The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.23           June 9, 1997 
 
 
Build SWP Convention  
Over the next ten days, socialist workers who are members of industrial unions and the Young Socialists are focusing their energies on getting fellow unionists, working farmers, and rebel-minded youth to attend the 39th convention of the Socialist Workers Party (see ad below). We urge all interested readers of the Militant to join the effort. Anyone who would like to attend can contact party supporters at the locations listed on page 8.

Convention delegates will discuss the politically explosive tendencies in a world marked by economic depression - a world where Washington increasingly uses military power to strengthen its competitive position against its imperialist rivals and attempts to destroy the remaining working-class conquests made possible by the Russian revolution of October 1917.

Delegates will discuss the resistance to this course by working people around the world, including the vanguard example of the socialist revolution in Cuba and the current social rebellion that has erupted in Argentina.

Reports and discussion will take up the increased opportunities today to get communist ideas to a broader audience of fighting workers and youth, and to recruit many of them to the communist movement. Delegates will draw a balance of the experiences of communist workers in strengthening their activity in the unions and in attracting politically active youth toward the revolutionary workers movement.

The big majority of delegates and guests will be workers and youth actively involved in building solidarity for the Wheeling-Pitt steelworkers' strike, battles of farmworkers, and other labor struggles; in the fight for Chicano liberation, Black freedom, and women's rights; in protests against the Klan and other rightist currents; and in actions supporting a democratic secular Palestine, Irish freedom, Quebecois independence, and other battles for national liberation.

A number of conference activities will surround the sessions for the delegates. These will include presentations by Perspectiva Mundial editor Martín Koppel, who would have just returned from a reporting trip to Argentina, and by Mary-Alice Waters, a longtime SWP leader, who recently traveled to Cuba. The conference is cosponsored by the Young Socialists and many of those who attend will be YS members from across the United States and other countries.

Participants will celebrate the publication of several new political weapons for the communist movement that will be available for sale at the conference. These include the Spanish-language edition of The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions by SWP national secretary Jack Barnes; and Pombo: A Man of Che's `guerrilla' by Harry Villegas, brigadier general of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces (see ad on page 6).

The conference will include classes, workshops, musical performances, dances, sports events, film showings and other social activities.

Making a special effort to bring to the convention as many fighting workers and youth as possible will enrich the political discussion and informal exchange of experiences and maximize recruitment to the communist movement.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home