Socialism conference gave voice to Palestinian liberation
While last month’s Democratic National Convention silenced Palestinian voices and failed to hold the apartheid state of Israel culpable of genocide, Socialism Conference 2024 sung a different tune by keeping Palestine at the forefront of the conversation this Labor Day weekend.
Attendees from across the globe gathered as waves of keffiyehs flooded the halls of the Hyatt-Regency in McCormick Place. Dozens of educational sessions were held each day on an array of topics from Movement Media workshops that seek to end the myth of objectivity in journalism, to lectures from authors engaging in both socialist and liberatory theory, yet the majority of sessions were focused on the Palestinian people’s fight against U.S.-sponsored tyranny.
Notable speakers included Linda Sarsour, author Ruth Wilson Gilmore, AirGo Radio’s Damon WIlliams and Daniel Kissinger, and 33rd Ward Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez, among many others.
During the four-day conference, Palestine was connected to other international struggles in the world, such as the ongoing crisis in Congo, and Puerto Rico’s colony status under the U.S.. Israel is modeled after the United States’ ethnic cleansing of the North American indigenous population in the name of “Manifest Destiny,” the religious claim that westward expansion and globalization was a God-given right.
In a unique session titled “Sports and the Fight for Palestine,” political sports writer Dave Zirin was joined by the founder of the Palestinian Ultimate Frisbee Committee Daniel Bannoura, and Rebecca O’Keefe of the Irish National basketball team, who pointed out the hypocrisy of international sports federations like FIBA and the Olympic, who have “sports washed” Israel’s crimes by allowing them to compete in competitions while banning Russia for their invasion of Ukraine.
Even sessions not explicitly focused on Palestine offered reflections on the one-year anniversary of the accelerated genocide.
Some panelists from different sessions even noted that the concept of being Anti-Zionist is still relatively new among Western Leftists. MacCarther Genuis author and poet Hanif Abdurraqib led a session exploring the work of famed Black feminist poet June Jordan titled, “I Guess It Was My Destiny To Live So Long,” reminding attendees that she nearly lost her career after publishing poems showing solidarity to the people of Palestine and Lebanon in the 1980s.
The final night of the conference provided a much more spiritual perspective of our connected struggle through the lens of Revolutionary Love. SunDDay school, as it was called, was led by the Dream Defenders, an anti-racist, pro-abolition human rights organization that was founded after the murder of Trayvon Martin. They kicked things off with a choir group that sang passionately in front of a massive Palestinian flag, so that the heavens up above may hear our calls to prayer for an end to state-sponsored terrorism all across the world. While some on the Left may feel that spirituality and socialism are incompatible, this evening was proof that one’s faith in love and justice as guiding principles go hand-in-hand with starting a revolution no matter what religion they follow.
Different activists went on stage reading letters that had to be written to the people of Gaza before having attendees write their own letters. In a year of grief and mourning, the Socialism Conference offered numerous moments of catharsis like this, which made the entire weekend equally healing as it was educational. Following the conference’s conclusion on Monday afternoon, many attendees traveled north just a couple miles to participate in the Labor Day protest for Palestine.
For four days in Chicago, strangers from all corners of the globe established bonds as international comrades, restoring any sense of hope in the world that there are indeed people on the ground every day in their home country fighting for what’s right.
