Socialism 2026 conference declares GLP-1s stem from ‘fat genocide,’ demands prison ‘abolition,’ plans massive May Day 2028 action

Angela Davis, who is a Marxist political activist, thought leader, and longtime member of the Communist Party, spoke about the need for a stronger push for the prison "abolition" movement. She said that it is not "okay" to say that someone should be sent to prison.

She argued that the "abolition movement" has made "so little progress" thanks to "carceral ideologies," or rather, prison systems. She argued that activists need to keep pushing and use victories in the prison abolition movement as a "launching pad" to further abolish prisons.

Socialism 2026 speaker Da’Shaun L. Harrison also said that the deployment of GLP-1 drugs is "fascistic" because the world is "fixated on genociding fat people.”

"This is a structural critique that asks what happens when the conditions produced by capitalism, by public health, by the state apparatus, and by anti-black desire align around a single bodily ideal that leaves little to no room for divergence and punishes any body that does," he said. "Whereas earlier diet drugs were often associated with vanity or addiction, GLP-1s are positioned as responsible medicine, promising relief rather than restraint."

Harrison followed up and said that "policing of black fat flesh anchors entire systems of governance."

“Without a population to discipline, there would be no BMI, no obesity epidemic, and no medical or scientific institutions organized around managing fatness," he claimed.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton, who has dubbed herself a " Health Communist," joined the panel with Harrison, and said the Trump administration's push for MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) is part of "health fascism."

"The idea is that health, fitness, productivity, and bodily normalcy are measures of moral worth and political belonging," Adler-Bolton said. "Things like fatness, illness, disability, racialized difference, perceived dependency, or perceived degeneracy are interpreted as evidence of social rot in need of excising. The Make America Healthy Again project makes this quite explicit."

She then claimed that the MAHA movement "draws on this much older, eugenic, anti-black, anti-fat, ableist, racist, productivist traditions that have long organized the abandonment of certain populations and the flourishing of others."

Human Events Daily host Jack Posobiec reacted the comments about GLP-1s, saying, "The left believes that everyone is an identity."

"For you to want to 'make people healthier again,' you're applying an objective standard to their Marxist relative standard, so of course they would say that's a genocide," he added, saying that the left calls "pretty much everything a genocide these days" in relation to transgender ideology and other identitarian characteristics.

The conference lasted four days from September 4 to the 7. Tickets to the event at the "standard rate" were $155 a pop, with the "solidarity rate" being $250.

The activists also discussed their plans for "May Day" 2028, where DSA official Griffon Mahon said that the socialist organization wants to build up their fundraising capabilities in preparation for May Day 2028.

He said that DSA wants to get more "internally organized" to bring more unions and strikers out to May Day 2028. Another socialist activist at the event—Sean Fulkerson of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America—said that May Day 2028 should be a "structure test" to see how many people will take to the streets and skip out on work in order to protest for more socialist policies.

Piker, who was one of the bigger-name speakers at the event, said that he sees activism against data centers as well as Flock cameras as issues that the left can capitalize on. This comes as socialism has been rising in favorability with many younger people, and only 8 Democrats in Congress last week voted against a resolution that condemned socialism.