
Learn and discuss the nature and tenets of socialist ideology, organizing, and action. These group discussions allow us to learn, coordinate, build on and discuss organizing a better future for all of us. Past presenters at the Socialist Night School have included Noura Erakat, Vijay Prashad, Grace Blakely, Bill Fletcher, Tim Shorrock, Daniel Denvir, Johanna Fernández and Sarah Jaffe. To contact us with questions or comments, to learn more about Socialist Night School, or to get support for your chapter’s political education, please email us at politicaleducation@mdcdsa.org.
Upcoming Events
Big Tech & Capitalism Walking Tour
Saturday, October 7 @ 1:00pm
Meet at Farratgut Square, 912 17th Street NW
Sign up here
The Mount Pleasant Uprisings
Thursday, October 12 @ 6:00pm
Mount Pleasant Library (Meeting Room 13160)
3160 16th St NW, DC 20010
Sign up here
PAST SESSIONS
The Basics
DC, Maryland, and Virginia Issues
Come hear the socialist argument for why we need to decriminalize sex work! Join us for Socialist Night School: Sex Work Decriminalization. You will learn first-hand from sex workers and HIPS, a
local harm reduction services, advocacy, and community engagement group, through a Sex Work 101 presentation, a conversation debunking myths about sex work, and a Q&A session.
Come learn more about the War on Drugs, and the socialist arguments for why we need to decriminalize drugs and invest in a harm reduction approach in supporting the health and wellness of people who use drugs! Join in person or online on Wednesday, March 22 from 6:30-8:00 for a Socialist Night School entitled Seize the Means of Consumption: A Harm Reductionist Fight for Drug Decriminalization. You will learn first-hand from advocates and people with lived experience from HIPS and decrimpovertydc through a harm reduction 101 presentation, a conversation debunking myths about drug use and prohibition, and a Q/A session.
Internationalism
Policing and Prisons
National Issues
Socialist History
The Black Power movement, often associated with its iconic spokesmen, derived much of its energy from the work of people whose stories have never been told. Stayed On Freedom brings into focus two unheralded Black Power activists who dedicated their lives to the fight for freedom.
Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons fell in love while organizing tenants and workers in the South. Their commitment to each other and to social change took them on a decades-long journey that traversed first the country and then the world. In centering their lives, historian Dan Berger shows how Black Power united the local and the global across organizations and generations.
Based on hundreds of hours of interviews, Stayed On Freedom is a moving and intimate portrait of two people trying to make a life while working to make a better world. Join us for our session on the book Stayed On Freedom: The Long History of Black Power through One Family’s Journey by Dan Berger.
Dan Berger is Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies and Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Scholarship in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell. He is the co-director of the UWB Labor Studies Colloquium.