BY NAOMI CRAINE AND TOM ALTER

MINNEAPOLIS - The Young Socialists came out of their first national convention geared up to join protests demanding equal rights for immigrants, strike picket lines, and antiracist and women's rights actions. In the process YS members will use the momentum from their convention to campaign for socialism and build the communist movement.

Delegates to the convention, held here in Minnesota April 6-7, decided to put winning support for the Socialist Workers candidates James Harris for U.S. president and Laura Garza for vice president at the center of their work. They discussed, amended, and adopted a set of political principles, as well as a plan of action for the coming months. The YS campaigns include work in defense of the Cuban revolution and participation in a broad range of other struggles.

YS members didn't wait for their convention to end to begin carrying these out. Several missed the first day of the gathering in order to participate in protests in Los Angeles and New York against the April 1 police beating of two Mexican workers in California.

A statement of principles drafted six weeks earlier by a leadership conference of the YS National Committee and representatives of YS chapters across the country provided the framework for the political discussion on the first day of the convention. These principles were discussed and voted on in Young Socialists chapters, along with proposals on the group's campaigns and rules of organization and discipline.

Thirty-three delegates voted in convention proceedings from chapters of three or more YS members. Several consultative delegates were also chosen by Young Socialists in cities where there are two members, and from YS groups in Australia, Canada, France, and the United Kingdom. Between delegates and observers, 140 people registered for the convention, from more than 50 different cities. The overwhelming majority were between 14 and 26 years old, the age range for YS membership.

Delegates discussed the political principles under two reports, presented by Jack Willey, a garment worker and member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees in New York, and Diana Newberry, an airline worker who moved to the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul) before the convention to work full time on organizing the event.

Willey described the world today as one where capitalism is increasingly unstable. As competition between rival capitalists in different countries sharpens, the possibilities that trade conflicts may lead to military confrontations grow. At the same time there is more political polarization, which is reflected in the rise of figures like ultrarightist politician Patrick Buchanan.

"Buchanan taps into the instability and attacks the `establishment' " Willey said. "He puts forward a program based on defending the `nation.' " The only answer for working people to the Buchanans is building an organization with an internationalist working-class program and orientation that can lead workers and farmers to take state power, the YS leader said.

The simultaneous resistance to the rulers' attempts to put the burden of the crisis on the backs of working people shows the openings to win workers and young people to build such an effective movement. Willey pointed to strikes against austerity drives in France and Canada, the continued national struggles by the Irish, Quebecois, and Palestinians, and the immediate outcry against the Los Angeles beatings.

"Defense of the Cuban revolution is part of what the Young Socialists was born out of," said Newberry. Her report on Cuba expanded on one of the draft political principles: "The YS defends Cuba's socialist revolution and sees it as a living example of the way forward for all of humanity, as the Bolshevik-led October 1917 Russian revolution was earlier in this century. Our goal is to emulate the Cuban revolution in the U.S. and internationally."

"We're missing something here at this meeting," Newberry said, "because the U.S. government refused to allow Maika Guerrero and Iroel Sánchez into the country." Guerrero and Sánchez are Cuban youth leaders who were going to be on a speaking tour in the United States in April. They would have been in Minneapolis during the YS convention. Representatives of the Faculty-Student Cuban Youth Lectures Committee from Boston set up a table at the convention to get out information on the fight being organized to demand the reversal of the decision to deny them visas. The YS set as an immediate priority working with others to get protest messages to the U.S. State Department.

This attack on the democratic right to have a free exchange of ideas is part of Washington's stepped-up aggression against Cuba, Newberry stated. It goes hand-in- hand with tightening the decades-long policy of economic war against the Cuban people and the anti-Cuba propaganda barrage that followed the downing of two planes, originating from Florida, that invaded Cuba's airspace February 24.

"The Young Socialists and Socialist Workers Party are among those who've taken the lead in protesting the latest U.S. war moves against Cuba," the YS leader noted.

Newberry pointed to the upcoming congress of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC) as a sign of how "workers in Cuba are discussing defense of the gains of their revolution concretely. They are saying, `We are not introducing capitalism in Cuba. We're preparing to fight against everything that comes out of capitalism,' " she said.

