. Of all the Jews in Europe, Germans like the Neuburgers feel most secure.When, on a warm July day in 1914, an assassination strikes an “obscure” Balkan corner of the continent, the news passes through Munich’s beer-gardens like a cold wind. Far from a fleeting chill, what follows is the time of prolonged bloodshed known as World War I, followed by a period of German humiliation, resurgent revolution, and a brief left-led democratic interlude in Munich. What might have been a site of socialist experimentation instead becomes the epicenter of German fascism, and as Benno and Anna and their extended families cling with vain hope to a peaceful resolution, their beloved haven degenerates into a state of racialized madness. A bloody pogrom is chased by a second world war, followed by evictions, “resettlements” and far worse, sounding an inescapable knell despite desperate and defiant acts of resistance.
Laura Scherling, EdD
Laura Scherling, EdD
Join Duo Pizzicato and guests for a short set of Italian roots music played on mandolin, guitar, tamburello, and castanets. We'll end our set with a participatory singalong of Bella Ciao in English, Italian, and Spanish (with the lyrics, translations, and song info provided so everyone can join in).
Brian Bean in conversation with Melissa Gonzalez Hernandez
Chicago-based socialist activist, writer, and speaker brian bean discusses his new book and analyzes the connections between policing and capitalism, centering global lessons of revolt and resistance. Where do cops come from and what do they do? How did “modern policing” as we know it today come to be? What about the capitalist state necessitates policing? In his clear and comprehensive account of why and how the police—the linchpin of capitalism—function and exist, brian bean presents a clear case for the abolition of policing and capitalism.
Paul Messersmith-Glavin, Danielle Filippo, 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.
Moazzam Sheikh
My talk will explore the complicity of American fiction using examples from novels written by American authors. My talk will highlight the ways in which American fiction writers have touched on Israel either as if it's a country like any other, victim of aggression or dealing with conflict but never bothering to go deeper or probe the nature of its existence, from settler colonialism to apartheid to occupation.
Rickey Vincent and Pat Thomas
Discussion along with samples of music that inspired the Black Panthers and the Black Power movement with the authors of Party People and Listen Whitey.
An honest and vulnerable discussion about the realities of prison resistance. Oftentimes we romanticize prison. The reality is that resisting inside has very serious consequences, including the lasting trauma when you leave. This talk, based on my book, is about all the things that often get left out when we talk about life inside. Not just how bad it can get for us, but for our families and our free world selves, but also what is needed to help those reconnecting with the free world or still stuck inside.
Dani Burlison and Margaret Elysia Garcia
The editors of “Red Flag Warning: Mutual Aid and Survival in California’s Fire Country” (AK Press, 6/2025), Dani Burlison and Margaret Elysia Garcia will discuss the book and different approaches to mutual aid covered in the book, including protecting undocumented folks, centering traditional ecological knowledge, highlighting work by formerly incarcerated firefighters, class justice, mental health, rural environmental justice, and more! After our brief conversation/presentation, we will open to a participatory dialogue with attendees to share more ideas and collaborations.
Shella Cervantes, Tehmina Kahn, Kinneret Alexander, James Tracy, Beatriz Herrera
Instructors from City College of San Francisco's Ethnic Studies and Social Justice Departments explain the meaning of attacks on dissident education, ethnic studies and history from below.
Keith Knight and Fred Noland
Join cartoonists Keith Knight and Fred Noland in conversation about the history of cartoonists speaking truth to power. From Ollie Harrington to Dorothy Zeller (creator of the Black Panther Party logo), Aaron MacGruder to...themselves!
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 and Caitlin Cao
Tech firm 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 and workers 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 tech agenda.
Tiny Gray-Garcia, Muteado Silencio, Aunti Frances Moore
Session will include an author talk, workshop, and dialogue about POOR Magazine's newest book, UnTourBook. This new genre “guide Book” is full of truth about genocide as well as poetry, prayer, stories and art on indigenous resistance to settler colonial erasure, poLice terror, homelessness and the many acts of indigenous/Black/Brown-led resistance from Turtle Island to Palestine and all across Mama Earth. The UnTours across Occupied Turtle Island ( which the book is named after ) was launched in 2016 to reveal the truth about so many acts of settler colonial terror, rape, enslavement removal and murder, Terrifying acts like missionaries and settlers like Juniperro Serra was responsible for under his reign in the California Mission system.
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.
