Haymarket Books Live

Join Haymarket Books, Labor Notes, and the American Prospect for a discussion of how to build labor's power in the Trump era.With an emboldened Trump in the White House for a second term, the ground has shifted dramatically for unions. The labor movement, like many institutions, is scrambling to devise strategies to build power—or even just survive—during these challenging times.This authoritarian consolidation of power is testing unions. What can unions do to survive in the second Trump presidency? What tactics and strategies can help organize more new members and best survive an all-out assault on labor and other rights?Speakers:Brandon Mancilla, UAW Region 9A DirectorDiamonte Brown, President, Baltimore Teachers UnionJackson Potter, VP, Chicago Teachers Unionmoderated by David Dayen, The American Prospect and Natascha Elena Uhlmann, Labor Notes.This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books, Labor Notes, and the American Prospect.Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/niZH5ErNG_gBuy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org

Join Haymarket Books and Historical Materialism for a launch and discussion of The Founding of the Red Trade Union International.In 1921 revolutionary trade-union leaders from across the world met to found the Red Trade Union International, representing millions of workers. The gathering brought together a wide variety of forces within the global labor movement, with proceedings that included acrimonious debates between syndicalists and other currents over the purpose and tasks of trade unions, the nature of class-struggle unionism, and union strategy and tactics. This launch event will discuss the contours of these debates and their relevance for revolutionaries today.Order a copy here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2689-the-founding-of-the-red-trade-union-internationalSpeakers:Reiner Tosstorff teaches at the history department at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, and is author of The Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) 1920-1937. He has published monographs and articles on Spanish history as well as on the international workers’ movement in the twentieth century.Daria Dyakonova is a history researcher who teaches at the International University in Geneva, Switzerland. She is co-editor of The Communist Women’s Movement, 1920-1922. Her Ph.D. thesis was on the Canadian Communist Youth and ties with the International Communist Movement during the interwar period.Mike Taber is editor of The Founding of the Red Trade Union International and is the current director of the Comintern Publishing Project. He has edited a number of volumes on the history of the international socialist and communist movement.This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books and Historical Materialism.Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/Z0UOKR7W7osBuy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org

Join authors David Camfield and brian bean as they discuss a historical approach to abolition, the state, and how our side can build a genuinely liberatory alternative to capitalism.Increasingly, people are responding to the contemporary crises underwritten by capitalism by exploring the politics of communism. Camfield and bean will draw on historical lessons and debates to bring nuance to the meaning of “solidarity” and clarity to what “abolition” and “revolution” look like in practice as they take on key questions on what this current period of radicalization means for the future of the left.More on Red Flags:Red Flags traces the path from the 1917 Russian Revolution to the construction of the world’s first AES society: the USSR. It also looks at the post-revolution societies created along the same lines in China and Cuba. Using the intellectual tools of historical materialism, Red Flags argues that they were not in fact moving towards communism because the social relations remained fixed in class exploitation. The workers were never liberated.At a time of burgeoning anti-communism from both conservatives and liberals, this book is an accessible, vibrant synthesis of the history of communism that draws on the latest research to develop a rigorous analysis of the contradictions and uneasy truths the left needs to confront if it is to build a genuinely liberatory alternative to capitalism.https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/red-flagsMore on Their End is Our Beginning: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 this clear and comprehensive account of why and how the police—the linchpin of capitalism—function and exist, organizer and author brian bean presents a clear case for the abolition of policing and capitalism.Their End Is Our Beginning traces the roots and development of policing in global capitalism through colonial rule, racist enslavement, and class oppression, along the way arguing how police power can be challenged and, ultimately, abolished. bean draws from extensive interviews with activists from Mexico to Ireland to Egypt, all of whom share compelling and knowledgeable perspectives on what it takes to—even if temporarily—take down the cops and build a thriving community-organized society, free from the police.Get Their End is Our Beginning: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2540-their-end-is-our-beginningSpeakers:David Camfield’s most recent book is Red Flags: A Reckoning with Communism for the Future of the Left. David’s other books are Future on Fire: Capitalism and the Politics of Climate Change, We Can Do Better: Ideas for Changing Society, and Canadian Labour in Crisis: Reinventing the Workers’ Movement. David lives in Winnipeg and teaches in Labour Studies and Sociology at the University of Manitoba. A longtime active socialist, David is on the editorial board of Midnight Sun and hosts the podcast Victor’s Children. His website is prairiered.cabrian bean is a Chicago-based socialist organizer, writer, and agitator originally from North Carolina. They are one of the founding editors of Rampant Magazine. Their work has been published in Truthout, Jacobin, Tempest, Spectre, Red Flag, New Politics, Socialist Worker, International Viewpoint, and more. They coedited and contributed to the book Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, and wrote Their End is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition, both from Haymarket Books.Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac6I29c07N0Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org

