BY LAURA GARZA
NEW YORK - "As youth today, what are our options?," asked Tami Peterson, a leader of the Young Socialists speaking at a Militant Labor Forum here November 25. "We are faced with an abundance of crises around the world: from Yugoslavia to the nuclear testing by France's imperialist government, and from attacks on women's rights, immigrant rights, and workers rights to the continuing British occupation of Ireland.
"But we, the Young Socialists, offer and fight for an alternative," she said. Contrary to the image of Generation X pushed in the big-business media, "Youth have quite a bit of revolutionary potential in our hands. This fact has begun to manifest itself through struggles against the anti- immigrant Proposition 187 and for affirmative action," Peterson said pointing to the demonstrations of up to 70,000, which high school students and others in California participated in. The option for youth, she stated, is to "become part of the struggles to fight back."
Some 75 people attended the forum, which was held in conjunction with a National Committee meeting of the Young Socialists November 25-26. YS leaders active in coalitions and protest actions in defense of the Cuban revolution, to oppose the death penalty and police brutality, and to defend affirmative action and abortion rights were featured speakers at the event. Several have been involved in supporting striking workers in Detroit, Seattle, and elsewhere.
During the leadership meeting, members of the YS National Committee and organizers of local chapters of the revolutionary youth group from a dozen cities discussed the next steps in building the YS. Noting that two dozen people have joined the organization over the past two months, the YS leaders charted an ambitious course of reaching out to more young fighters across the United States and around the world.
In addition to involvement in important upcoming protest actions, building on efforts to win new readers to the Militant and distribute Pathfinder books, the National Committee voted to hold a national meeting of the YS over Easter weekend, April 6-7.
In opening the forum, Peterson took special note of a victory in a fight many in the room had taken part in, that of Mark Curtis to win parole from prison in Iowa. She read a message from Curtis to the young fighters. In issuing a call for a national gathering the socialist youth also issued an invitation to Curtis to attend the gathering.
The fact that the YS is becoming more established as a socialist youth organization, and gaining a reputation among a layer of co-fighters, was evident at the forum.
Active participants in class struggle
Veronica Poses from Miami explained how the YS has
joined in demanding that cops who shot and killed a 17-year-
old student be jailed, and in supporting immigrant
farmworkers fighting in Immokalee, Florida. The workers are
demanding a raise in their wages to $5.25 an hour, after
being cut to below minimum wage.
Poses also pointed to the great value in distributing revolutionary literature, saying the debates and discussions during the Miami Book Fair provided proof of the openings to discuss the Cuban revolution and other issues. YS members joined with members of the Socialist Workers Party in staffing a table featuring books published by Pathfinder, including those by leaders of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara.
Tom Alter, a student at the University of Indiana at Bloomington, said the Young Socialists has helped bring people to the picket lines in Detroit to support the striking newspaper workers, including students who have been involved in issues ranging from gay rights to supporting affordable housing.
"You learn the most from action, and this has been a strike full of action," he said, explaining they participated in mobilizations of workers to stop the delivery trucks from rolling with the papers produced by strikebreakers. They joined on October 8 with about 100 people from Women Involved in Labor Disputes to support the strike and have brought these experiences back to Bloomington.
"Recently we participated in a protest at a local Shell station against the killing of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other environmentalist and human rights activists in Nigeria," Alter said. "We want to get some of these activists up to Detroit so they can see what happened in Nigeria is what capitalists do all over the world, to varying degrees, depending on what they think they can get away with," he stated, noting the attacks by cops against strikers on the picket lines.
Participating from Montreal, Carlos Cornejo discussed how the Young Socialists there joined in mobilizations with tens of thousands to support the struggle against the national oppression of the Quebecois and for a Yes vote on the recent referendum. "The Quebecois receive lower average pay, have less chance at getting a job, and have a higher illiteracy rate," he said.
The YS also helped mobilize Quebecois and other youth to come to New York for the October 21 march against the U.S. embargo of Cuba and to work in Canada on a speaking tour by two youth leaders from Cuba. Building this demonstration, and those a week earlier in San Francisco and Chicago, had been a central activity of the YS across North America in September and October.
In the audience were a number of workers and youth who recently heard about the Young Socialists after buying a copy of the Militant newspaper or seeing YS members at a literature table on their campus. Students attended from the State University of New York-Stonybrook on Long Island, Medgar Evers College, and Brooklyn College. Several activists who were in town from the University of Minnesota also joined in the discussion, which ranged from questions on the threats by Canadian capitalists to move out of Quebec if the pro-autonomy referendum passed to comments on the fight to defend affirmative action from California to Minnesota.
Activities projected
The YS National Committee meeting was kicked off by a
report by Brock Satter, who presented a tasks and
perspectives report on behalf of the YS national steering
committee.
