The Other Political Convention in Chicago

Days after delegates to the Democratic National Convention depart Chicago in late August, the city will play host to a second, considerably less well-known political gathering called Socialism 2024. Aside from serving as an interesting window into the world of American left-wing radicalism, Socialism 2024 also highlights the close financial ties between that radicalism and some of the largest and most important left-of-center nonprofit funding networks in the country.

An Annual Gathering

Socialism 2024 is this year’s iteration of an annual left-wing gathering held in Chicago. Its purpose is to convene “thousands of socialists and radical activists from around the country to take part in discussions about social movements, abolition, Marxism, decolonization, working-class history, and the debates and strategies for organizing today.” The goal is to bring together “a wide range of radical politics and provide the opportunity for those with differing viewpoints to learn from each other and contend in a healthy and comradely space.”

Over the four-day conference, attendees can choose from more than 100 different sessions distributed across 20 different topical categories. Anticipated sessions (which as of mid-July are still subject to finalization) reflect the full “Everything Leftism” spectrum. Some examples include:

• How to Abolish Prisons: Lessons from the Movement Against Imprisonment
• We Lie to Cops: Lessons from Incarcerated Radicals
• Mastering the Universe: Who is the Ruling Class (and How Do We Take Their Money)?
• Lenin and the Politics of Rehearsal
• 175 Years Since the Communist Manifesto: Why Marxism (Still) Matters
• What is Gay Communism?
• Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis
• Politicians Won’t Save Us: Fighting for Abortion Rights Beyond the Ballot Box
• Abolishing the Child Welfare (aka Family Policing) System

An entire section of the agenda is devoted to Palestine, illustrating the remarkable importance of the issue to the American radical Left. All told, at least seven of the 20 agenda topics feature at least one session devoted to promoting the Palestinian cause and/or criticizing Israel. Examples include “Palestinian Feminism: A Transformative, Decolonial Praxis” and “Isolating Israel: Organizing for the Academic and Cultural Boycott.”

Big Money for Socialism

Socialism 2024 is being hosted by Haymarket Books, a self-described “radical” Chicago book publisher. Haymarket is a project of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit called the Center for Economic Research and Social Change, which also sponsors a handful of other groups such as the virulently anti-Israel and pro-Hamas media outlet Mondoweiss. In its most recent tax filings, the Center for Economic Research and Social Change reported total revenue of just over $6.1 million. In 2022, it received $1.6 million from the Marguerite Casey Foundation (all of which was specifically earmarked for Haymarket Books) and $1.5 million from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (designated as “general” support).

As of mid-July, the Socialism 2024 website listed 82 endorsing organizations, with more being added regularly. Approximately one-third of these appear to be independent nonprofits with their own tax-exempt status from the IRS. Combined, these standalone nonprofits had 2022 revenues of about $73.8 million, though the Highlander Research and Education Center alone accounted for $34.5 million of this total. That year, Highlander received seven-figure grants from the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program ($2,137,500), the Marguerite Casey Foundation ($1,501,200), the W.K. Kellogg Foundation ($1,385,666), the Public Welfare Foundation ($1,366,775), the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund ($1,200,000), the Silicon Valley Community Foundation ($1,200,000), and the Foundation to Promote Open Society ($1,050,000).

Other notable independent nonprofit endorsers of Socialism 2024 include:

• Civil Rights Corps (2022 revenues: $7,787,276),
• Democratic Socialists of America (2022 revenues: $5,713,635),
• The New Press (2022 revenues: $5,201,397),
• Jewish Voice for Peace (2022 revenues: $3,959,130),
• Detention Watch Network (2022 revenues: $2,592,686),
• Real News Network (2022 revenues: $2,526,986), and
• In These Times (2022 revenues: $2,424,946).

Approximately another third of endorsers are groups that operate as projects of nonprofits that have their own tax-exempt status, often under a fiscal sponsorship arrangement. Most notably, this includes at least five different projects sponsored by the 501(c)(3) Tides Center or the affiliated 501(c)(4) Tides Advocacy—two constituent members of the network of related fiscal sponsorship, grantmaking, and advocacy entities that exist under the “Tides” umbrella, and which collectively brought in nearly $1 billion in 2022. At least one of these Tides projects—Dream Defenders—has received significant 501(c)(3)-side funding from the Marguerite Casey Foundation in recent years.

Another endorsing organization, the explicitly communist-inspired publication Hammer & Hope, is fiscally sponsored by the New Venture Fund, which with 2022 total revenues of over $755 million is the largest of a family of massive left-of-center activist nonprofits managed by Arabella Advisors. Hammer & Hope has itself received significant funding from both the Marguerite Casey Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

Other groups that have endorsed Socialism 2024 and that are fiscally sponsored by major national nonprofits include:

• Decarcerate KC, which is a project of Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (2022 revenues: $61,735,417);
• The Debt Collective, a project of the Sustainable Markets Foundation (2022 revenues: $42,011,341); and
• The Surveillance Resistance Lab, a project of the Fund for the City of New York (2022 revenues: $114,215,839).

Finally, at least three programs housed at universities have also endorsed Socialism 2024. One is UpEND, which is housed at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work and has received funding from the Surdna Foundation’s Andrus Family Fund, the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, and other grantmakers. Another is the Law and Political Economy Project at Yale Law School, which is funded by both the Hewlett Foundation and the Ford Foundation. There is also the Social Justice Initiative at the University of Illinois Chicago, which received $1.5 million from the Marguerite Casey Foundation in 2022.

Radicalism and Philanthropy

A few thoughts about all of this:

First, the Marguerite Casey Foundation’s repeated appearance as a major funder of Socialism 2024’s nonprofit endorsers further cements its status as Big Philanthropy’s most radical foundation. It is the archetypical example of a 501(c)(3) private foundation being used to push far-left political ideologies.

More broadly, it is worth remarking on how few degrees of separation are required to get from discussions of prison abolition and revolutionary communism to some of the biggest and most important nonprofit—indeed, charitable—funding networks and institutions in the United States. The radical Left may exist on the fringes of American society, but it is considerably more mainstream within certain powerful circles of American philanthropy.

This leads to a final point, which is that the very same tax-exempt grantmakers that generously fund the endorsers of Socialism 2024 are themselves the product of capitalistic business success. Philanthropy is just one of many positive externalities produced by this success, and private foundations perpetuate themselves largely through returns from sophisticated (and thoroughly capitalist) investment strategies—for which they pay handsomely. That so many large and influential philanthropies finance groups that would tear this entire socioeconomic system apart is one of the sector’s greatest ironies.