The U.S. is experiencing one of the largest waves of political repression in its history. Academics, socialists, leftists, intellectuals, Palestinians, Muslims, labor organizers, trans people, queer folks, migrants, immigrants, people of color, the disabled, the working-class, the poor are all under attack. The state’s efforts to repress free speech are part of a larger campaign to silence and stamp out dissent of all kinds, andmove the U.S. further towards authoritarianism. Recently, Tom Alter, a tenured historian, was fired from his job at Texas State University, simply for speaking as a Socialist.We must fight back. Join us for this 90 minute Speak Out! with activists, organizers and writers who will share ideas about the meaning of MAGA McCarthyism and how we can together resist.Speakers: Tom Alter. Tom Alter is a scholar and activist who was recently fired by Texas State University. He is the author of Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas. He is a member of the Texas State Employees Union, the American Association of University Professors, and Socialist Horizon.Eman Abdelhadi is a scholar, organizer, and writer based in Chicago. She is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on Arab and Muslim communities in the United States and has been cited by NPR, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and other outlets. She co-wrote the revolutionary sci-fi novel Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 (Common Notions Press, 2022). She writes a regular column on Palestine and politics for In These Times magazine. Her essays have appeared in Jacobin, Truthout, Zeteo, and other publications.Jodi Dean is Professor of Politics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Her most recent books are Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging and Capital's Grave: Neofeudalism and the New Class Struggle, both published by Verso.Catarina Kissinger is an organizer with the Texas State Employees Union (TSEU / CWA Local 6186), where she helps lead the union’s campaign in defense of Dr. Tom Alter and works to build collective power among faculty, staff, and student workers in higher education.Karim Mattar is Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. A descendant of survivors of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, he works at the intersection of Palestine studies, the humanities, and higher education. He is currently at work on "Writing the Catastrophe: Trauma and Responsibility Across Generation," a monograph that interweaves personal experience, family history, cultural critique, and political analysis to tell a multigenerational, transcontinental story of responsibility to Palestine. Karim is co-chair of the CAHE Palestine Caucus and Faculty Editor of the AAUP's Journal of Academic Freedom."David McNally has taught history and political economy at the University of Houston and York University in Toronto. He is currently director of the Project on Race and Capitalism. David is the author of eight books including most recently, Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History published earlier this year by the University of California Press.This event is sponsored by Committee to Defend Tom Alter, Texas State Employees Union/CWA Local 6186, and Haymarket Books.

Join Kelly Hayes in conversation with Shane Burley, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Atena O. Danner as they discuss the launch of Read this When Things Fall Apart, bundle of letters to activists and organizers on the frontlines in catastrophic times.In social movements, some heartbreaks are all but inevitable. Campaigns will be lost. Mental health crises will occur. Social ills, like gender-based violence, will manifest themselves in movement spaces. People will experience profound personal losses. Grief, alienation, and despair can grind us under. Sometimes, we need accompaniment. Sometimes, we need to be met where we’re at by a caring voice of experience. Read This When Things Fall Apart is a care package for activists and organizers building power under fascistic, demoralizing conditions. It’s an outstretched hand, offering history lessons, personal anecdotes, and practical advice about how to navigate the woes of justice work. A survival guide for the heart, this is a book for activists to keep close, and to share with co-strugglers in need.Personal, reflective, and hopeful, Read This When Things Fall Apart harnesses the writers' individual moments of despair into living, breathing wisdom that chips away at the supposed inevitability of fascist life. Restorative like a letter from a trusted friend and invigorating like a story from a mentor, the book is an indispensable companion for all of us navigating challenging times. Featuring letters from Mariame Kaba, Ashon Crawley, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Eman Abdelhadi, Brian Merchant, and more.Get the book: https://www.pilsencommunitybooks.com/item/vCQt68DQBH3U0CUUWZyWRwSpeakers:Kelly Hayes is a Menominee author, organizer, movement educator and photographer. They host Truthout’s podcast Movement Memos and are co-author of the book Let This Radicalize You, with Mariame Kaba. Hayes is also the creator of Organizing My Thoughts, a weekly newsletter about politics and justice work.Shane Burley is a journalist and filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author and editor of four books, including ¡No Pasaran!: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis (AK Press and the Institute for Anarchist Studies, 2022) and Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism (coauthored with Ben Lorber; Melville House, 2024). His work has been featured in places like NBC News, The Daily Beast, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, Truthout, In These Times, Jewish Currents, The Baffler, Yes! Magazine, and Oregon Humanities.Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (they/she) is an older cousin, regular person, memory worker, disability and transformative justice uncle bytch, and the author or coeditor of ten books including The Future Is Disabled (coedited with Ejeris Dixon; Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022), Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement (AK Press, 2020), Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018), Tonguebreaker (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019), and Dirty River (Arsenal, 2016). A 2020–2021 Disability Futures Fellow, Lambda and Jeanne Córdova Award winner, five-time Publishing Triangle short-lister, and longtime disabled QTBIPOC space maker, they are currently building Living Altars, a cultural space by and for disabled QTBIPOC writers.Atena O. Danner is a cultural worker who imagines Black liberation, engaged in boundless curiosity. As a poet, singer, and visual artist, Atena creates work that encompasses kitchen-table specificity and folk story relatability, covering topics including neurodiversity, human connection, and collective liberation. As an organizer and activist, she has worked to incorporate struggles for justice into her life as a caregiver in a family of complex needs while also writing and publishing in journals, antholo- gies, and her own book of poetry, Incantations for Rest: Poems, Meditations & Other Magic (Skinner House, 2022), which was awarded a Nautilus Silver Award for poetry in 2023.Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/qrpIX72ivqsBuy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org