Satter pointed to several political developments around the world as examples of the crisis of the capitalist system, such as the war in Bosnia, and the inevitable deepening of the war with the deployment of U.S. and NATO troops; the unstemmed crisis in Mexico; and the continued attacks on social services and unions at home.
As this crisis unfolds, he said, the wealthy rulers are meeting resistance to their assaults. He cited experiences of YS members joining picket lines of Boeing strikers, meeting students protesting austerity measures in Mexico, participating in actions in defense of Black rights, and finding growing interest in the Cuban revolution.
The YS, Satter said, joins in actions that can strengthen the ability of the working class to fight in its own defense. Socialist youth also bring a perspective to other fighters of the kind of revolutionary struggle that will be necessary to overturn the dog-eat-dog system of capitalism and open the road to socialism.
Satter said one of the central accomplishments of the YS over the past several months was joining in the campaign to win new readers of the socialist press and to help distribute revolutionary books. Such propaganda work, he said, "is essential to getting the lessons of the working- class movement into the hands of those coming into political struggle today.
"While we continue to organize activities in defense of Cuba along with others," Satter said, "there is a range of other protest action we can deepen our involvement in." These include joining picket lines in Detroit; building the December 9 Mumia Abu-Jamal Activist Conference in Philadelphia; participating in events to be held to celebrate the life of longtime Socialist Workers Party leader Ed Shaw on December 3, 10, and 17 in Miami, New York, and San Francisco respectively; and becoming part of an action to defend abortion rights in Boston December 30.
A major effort will be made to bring youth and others from all these activities to the one of the four regional socialist educational conferences to be held December 30- January 1 in Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, and Seattle.
The discussion showed a range of activities YS members have participated in, and some common experiences they are gaining. Meg Novack from Seattle said that when strikers at Boeing rejected the newest contract offer, YS members there immediately went out to the picket lines. That experience has inspired chapter members to read Teamster Rebellion, which explains some of the lessons of working-class fighters from earlier generations.
High school students from Chicago and Salt Lake City described the interest other students had in hearing about trips they made to Cuba in August. Cecilia Ortega, from Cleveland, said her class on 20th century world issues voted to study Cuba for several weeks after discussions she raised on her recent visit. A Political Awareness Club is now being formed by radical-minded students on campus.
Jack Willey from New York said the organization would join with other groups participating in a task force of the National Network on Cuba to build a U.S. youth brigade to Cuba for August 1996.
Several YS leaders, including Vanessa Knapton from Los Angeles, explained how education is becoming an important part of the meetings of the YS membership in their cities. At each one of their bilingual chapter meetings, Knapton explained, members discuss an article from the current issue of the Militant.
Tom Alter reported that the KKK has announced plans for a January 13 rally in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Leaders from the traditional civil rights from groups like the NAACP agreed to a plea by city officials not to call a counterprotest. Alter asked for discussion on other experiences that could help in thinking out how to respond to this right-wing action. He also said weekly literature tables set up on campus are "the main organizing and building tool" of the YS.
Megan Arney, from the Twin Cities, Minnesota, agreed with the proposal for YS members to write for the Militant, using it to exchange experiences building their chapters and discussing political issues and events YS members are participating in.
Part of the meeting was a tour for several hours of the Pathfinder building, where the socialist arsenal of books and periodicals is published, and where the national offices of the Socialist Workers Party are located. Over the last year members of the Young Socialists from many cities have joined the volunteer workers in the print shop of the communist movement, learning how to run presses and produce high-quality revolutionary books and papers.
Revolutionary youth organization
YS steering committee member Diana Newberry presented a
report drawing the lessons of the last year's efforts to
forge a socialist youth organization.
One step the National Committee approved was for chapters to start voting on taking in members, as opposed to someone being considered a member if they sign up and pay a one dollar initiation fee, as is the practice now.
This new norm will help insure that each person wanting to become a member knows the rights and responsibilities of membership, and the political foundations of the YS's revolutionary perspectives. Where there is no chapter, members can be voted in by the steering committee. Newberry also presented proposals that anywhere three or more members of the YS function together a chapter be constituted, and a coordinator elected.
The organization voted that membership is open to anyone between the ages of 14 and 26. Currently, most members of the YS are in their teens or early twenties. The payment of dues was also discussed. It was decided to set the monthly contribution at $3, and to make it a requirement of membership. The dues, Newberry pointed out, "are not the primary way the YS will finance itself. They are a way of defining the membership, a commitment that each member makes as part of the decision to be in the organization."
Making the YS self-financing will be accomplished with national and local fund raising projects, and some chapters reported that members already make voluntary pledges to finance the activities of the organization. The meeting agreed to launch a $10,000 fund drive to begin January 1 and last through February.
A national steering committee of three was elected: Diana Newberry, Brock Satter, and Jack Willey.