Three days after the convention, Newberry and Róger Calero left for a speaking tour in Cuba, at the invitation of the Union of Young Communists (UJC). In addition to speaking with workers and young people in several provinces about what communist youth in the United States do, they will be attending the congress of the Cuban trade union federation. YS leader Brian Taylor, an airline worker in Washington, D.C., will also be traveling to Cuba for the congress.

Many YS members had been reading and studying the theses that Cuban trade unionists discussed at thousands of factory assemblies between January and March. Meg Novak from Peoria, Illinois, urged chapters to study the document collectively. "It lays out a plan for the working class for fighting imperialism," she said.

Discussion reflected real experiences
The character of the discussion over the principles of the Young Socialists was marked by the real experiences members of the YS had gone through since its founding in August 1994.

Members of the YS shared their accounts from recent demonstrations against the fascist-minded presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan. Many members of the YS have taken part in demonstrations, along with other fighting youth, from Lexington, Massachusetts, to Toledo, Ohio, and Chicago opposing the racist and sexist ideas of Buchanan.

Gaetan Whiston from the Twin Cities chapter stated that YS members learned from the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Chicago, in which Buchanan marched, that "Where Buchanan will be, fascists will be." He was referring to a Pathfinder literature table staffed by members of the YS and SWP at the parade that was confronted by right-wing youth. During the encounter those staffing the table refused to back down or be forced into overreacting to right-wing provocations. "This shows why we need to organize ourselves in a disciplined way," he said.

"The YS looks to the working class," states the group's principles, as the class capable of leading the fight for a revolutionary transformation of society. This passage was much discussed. Delegates pointed to the need for the YS to base itself and its activities in the working class.

Several delegates noted that Buchanan supporters take his message to factory gates, and that he marched in parades with unions to try and portray himself as on the side of workers, while he promotes a program aimed at dividing the working class.

The YS's commitment to defending working class unity in action was clearly shown in the YS Steering Committee's decision to send three convention delegates - Verónica Poses, Ved Dookhum, and John Evenhuis - to the 6,000-strong demonstration in Los Angeles to protest the brutal assault on Mexican workers by police on April 1.

The international character of the Young Socialists came across in the meeting. YS members from Canada had been involved in the fight for Quebec independence and in supporting the recent public workers strike in Ontario. Two new members of the YS came from France, where they were involved in the strikes and student protests against the Juppé government's austerity programs last December.

In addition to the international delegates, many Young Socialists from the United States had been to other countries recently. Cecilia Ortega, a high school student from Cleveland, described a sales team at the Mexico City book fair. "Besides talking to thousands of people at the fair, we set up tables at the university and outside a Chrysler auto plant," she said. "We got an amazing response to the literature, especially Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War" by Ernesto Che Guevara. It's important for YS members to "do politics internationally and come back and talk about it," she said.

YS members also traveled from the United States to participate in socialist conferences in Britain and in Iceland, and three YS members from the U.S. and Canada attended the Havana book fair in February. YS leaders also participated in a February congress of the Movement of Communist Youth of France.

In keeping with these experiences, one of the political principles adopted by the group states, "The Young Socialists recognizes the need to overthrow capitalism and fight for socialism. Since this is an international struggle, we build our organization internationally."

Greetings from the UJC in Cuba and the African National Congress Youth League in South Africa were read to the gathering.

Discussion on China, Taiwan
One of the political questions delegates grappled with was the tensions between Beijing and the government in Taiwan. A couple delegates questioned whether socialists should support the stance of the Chinese government insisting on the reunification of Taiwan with mainland China. "Is it better for workers in Taiwan to go back under a Stalinist regime than to fight for independence?" asked one.

Many YS members were discussing this, and a number of delegates took the floor. "The imperialists use the false propaganda that there are two Chinas to justify attacks on the workers state in China," said Megan Arney from the Twin Cities. "We should stand for a united China."