Anakhbayan Collective, City College of San Francisco
Students from City College of San Francisco discuss ways to connect local, campus and international solidarity organizing.
10:30-12:00
TBD
10:30-12:00
TBD
Kevin Van Meter and Robert Ovetz
Café, nonprofit, and public and private sector workers across the United States are on the move—refusing current regimes of work, fighting bosses and organizing unions, speaking about their working lives and demanding workplace democracy. Our workshop will examine two recent workers inquires with café and nonprofit workers in the US. Robert Ovetz will recount his inquiry into the nonprofit industry in his forthcoming Rebels for the System: NGOs, Capitalism and the Labor Movement (Haymarket, 2026). Kevin Van Meter will report on his recently coauthored “Class Composition in the Café Sector” (Notes from Below, 2025) and speak about his forthcoming Reading Struggles: Working-Class Self-Activity from Detroit to Turin and Back Again (AK Press). In this workshop participants will have the opportunity to practice a workers’ inquiry to understand the position of their work in the current capitalist economy to develop new tactics and strategies to build our power. The workshop teaches how workers’ inquiry can help circulate workers’ struggles and build working-class power to take on fascism.
Lindsay WeinbergIn this author talk, I'll share some of the main arguments from “Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age” (2024) as a way of opening up a conversation about how digital technologies are being used in US higher education for surveillance, censorship, and the repression of student and faculty activism. I would also share concrete strategies for how participants can use tactics including open letter writing campaigns, public records requests, and unionization to push back against the repressive digitization of universities. This talk is of relevance not only to those who live, work, or study at universities, but also those who live near universities, given the ways universities directly impact the material conditions of those who live near them, including through the expansion of campus real estate and digitally enhanced campus policing techniques. Furthermore, universities can be sites for either the reproduction or critique of dominant class ideology, which is why all who oppose autocracy should struggle for their independence from far-right regimes. I would plan to speak for 15 minutes about the book’s arguments, 15 minutes sharing concrete strategies participants might make use of, and the remainder of the time facilitating conversation about participants’ own experiences navigating authoritarian attacks on higher education.
Rowan Saoirse, Malkia Cyril and more TBD
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 ,Mickey Huff, Peter Phillips, 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?
Simon Knaphus
Seahorses is a groundbreaking anthology that shares the experiences of trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people who have navigated pregnancy.What can trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people expect from pregnancy? What roles do supportive friends, family members, and care providers play? What are some of the fabulous family structures folks are creating? This collection brings together a wide spectrum of voices to share unique stories about navigating family building, pregnancy, fertility treatments, conception, loss, healthcare, abortion, childbirth, the early days of parenting, and the intersections of legal, political, and cultural contexts. Alongside individual stories, this book features collaborative round-table discussions where contributors address shared questions about personal journeys, community, advice and information, and pregnancy care.
Steve Martinot and more TBD
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).
Lara Messersmith-Glavin
Fiction helps shape the way we understand others and ourselves. It tells us about the nature of struggle and combat, of love and family, of our roles and expectations. It informs what we think it means to be a hero or a villain—or a character at all. It can define the boundaries of our imagination or our understanding of power; it can compress or expand our notion of what is possible. With this in mind, I would like to offer a 2 hour creative writing workshop for folks interested in developing short stories or long-form fiction to explore possibilities for creating revolutionary change. We will begin with a brief discussion of the visionary potential of creative writing and look at some concrete examples through readings and familiar texts. Next, we will explore character- versus plot-driven narrative structures and weigh the advantages and limitations of each, as well as consider the different processes or approaches they might entail. Participants will then work in small groups to reflect on issues from their own organizing or political experiences that they want to see explored in fiction. Lastly, participants will spend some time brainstorming or drafting elements of either character or plot that would allow them to address such issues in a story. Folks are welcome to share what they come up with, but no one will be required to read their writing aloud. All levels of experience or literacy are welcome. Participants should expect lively, respectful discussion as well as quiet solo work time. All folks who take part will also be given a small zine of creative writing prompts to take home and will have a chance to share their own with the group.
Charmaine Chua, Lara Kiswani, Samer Araabi
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 long-haul labor organizing 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.
Leroy F. Moore Jr. introduces a documentary on police murder of disabled people.
