August 2024
Dear Socialism Conference attendee,
Thank you for taking time away from work, organizing, and other responsibilities to join us for a weekend of socialist politics, education, and community! We hope that you’ll have an inspiring, instructive, and energizing four days at Socialism 2024!
In 2022 and 2023, we were so grateful that Socialism Conference attendees kept each other safe by wearing masks indoors throughout the conference weekend, helping to ensure that the conference was accessible to immunocompromised and otherwise especially vulnerable comrades and protecting attendees from Covid transmission.
This would not have been possible without a mask requirement, so this year we are once again requiring that conference attendees wear N95 or KN95 masks indoors, with the sole exception of session speakers, who may remove their masks only while they are delivering presentations from the front of the room. We strongly encourage session speakers to keep their masks on even while presenting, however.
We know that, in a society in which we have each been largely left to make our own individual decisions about how to navigate this pandemic and at a time when many of us are rarely, if ever, required to wear masks, our policy may cause surprise or even provoke questions from some attendees.
Nonetheless, Covid remains rampant and conference attendees travel to Chicago from all over the world. Our priorities remain the same as they were last year and the year before: we aim to make the Socialism Conference accessible to anyone looking to share organizing lessons, learn from radical history, and build community, while ensuring—to the maximum extent possible—that no one leaves the conference having contracted Covid and suffering the resulting health and economic consequences (including missed work and the potential cost of treatment).
Even and especially if you’re not someone who typically opts to wear a mask, we thank you for respecting our policy and helping us to enact a compassionate and collective approach to holding a large-scale gathering during an ongoing health crisis.
Free N95 masks and rapid Covid tests will be available at the registration desk throughout the conference weekend. If any conference attendee experiences any possible Covid symptoms during the weekend, we ask that you please isolate yourself and reach out to conference organizers at [email protected] about securing a test.
For any session speakers who are planning to un-mask during their presentations, we ask that you make sure to pick up a free rapid test from the registration desk and test yourself 4–6 hours before your session.
Additionally, please note: there will be a community safety team on duty for the duration of the conference, identifiable by special badges. We ask that all conference-goers keep an eye out for each other, and that folks keep in mind that the Socialism Conference is a relatively public space, so both speakers and attendees should consider anything they say from the front or from the floor during sessions to be public speech.
Thanks for helping us to keep one another safe at Socialism 2024!