Join us as author Hamid Dabashi will be in conversation with Muhannad Ayyash as the two discuss Dabashi's latest book, After SavageryAs the death toll in Gaza continues to rise, what remains of the theories we use to understand our world? Join Hamid Dabashi and Dr. Muhannad Ayyash as they discuss and expose the racist roots of Western philosophy. Rather than perceiving “the West” as giving carte blanche to Israel, Dabashi insists that Israel must be understood as its quintessence.If Israel is the West and the West is Israel, then Palestine is the world and the world is Palestine. Holding to glimmers from revolutionary works of literature and film, Dabashi argues, in grief and love, that the wretched of the earth need poetry after barbarism—and that Palestine is the site of a liberated imagination.Get the book, After Savagery: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2607-after-savagerySpeakers:Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Among Dabashi’s recent books are On Edward Said: Remembrance of Things Past, The End of Two Illusions: Islam after the West, and Iran in Revolt: Revolutionary Aspirations in a Post-Democratic World.Dr. Muhannad Ayyash was born and raised in Silwan, Al-Quds, before immigrating to Canada where he is a Professor of Sociology at Mount Royal University. He is also a policy analyst at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. He is the author of Lordship and Liberation in Palestine-Israel and A Hermeneutics of Violence, has co-edited two books, and is the author of over twenty journal articles and book chapters, and over fifty commentaries and opinion pieces.Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/C1nXFhST1H4Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org

Join us for a virutal book launch of Displaced in Gaza, A powerful collection of testimonies from Palestinians facing genocide and displacement with hope and resistance.Displaced in Gaza aims to raise global awareness of how violent displacement has impacted the lives of Palestinians—students, mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, educators, and those who already survived the Nakba of 1948. In Gaza, 2.3 million Palestinians have been subjected to starvation, mass destruction, and targeted killing. Yet they endure.This book is a commitment to the longstanding Palestinian tradition of storytelling, documenting both the horror of the genocide and the resilience of the Palestinian people. The stories in this collection are not merely accounts of suffering, they are assertions of humanity, resistance, hope, and the unbreakable bond that ties Palestinians to their homeland.Displaced in Gaza is a collaboration between the American Friends Service Committee and the Hashim Sani Center for Palestine Studies at Universiti Malaya.Order Displaced in Gaza: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2620-displaced-in-gazaSpeakers: Dr Yousef Aljamal is a Palestinian journalist and author from Gaza. He is the Gaza Coordinator at the AFSC. He is the co-editor of Displaced in Gaza. He holds an MA degree from the Department of International and Strategic Studies at the University of Malaya in Malaysia. He was awarded his PhD from the Middle East Institute at Sakarya University in Turkey. In addition to his research interests in diaspora, security, and indigenous studies, Yousef Aljamal has been involved on a number of book projects including translations of books on Palestinian prisoners, among them “Dreaming of Freedom: Palestinian Child Prisoners Speak” (2016), and a collection of stories about the shared struggle of Palestinian and Irish Hunger Strikers. Most recently he edited “If I Must Die” an anthology of poetry and prose by the recently assassinated Palestinian poet and academic, Dr Refaat Alareer.Norma Hashim has been involved in advocacy and relief work for Palestine since the 2008 attacks on Gaza, and is treasurer of Viva Palestina Malaysia . Other than Displaced in Gaza, she has co-edited three books with Yousef Aljamal on Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons - “The Prisoners’ Diaries“(2013) , “Dreaming of Freedom: Palestinian child prisoners speak”(2016) which has been published in the US in support of a legislative bill for human rights for Palestinian children, and “ A Shared Struggle: Stories of Palestinian and Irish Hunger Strikers”(2021). In 2022 she founded the Hashim Sani Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Malaya to address the need for a Palestine research and knowledge.Zoe Jannuzi works as the Palestine Activism Program Coordinator at the American Friends Service Committee. She activates folks across the United States and the world to further their visions for a world free of apartheid, occupation, colonialism, and genocide. Zoe graduated from Swarthmore College in 2022 with a major in Peace Education and minors in History and Dance Performance. Alongside Yousef M. Aljamal, Norma Hashim, and Noor Nabulsi, she helped edit Displaced in Gaza, bringing 27 incredible, heartbreaking, and wise stories from Gaza to a U.S. audience.Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cxhWkrk26oBuy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org