Chiapas Support Committee
Dispatches from Resistant Mexico is a series of short documentaries from southern Mexico, each depicting one of the thousands of pockets of resistance throughout Latin America that are in struggle against the capitalist looting of resources and land from indigenous communities. The individuals and communities depicted in the films affirm traditions and ways of life that are collective, egalitarian, and deeply in tune with “Mother Earth”. They have preserved traditional forms of life and ecological practices despite 500 years of colonization. Prosperity of the community and mutual respect between all beings are valued more than money, individual accumulation, and competitive striving. The shorts will be followed by updates on Mexico and discussion on why these struggles are important to us in the U.S.
Dani Gabriel, Jessica Huang Zachary Rogow
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.
Left In The Bay And More TBD
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, Maya Schenwar
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, Maya, 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.
Sarah Alza12:00 and Jamie Swanton This presentation explores the life experiences of a Palestinian refugee through hergrandparents’ powerful stories of a Palestine before Zionism and then surviving the Nakba. Despite the Zionist entities’ current genocide wiping the family name from the civil registry, Sarah Alza12:00 continues the fight for a free Palestine in the diaspora. Specifically looking at the long history of the Zionist mission to dismantle the Palestinian medical infrastructure, Sarah, along with Jamie Swanton from Healthcare Workers for Palestine, focus on the continuing Palestinian-led resistance to Zionism through education and action in the diaspora as well as the fight for a liberated Palestine in the U.S. by Healthcare Workers for Palestine. The presentation includes sections from the Al Jazeera documentary, “The Disappearance of Dr. Abu Safiyah” and time for questions and discussion. We will also have zines, pamphlets, handouts and other resources on Zionism as racism and settler-colonialism created by Palestinians in the diaspora and anti-Zionist organizers.
Cayden Mak, Max Elbaum, Maya Schenwar
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, Maya, 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.
Eric Mann
A talk based on his work with CORE, SDS, the United Auto Workers, and the Labor/Community Strategy Center and his books Katrina’s Legacy—U.S. genocidal climate crimes from New Orleans to the Third World and Playbook for Progressives: The 16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer.
Owen Hill, Jonathan Lethem, Summer Brenner, Jerry Thompson
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
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.
Laura Ruberto, Evelyn Ferraro, Antonella Vitale, Benedetta Liccarda
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.
Sasha Coleman, Aryn Far, Marc Lispi, Blanca Missé
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 critical thought, going after undocumented students and families — this is all part of a broader authoritarian agenda to suppress dissent and impose a racist, reactionary ideology. From the defunding of public schools, to the attacks on unions, to the erosion of tenure and academic freedom in higher education, this offensive is designed to weaken working class access to education and criminalize dissent of any form. 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.
Paul Messersmith-Glavin and Jasper Bernes
This workshop will explore the ideas of Japanese Marxist Kohei Saito, in the context of other ecological Marxists and the social ecology of Murray Bookchin. We will look at what Saito has found in researching the thinking of Marx during the last 14 years of his life and compare and contrast those ideas to others such as Bookchin who have also thought through the roots of the ecological crisis and ways out. We will explore what we mean when we talk about growth and address both the viability and implications of an anarchist communist degrowth politics. We will also collectively think through what can be done in terms of various forms of revolutionary organizing.
Mary Anne Trasciatti
In this session I propose to explore the connection between civil liberties and collective action, as presented in my recently published book, Elizabeth Gurley Fynn: The Rebel Girl, Democracy, and Revolution (Rutgers UP). As a socialist, then a Wobbly/syndicalist, and then a Communist, Flynn organized workers into unions, led strikes, championed women’s rights, supported anti-imperialist movements around the globe, protested deportations, advocated for prison reform, and fought for Black liberation. Through all these campaigns, she was an ardent and active defender of the right to hold and express one’s political views and to associate with like-minded people in pursuit of economic, social, and political change. Rather than a matter of individual rights, Flynn’s understanding of civil liberties was inseparable from her socialism, a position that caused her to be expelled from the ACLU, an organization that she helped found. She believed that freedom of speech, press, assembly, and the right to a fair trial by jury are necessary for democracy in a capitalist state where material resources are unevenly distributed. The only way to remedy the imbalance between “haves” and “have nots” is collective action by the latter, and collective action is impossible without civil liberties. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn belongs at the heart of labor and civil liberties history: her life is a wellspring of inspiration for contemporary activists who wish to fight supremacy in all its nefarious forms.
