Socialists are all about “the worker,” right? That is what they spout again and again. So the irony of what is happening at the Socialism 2026 conference being held this weekend in Chicago is rich and lays bare the labor rhetoric vs. how champagne socialists actually behave.
The communist, Mao Zedong-loving influencer Hasan Piker is a featured speaker at the event.
The gathering is endorsed by groups including the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Organized Communities Against Deportations, and the Black Rose Anarchist Federation.
While good little Bolsheviks entered the venue to plan the demise of the American way of life, they walked right into a hotel where union workers have been working without a contract since midnight on September 1.
The annual conference, sponsored by Haymarket Books and other co-sponsors, is a weekend full of Marxism, Palestine cheerleading, ICE bashing, climate handwringing, and, of course, performative conversations about the labor force. This year’s event is being held at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place with about 2,600 registered.
The same weekend, UNITE HERE Local 1 hotel workers at 46 Chicago hotels, representing more than 7,000 people workers, have been working without a contract since midnight on September 1. The union marched on Michigan Avenue on September 2 and said they could strike at any time.
Holding a socialist conference inside a Hyatt, tied to Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s (D) family during an active citywide hotel contract fight doesn’t say much about how seriously the socialists take their fight for worker’s rights.
The annual Socialism 2026 Conference in Chicago is already going very badly.
The Unions are out in front of the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place protesting.
Will the 2026 Socialism Conference stand in solidarity with the workers?
Will they cancel the conference in protest? https://t.co/hWUnqC4iBi pic.twitter.com/hNixruaUVP
— Brian Costin (@BrianCostin) September 4, 2026
Why is @hasanthehun and the @DemSocialists speaking at the Socialism 2026 conference inside the @Hyatt Regency McCormick Place today, while @UniteHereLocal1 workers protest outside for fair wages and a contract?
Apparently, socialist solidarity ends at the hotel doors. https://t.co/SuFcbKpZxh pic.twitter.com/AIxQcjXmPN
— Brian Costin (@BrianCostin) September 4, 2026
Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey held a presser outside that hotel as the conference opened.
ABC7 Chicago shared, “It’s no surprise that socialists feel at home here in Illinois. J.B. Pritzker has spent nearly eight years rolling out the red carpet for their policies,” Bailey said.
Some highlights (lowlights) of the topics that will be tackled Saturday and Sunday include :
- The Black Path to Socialism
- Journalism, Authoritarianism and Struggles Against ICE
- Gender and Accumulation
- Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State
- Building the Anti-War Movement: Identifying and Organizing Against U.S. Military Subcontractors
- Labor at the Margins
- Lessons of the Russian Revolution
- Song for a Hard-Hit People: Building Anti-Racist Solidarity in Appalachia
- Cross-Walls Solidarity Against Carceral Infrastructure
- The Merciless Society: Incarceration, Dehumanization, and American Empire
- Art and Propaganda: On Learning from Paul Robeson
- Break the Board: Neoliberalism in Crisis and the Popular University as Abolition
- Sex for Pleasure: Controlling your Reproduction Under a Pro-Natalist Regime
- What Is the Muslim Left?
- Migra Watch Training for Illinois Residents
- Che’s “New Man” and The Bodhisattva Revolutionary
- Socialism, Liberation Theology, and the Black Church
- Ocean Deep Solidarity: Reparations, LANDBACK, and Collective Liberation
- Printing the Revolution
- Resisting Attacks on Schools, from Gaza to Chicago
- Trans Care in the Age of Health Fascism
- All Socialism, No Government: An Introduction to Anarchist Theory and Strategy
- Black Left Feminism and the Fight Against Fascism
- How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention
- Political Education 3: Slavery, Colonialism, and Primitive Accumulation
- Building the People’s Embargo for Palestine
- War, Capitalism, and Navigating the Climate Crisis
- “As Goes the South”: Building Multiracial Working-Class Solidarity
- Movement Lawyering in Times of Retrenchment
- The False Choice Between Identity Politics and Class Struggle
- Neighbors Get Ready: Forging New Solidarities and Defeating ICE
- The General Strike and How to Build a Stronger Pro-Democracy Labor Movement
- Trust in God and Keep the Powder Dry
- Why Socialism Requires Abolition
- Palestinian Revolutionary Thought and the Prisoners’ Movement
- Weaponizing Antisemitism: An Interactive History
- Unsafe: The Carceral Roots of the Anti-Trans Backlash
- Resisting MAHA & Building Environmental & Reproductive Justice
- Intro: Harm Reduction and Solidarity with Unsheltered Neighbors
- Cuba Under Siege
- The State of Worker Organizing in the South
- Redefining Family: Intro to Family Abolition
- Care Networks, Abolition, and the Fight Against Border Policing
- Are All Cops Bastards?
- Imagine a Future Without Family Policing! (Dorothy Roberts)
- Socialism Beats Fascism: Organizing for a Post-Trump America
- Mass Labor Action in Defense of Immigrant Workers
So, despite their rhetoric, socialists booked a Pritzker-linked Hyatt while housekeepers and banquet workers at that chain were in a labor dispute. A conference that talks “strike solidarity” should not put 2,600 people through a hotel whose workers just lost their contract.
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