Thread by @LansingDSALabor

We're now just moments away from #Socialism2020, sponsored by @haymarketbooks, @jacobinmag, and @DemSocialists!

https://twitter.com/socialismconf/status/1272958884647485440

And the virtual conference has begun with a reading of Frederick Douglass's "What to the Slave Is the #FourthOfJuly?" #Socialism2020 teachingamericanhistory.org/library/docume…

"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham" - Frederick Douglass #Socialism2020

"There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour" - Frederick Douglass #Socialism2020

The virtual conference is now fully underway with the opening plenary, "Racial Capitalism and Crisis," introduced by @brainyandbrawny of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture #Socialism2020

The first speaker is economist, @tribunemagazine staff writer, and @UKLabour activist @graceblakeley #Socialism2020

"The fact that things aren't going to just go back to 'normal'...emerges from the inherent contradictions of the kind of financialized, monopolized, imperialistic system that we are living under today." - @graceblakeley #Socialism2020

"We are living in an age of unique opportunities, [but] we also have to be able to organize in order to take advantage of them. There is no natural link between capitalist crisis and the emergence of socialism." - @graceblakeley #Socialism2020

Speaking next is historian Robin D.G. Kelley, author of such books as Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (1990) and the excellent Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (1994) #Socialism2020

"Capitalism operates through racial projects, racial projects that assign differential value to human life and labor. And to put it simply, there are segments of the working class that experience crises when others do not" - Robin D.G. Kelley #Socialism2020

"The Communist Party was the most vibrant, successful Left formation in the 30s. What made them different than any other socialist party in history up to that point was that they made antiracism central to their agenda" - Robin D.G. Kelley #Socialism2020

"If I have to read another article chastising Black Lives Matter...for not being sufficiently anticapitalist...I'm going to scream! The Movement for Black Lives has been uncompromisingly anticapitalist...from its inception" - Robin D.G. Kelley #Socialism2020

"While I see promising signs, we still have a long way to go because white supremacy continues to rule. A revolutionary working class movement needs to attack white supremacy and patriarchy directly" - Robin D.G. Kelley #Socialism2020

"It has been truly astonishing to see the Federal Reserve basically say 'We will create unlimited amounts of money to support the needs of capital'...Capitalists...[are] aimed at supporting the interests of capital, rather than those of workers" - @graceblakeley #Socialism2020

"The rise of Democratic Socialism represents a reversion of the historical trend where neoliberalism...was associated with a...fragmentation of the Left into an electoral arm, an NGO arm, and a more radical, protest-based arm" - @graceblakeley #Socialism2020

"So, long story short: Can we achieve any modicum of...improvement in our science of living just by the demands of the state? No. Can we achieve our ends without focusing on the state? I don't think so" - @graceblakeley #Socialism2020

"There are people who say we need more police, more repression, and more violence, and those are the ones we have to talk about...If historic blocs frame or shape the way we move forward...the question of state power has to be on the table" - Robin D.G. Kelley #Socialism2020

"You can't separate the idea[s] of slavery...and Indigenous dispossession from a market economy that makes things into commodities, makes human beings into commodities, and also places a certain kind of value on private property" - Robin D.G. Kelley #Socialism2020

"Mutual aid is the basis of any kind of solidarity or community building. Collective survival is essentially what it's all about" - Robin D.G. Kelley #Socialism2020

And with that, we've reached the end of the opening plenary! Fun Fact: Plenary facilitator @brainyandbrawny ran for Lieutenant Governor of New York in 2014 on the Green Party ticket with current Green Party presidential candidate @HowieHawkins

We're now moving into the breakout session "Socialist Organization and the Capitalist State" with @the_antifada co-host @jamie_elizabeth and @_ericblanc, author of Red State Revolt: The Teachers' Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics (2019) #Socialism2020

Or so we thought...A technical issue has necessitated that this session be rescheduled. Luckily, we've been able to catch a decent portion of "Reparations for Slavery and Settler Colonialism," featuring @DinaGWhit, @BillFletcherJr, and Symone Baptiste #Socialism2020

Finally, we have the closing plenary, "From Rebellion to Revolution," featuring educators @JessedHagopian and Khury Petersen-Smith, and @YDSA_ co-chair Amelia Blair-Smith #Socialism2020

Speaking about her experience at the Minneapolis Uprising, Amelia Blair-Smith says, "The burning of the third precinct...is evident of a demand to collectively defund, disarm, and abolish the police through direct action. Not just through legislative action" #Socialism2020

"@YDSA_ leaders are trying to turn the organic militant energy of students, of young people, of people of color into campaigns to cut ties between schools and police departments" - Amelia Blair-Smith #Socialism2020

"I truly believe that campus organizing should be a training ground for worker organizing, and I hope that all members take the skills that they learn in @YDSA_ and then apply them to their workplaces" - Amelia Blair-Smith #Socialism2020

"I'm just so grateful to the abolitionists...who laid so much of the groundwork for this uprising, and helped ensure that when...people did take the streets...they took up the...demands of defunding, disarming, and abolishing the police" - @JessedHagopian #Socialism2020

The abolitionists @JessedHagopian acknowledges are the likes of Ruth Gilmore, Angela Davis, and Miriam Kaba #Socialism2020

.@JessedHagopian "endured a lot of ridicule and mockery for suggesting that the police were not part of the working class...That you can imagine every single moment in the history of the labor movement...and just ask...'Which side were the police on?'" #Socialism2020

"They kicked the police out of the Oakland Public Schools. They kicked the police out of the Denver Public Schools. And on and on...Uprisings really get the goods, y'all. It's the way...And I'm not the only one that's drawing that conclusion" - @JessedHagopian #Socialism2020

"The police are not here to fight crime. If that was the case, they would be up in some board rooms, arresting hedge fund managers and investment bankers and war profiteers, and the prison-industrial complex organizers" - @JessedHagopian #Socialism2020

"We need to analyze the general strikes of the 1930s and talk about how we build a labor movement that's capable of shutting down entire cities, like happened in Minneapolis and Toledo and San Francisco" - @JessedHagopian #Socialism2020

"We want to abolish the capitalist system altogether. And the billionaire class had better watch their back because we are coming for them. And there are a whole lot of us" - @JessedHagopian #Socialism2020

"The #FourthOfJuly is not about freedom. It never was. It is about colonization. Please follow the Indian Collective, @The_Red_Nation, and other organizations connected with and building with relatives who were arrested last night" - Khury Petersen-Smith #Socialism2020

"Two months ago, in the op-ed pages of the New York Times were condescending pieces about how we need to support [Joe] Biden. Now there are pieces in the same op-ed pages...about abolishing the police. About disbanding police departments" - Khury Petersen-Smith #Socialism2020

"When we talk about revolution, it must be a conversation about decolonization and ending U.S. empire. Again, revolution does not just mean a change that leads to a more equal United States" - Khury Petersen-Smith #Socialism2020

"I believe that this conversation and this struggle must be transnational...because capitalism and...U.S. empire, they extend across borders, and therefore our struggle must extend across borders and must be against borders" - Khury Petersen-Smith #Socialism2020

"One of the things that I think can be done is kicking the police out of the school near you...That kind of victory can lead people to think...if we can...live in school...without police, maybe we can...[live] in the rest of society without police"-@JessedHagopian #Socialism2020

"I think that we need to integrate the fight against racism with the working class struggle at the workplace, and in our unions, and I think there's immense power there that we're beginning to see the potential of" - @JessedHagopian #Socialism2020

@threadreaderapp, unroll, if you please!