BY BROCK SATTER AND JOYA LONSDALE
OBERLIN, Ohio - Young Socialists and interested youth
from the United States, Britain, Canada, Iceland, and
Australia met here during the 38th Constitutional
Convention of the Socialist Workers Party to discuss what
the Young Socialists are doing around the world to build the Cuba
Lives international youth festival in August.
Diana Newberry gave a report to the meeting on behalf of the Young Socialists National Committee. Building the largest delegation possible to Cuba Lives is the central task of the Young Socialists, Newberry explained. She initiated a discussion on how to get as many YS members and other youth as possible to this event. Those attending the meeting enthusiastically agreed with this perspective.
The festival will be a launching pad to involve a new generation internationally in defending the Cuban revolution. Many of the guests at the SWP convention who were not yet members of the YS are planning to go to the festival.
Mara Geller, 24, came to the convention with YS members from New York and is going to make the trip. "As a person from the United States, I think it's especially important for us to go to Cuba to show that there are people who are against the blockade, which is putting economic stress on the lives of the people there," she said.
Joshua Carroll, a 23-year-old student from San Francisco, was also attending his first convention. By the end, he decided to join the Young Socialists and go to the youth festival. Carroll said the discussions at the convention helped him to decide to make the trip.
Many other young fighters who will be in Cuba are also looking for a way forward and a solution to the crisis of capitalism. The Young Socialists, along with communists in Cuba and from around the world, will work together to win many of this new generation to socialism. The festival is an opportunity for revolutionary-minded youth around the world to make contact with each other and plan common actions.
Young Socialists will bring the Militant, Perspectiva Mundial, New International in various languages, and Pathfinder books with them. They will also bring their experiences as participants in labor struggles, fights against police brutality and the death penalty, immigrant rights demonstrations, abortion clinic defense lines, and many other struggles to share with workers and youth in Cuba and from other countries.
Young Socialists have made it a point to politically prepare themselves and others who are going to the festival by reading the article "Defending Cuba, Defending Cuba's Socialist Revolution" by Mary-Alice Waters in New International no. 10; a series of articles printed in the Militant by reporting teams that visited workers assemblies, factories, agricultural markets, and agricultural cooperatives earlier this year; and other materials. Young Socialists in Manhattan reported they are sponsoring a class on the Militant series. The San Francisco chapter has reprinted the articles and is selling them on literature tables and at political events.
In addition to getting press credentials to report on the trip, Young Socialists discussed how they are setting up speaking engagements at college campuses, high schools, churches, and in their workplaces to tell of the experiences they had in Cuba. These meetings will be an opportunity to tell the truth about the Cuban revolution and help build the upcoming October demonstrations against U.S. policy towards Cuba and any other solidarity actions coming out of the festival.