Michelle Markel and Anne Broyles
Children need empowering true stories about protest - now more than ever. They can be inspired by stories that demonstrate how any one of us can- and should- speak out for human rights. Two award-winning authors will have a conversation about the making of their recent biographies: I’m Gonna Paint: Ralph Fasanella, Artist of the People (Holiday House, 2023); and Fearless Benjamin: The Quaker Dwarf Who Fought Slavery (PM Press, 2025).
Eric Drooker
Renowned artist and graphic novelist Eric Drooker will present a multimedia slide lecture exploring the changing landscape of the modern city—its architecture, its people, and the forces that shape urban life today. Drawing from his decades of work chronicling city streets and social movements, Drooker will reflect on the tension between art and survival, asking: Is it still possible for an artist to survive in the 21st century? Best known for his many New Yorker covers and his collaborations with poet Allen Ginsberg, Drooker combines striking visual imagery with social commentary and personal insight. His latest book, NAKED CITY: A Graphic Novel, offers a powerful meditation on contemporary urban experience, rendered in his signature, expressionistic style.
Tehmina Khan, Leslie Simon, Ladan Khoddam-Khorasani, Brianna Smith, Paul Buckley
Poetry for the People began in 1975 and continues to create the beloved community at City College of San Francisco and beyond. This multi-generational panel will celebrate this legacy, will share poems and stories, and will make space for participants to create and share poems in community. With founder Leslie Simon, students of the late Lauren Muller, and current instructor Tehmina Khan, we will discuss the history of this revolutionary movement and our calling to carry it forward into our current struggles.
Eddie YuenPresentation of some recently rediscovered posters, photos and handbills of social movements from the 1960s - 1990s. Prior to the “elite capture” of so-called identity politics, many social movements offered a genuine intersection of solidarity-based struggles.
Josh Fernandez and Jerrod Shanahan
To celebrate the publication of Every Fire Need a Little Bit of Help: A Decade of Rebellion, Reaction, and Morbid Symptoms (PM Press, 2025), author Jarrod Shanahan will appear in discussion with Josh Fernandez, author of The Hands that Crafted the Bomb: The Making of a Lifelong Antifascist (PM Press, 2024). Every Fire Needs a Little Bit of Help collects a decade of reflections on recent US struggles—Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and the George Floyd Rebellion—alongside accounts of the rise of Trumpism, the alt-right, an apocalyptic shift in popular culture, to paint a dense and complex portrait of a decade of protracted social crisis. Jarrod Shanahan reports from the ground. On the streets in 2014, from the depths of the Rikers Island penal complex, inside the alt-right underground and the carnival of Trump rallies, and in the line of fire in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020, among other scenes that Shanahan accessed not as a credentialed observer but an active participant: prisoner, infiltrator, activist. The resulting essays outline the pitfalls and opportunities facing those seeking to reverse the suicidal course of capitalist society and build a liberated world.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Legendary movement historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a sneak peek at her new book on White Christian Nationalism.
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 .
Jonathon Rosenblum, Bia LaCombe, more TBAConcept: 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.
Laura Scherling, EdD
AK Thompson and Delio Vasquez
Jonathon Rosenblum, Bia LaCombe, & TBA
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.
Sarah Alzanoon and Jamie Swanton
This presentation explores the life experiences of a Palestinian refugee through her grandparents’ powerful stories of a Palestine before Zionism and then surviving the Nakba. Despite the Zionist entities’ current genocide wiping the family name from the civil registry, Sarah Alzanoon continues the fight for a free Palestine in the diaspora. Specifically looking at the long history of the Zionist mission to dismantle the Palestinian medical infrastructure, Sarah, along with Jamie Swanton from Healthcare Workers for Palestine, focus on the continuing Palestinian-led resistance to Zionism through education and action in the diaspora as well as the fight for a liberated Palestine in the U.S. by Healthcare Workers for Palestine. The presentation includes sections from the Al Jazeera documentary, “The Disappearance of Dr. Abu Safiyah” and time for questions and discussion. We will also have zines, pamphlets, handouts and other resources on Zionism as racism and settler-colonialism created by Palestinians in the diaspora and anti-Zionist organizers.
AK Thompson and Delio Vasquez
What did Huey P. Newton mean when he said "I am we," and who exactly are "the people"? Are there ways of forming collective political subjects outside the bounds of state recognition? In this session, Delio Vasquez and AK Thompson talk about their forthcoming books addressing questions of collective subjectivity.