Join us for the next event in the Haymarket Presents speakers series, as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is joined by Uahikea Maile for a conversation on decolonial strategies that look to water as a catalyst for radical transformation. Co-sponsored by Pilsen Community BooksIn her powerful new book, Theory of Water, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson offers a radical rethinking of relationships between beings and forces in the world today. Simpson draws on Nishnaabeg origin stories while artfully weaving the work of influential writers and artists alongside her personal memories and experience—and in doing so, reimagines water as a catalyst for radical transformation, capable of birthing a new world.Theory of Water is a resonant exploration of an intricate, multi-layered relationship with the most abundant element on our planet—one that, as Simpson eloquently shows, is shaping our present even as it demands a radical rethinking of how we might achieve a just future.Theory of Water is a genre-bending exploration of that most elemental force–water–through Indigenous storytelling, personal memory, and the work of influential artists and writers.Speakers:Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, musician and member of Alderville First Nation. She holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba and is the author of seven previous books, including Rehearsals for Living with Robyn Maynard, and the novel Noopiming: A Cure for White Ladies. Her newest book is Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead.Dr. Uahikea Maile is a Kanaka Maoli scholar, organizer, and practitioner from Maunawili, Oʻahu. He is assistant professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. Maile’s current book manuscript, Gifts of Sovereignty: Capitalism, Settler Colonialism, and Indigenous Politics in Hawaiʻi, examines the historical development and contemporary formation of settler colonial capitalism in Hawai‘i and gifts of sovereignty that seek to overturn it by issuing responsibilities for balancing relationships with ‘āina, the land and that who feeds.This event is co-sponsored by Pilsen Community Books and Haymarket Books, and is part of the Haymarket Presents speakers series. Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxWlazKmtQ4Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org

A perilous situation faces Ukraine in the aftermath of the recent Trump-Putin summit, in which the partition of its land and people were proposed without a Ukrainian voice at the table. This panel will discuss the regional and global ramifications of Russia’s war of occupation and ways to solidarize with those opposing it.Speakers:Tanya Vyhovsky is a Ukrainian American, clinical social worker, and a member of Vermont’s Progressive Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, and recently returned from a trip to Ukraine.Ilya Budraitskis is a political researcher and socialist activist previously based in Moscow. His essay collection Dissidents among Dissidents: Ideology, Politics and The Left in Post-Soviet Russia was published by Verso in 2022.Denys Bondar, a native of Ukraine, is a professor of physics at Tulane University and is a member of the Ukraine Solidarity Network.Howie Hawkins, USN and Green Party presidential candidate 2020This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books and Ukraine Solidarity Network.Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzHRol0nAhMBuy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org

Join internationalist organizers discussing the lessons contemporary international solidarity movements can learn from past struggles against the Vietnam War and in support of Vietnamese liberation.View the A Luta Continua Zine Series: https://bit.ly/intlsolidarityzinesDownload the Solidarity and War in Vietnam Zine: https://bit.ly/vietnamzine2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the victory of the Vietnamese liberation forces over the imperialist US military. This timing coincides with the release of the zine, Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF Is Gonna Win: Solidarity and the War in Vietnam 1955-1975, written by James Kilgore. The zine is an overview of the international solidarity efforts that emerged in the US and beyond in support of the Vietnamese struggle and is part of the zine series A La Luta Continua from Community Justice Exchange.The launch of this zine comes at a moment when a massive global solidarity movement has emerged in support of the liberation of Palestine. In this webinar, a panel comprised of individuals who took part in the anti-war movement of the 60s and 70s, as well as contemporary activists engaged in Palestinian solidarity organizing, will share perspectives on the parallels and differences in the struggles, look at lessons learned from the support for the Vietnamese, and assess how we might learn from that history. The discussion hopes to provoke answers on how we can mobilize more support for Palestinian freedom and build a global movement based on international solidarity and visions of true liberation.This event is organized by Community Justice Exchange in partnership with Haymarket Books.Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF89oS7CtL4Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org