"Think about what capitalism lost with the revolutions in Russia, China, and elsewhere," said José Aravena from Boston. "Look at the map - these are huge territories ripped out of the hands of capital." That's why Washington sent warships to back up Taiwan and threaten the Chinese workers state, he said. The delegates voted to include among their campaigns building opposition to the U.S. war preparations against Cuba and China, as well as Yugoslavia.

After hearing the Socialist Workers candidates James Harris and Laura Garza speak to a public meeting (see accompanying article), the YS voted to endorse the ticket and launch Young Socialists for Harris and Garza as a way to involve new people in campaigning activity. They took on the goal of signing up 700 endorsers for the socialist ticket by early July, and 1,500 by the November election.

"We can use this campaign to build the socialist movement," said Brock Satter, a member of the International Association of Machinists in New York, explaining the proposal in a report on Young Socialists tasks the second day of the convention. The purpose of Young Socialists for Harris and Garza will be to organize youth who want to actively support the campaign, whether they are ready to join the YS or not. Delegates also adopted a goal of recruiting 50 new members to the Young Socialists by July 9, and doubling the size of the organization by the end of the election campaign in November.

Satter reviewed the evolution of the Young Socialists, which was initiated by groupings of revolutionary-minded youth in the Twin Cities and New York joining forces to launch the Socialist Youth Organizing Committee in early 1994. At a conference in August that year, members of the organizing committee from across the United States adopted the name Young Socialists and set out to build a nationwide organization. Young socialists from several other countries participated in that meeting, and decided to build sister organizations.

The April 6-7 gathering reflected genuine progress on these fronts. It was the first delegated convention of the group.

One of the campaigns adopted by the convention for the next several months is to join in building the U.S.-Cuba Youth Exchange delegation, which will travel to the Caribbean island in late July.

"We should encourage local Cuba coalitions to take goals for signing up youth for the exchange," Satter said, "and build as broad participation as possible. It's not at all too soon to start fund-raising and building the brigade." In the next few weeks, publicizing the Youth Exchange, which is a project of the National Network on Cuba, can be combined with protesting the denial of visas to Guerrero and Sánchez, and with trying to get a few more workers signed up to attend the CTC congress in Cuba, the YS leader said.

Satter also proposed the YS join with socialist workers in efforts to sell more Pathfinder books. "Every book we sell inflicts another blow against the capitalist system," he said.

Delegates also resolved to continue active participation in the fight for gay and lesbian rights along with the struggle for women's emancipation.

The final task of the delegates was electing a National Committee to serve as the highest decision-making body of the organization between conventions. They elected a committee of 12 regular members, with four alternates who will have consultative vote and be prepared to fill any vacancy among the regulars.

Following the convention, the new National Committee met and decided to keep the center of the organization in the Twin Cities for a period. The national center had been based in New York until shortly before the gathering.

Workshops highlight campaigns
Workshops held as part of the events surrounding the convention highlighted some of the YS activities. These included "Campaigning for a socialist alternative," "Building the Cuba Youth Exchange, winning visas for Cuban youth Maika Guerrero and Iroel Sánchez," "Writing articles and taking pictures for the Militant," and "Fighting to free Mark Curtis."

John Studer and Adam Gray from the Mark Curtis Defense Committee in Chicago set up a table at the event. They signed up seven endorsers for the case, collected $60 in contributions, and organized a showing of the video The Frame-up of Mark Curtis that 35 people attended during a lunch break. The framed-up unionist sent a message of greetings, which was read to the convention.

YS members also presented several classes: "Can a Rebel Army be built in the U.S.? - Studying Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58," "Forging a combat party through working-class struggle - Teamster rebellion 1934," and "The Quebecois freedom struggle."

A literature table from the local Pathfinder bookstore did a booming business, selling over $600 worth of books and pamphlets during the weekend.

The YS convention drew some media attention as well. The daily Minneapolis Star Tribune ran an article about the group a couple days before the convention. The Minnesota Daily, published at the University of Minnesota, covered the convention on its front page April 8. A local TV station covered the opening of the gathering, and YS leaders were interviewed on radio.  
 
 
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