Vote on upcoming readings below, and join our group chat!

Welcome to

The Red Thread!

Who Are We?

The Red Thread is an unchartered book club at Oberlin College, seeking to provide a space for meaningful exploration of leftist political ideas, as mediated by study of the great (and, occasionally, not-so-great) works of leftist literature.

It is not a space for organizers to proselytize or indoctrinate, according the strictly-defined narrative of any particular 'denomination' of leftism, but rather a space to engage in unconstrained and respectful dialogue across boundaries, with the aim of understanding the true extent of our collective common ground.

If you're interested in learning about revolutionary, emancipatory politics, focused on the liberation of the working class and the preservation of earth's vital ecology – or even if you're just disillusioned with contemporary American politics – then The Red Thread might be a home for you. From Libertarian Socialists to Marxist-Leninists (or even curious nonradicals), you are welcome!

How Does It Work?

We meet on a biweekly basis – i.e., once every two weeks. We have yet to establish a recurring time for the spring semester. Confirmation of meeting time for a given week can be found on the calendar below. If you intend to be a regular member, please enter you availability information into the When2meet and sign up for our email list in the forms below, as well as joining the Signal group chat for easy communication!

Meetings are expected to be an hour(ish) long, but may well run over. Don't worry – we're an informal club, not a class – you can come and go as you please. While it's obviously preferable if everyone actually reads the text at hand, if time doesn't permit you to finish it, it isn't a big deal! Texts will be selected in the voting section of this website in the days following a meeting, and the text chosen for the upcoming meeting will be announced via email and placed in the calendar.

Disagreement is not only inevitable, it is desirable – but debate (in the annoying, rivalrous sense of the word) is not. We seek to understand the content of a given text, digging out its implications, subtext, and historical embedment, and to contemplate its applicability in our contemporary situation. We are not a direct action organization and, while such are sorely needed in this time of waxing fascism, Oberlin is not a setting in which even the staunchest community efforts would have much tangible societal impact (especially given the apathy of the bureaucratic college machine). As per this, we aim only to be a source of knowledge acquisition and a space to develop political consciousness, the fruits of which can be taken forward into our post-Oberlin lives. If you seek more direct organization please consider getting involved with Oberlin Students for a Free Palestine (SFP) or Oberlin's Chapter of the Youth Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA).

If you wish to get involved with us, it's as simple as showing up at the next scheduled time and place – 'place' almost certainly meaning Russian House (Allencroft)! There is no need to reach out first, though preparation by reading the 'assigned' material is obviously appreciated.

If you would like additional information, or to converse with the club's galvanizers, there is contact info available at the bottom of this page.

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Meeting & Reading Calendar

Next Text Selection

You can weigh in on our next reading here. Please upvote your favorite suggestions, and only downvote suggestions if you think they will actually be unproductive or harmful for our conversations (not merely because they aren't your preferred topic, etc.). Don't hesitate to submit your own recommendations! (You can update your 'screen name' by pressing on the "Responding as " at the top, though this is only visible to us under the hood, so to speak.)