BY SETH GALINSKY AND MEGAN ARNEY
OBERLIN, Ohio - "One day I was walking on Manhattan's lower
east side and I saw this store with the book The Truth About
Yugoslavia in the window display. I walked in and I agreed with
most of the points of view I saw on the titles they had for
sale, but at first I didn't get this whole thing about the
importance of the Cuban revolution."
That's how Shoghi Fret, a 20-year-old worker from Brooklyn, New York, described his first contact with the communist movement. It was there, at the Pathfinder Bookstore in Manhattan that he learned about the International Socialist Conference at Oberlin. He later decided to participate. "The conference's been great," Fret said. "I haven't gotten any sleep. I've just been talking politics. It's incredible to see all these people who are politically active and who keep an open mind." Fret joined the Young Socialists at the gathering.
During the conference seven young people asked to join the Young Socialists and three others the Socialist Workers Party. Most of them met members of the two organizations during a variety of political activities.
Alejandra Rincon, 22, a sociology student at the University of Houston was among those who decided to join the Young Socialists. "I met the SWP and the YS at a forum about the Brothers to the Rescue planes that were shot down over Cuba in February," she said in an interview. "And then I went with them to a meeting of the Houston committee in friendship with Cuba. Then I participated in a protest against the escalation of the U.S. economic war against Cuba by the Clinton administration - all in one weekend!"
When asked about the conference, Rinco'n said, "I'm impressed by the depth of the discussion here. I really liked the part in the talk by Jack Barnes about the kind of people necessary to build the party. It's people who want to make a revolution!"
Maria Isabel LeBlanc met the Communist League and Young Socialists in Montreal where she was active in the local committee in solidarity with Cuba and the fight for Quebec self- determination last fall. "When the struggle for Quebec independence broke out, even though I'm Quebecois, at first I thought Canadian unity was better. But I went through the protests and debates around the Quebec referendum and realized why the fight for independence is essential."
The article "Working Class Campaign against Imperialism and war" in Nouvelle Internationale, the French-language edition of the Marxist magazine New International, "had the biggest impact on me," Le Blanc said. "It gave me confidence that in reality the only way to do effective politics is working in industry with other communists."
Daily discussions with newcomers
Rinco'n, LeBlanc, and many of the dozens of students,
workers, and others attending their first conference took part
in daily meetings to discuss the content of the four feature
presentations at the gathering. Between 20 and 50 people
participated in each of these sessions organized by the
conference welcoming committee. Often, discussion begun at
classes and workshops spilled over into these meetings as well.
Jared Friedman, 14, a high school student from Boston, spoke in the discussion during the class on "Fascism: What it is and how to fight it." He said he had traveled to a campaign appearance by ultrarightist presidential hopeful Patrick Buchanan in Lexington, Massachusetts, in March. "I was there trying to drown out Buchanan," he said, along with 200 others - overwhelmingly young. "I talked to this one guy who was there backing Buchanan. He was blaming immigrants. He said Buchanan was good because he was for kicking out the immigrants." Friedman said he tried to win over this person by arguing that immigrants are looking for work like everyone else and should have the same rights.
What attitude should socialists take toward supporters of rightist groups? That became a topic of discussion during the first welcoming session. "Our starting point is that communists have no common ground with right-wingers in the hatred of bankers, the government, gun control laws, wiretapping, or repressive legislation," said SWP National Committee member Naomi Craine. "The radical right spouts ideological harangues about what it's against. We are not primarily against capitalists and their government but for the fight for a workers and farmers government that will open the road to state power for the workers and their self-transformation in the process - just like the toilers in Russia and Cuba did. Those who go out to protest Buchanan, like the youth in Lexington, are among the best candidates to be attracted to our proletarian politics. Those are the people we orient to."
Much of the discussion focused on the Cuban revolution. Jeffrey Totten, a 35-year-old textile worker from North Carolina, asked in one of the meetings, "Why is Cuba so important? ... I know the U.S. has escalated the economic blockade, but why so much emphasis on Cuba?"
Clint Ivie, a 24-year-old auto worker from Atlanta, who was also attending his first socialist conference, responded, "Cuba shows that workers can take power. That socialism works." Ivie had recently joined the YS after meeting socialist workers on the job.
Working-class activity and education
A number of political activists who are not members of the
socialist movement were at the conference for their first time.
Like many other participants, they renewed or deepened their
commitment to be involved in social struggles.
Paul Burns, 34, a government worker from Washington, D.C., first heard about the socialist conference at the Gay Pride march in New York the weekend before the gathering at Oberlin. There he met YS members who were carrying a banner and selling pamphlets. While there he also found out about the trip to Cuba with the U.S.-Cuba Youth Exchange from activists in the local committee. Burns then called the Pathfinder bookstore in Washington, D.C., and was invited to a July 4 barbecue, where he met three people from Iceland who were on their way to Oberlin. "I thought that sounds really cool and I decided to go," he said.
Ramon Munoz, 19, was also attending his first socialist conference. "I'm a Mechista [a member of the Chicano rights group MEChA]," he said. "To know your identity is to know who you are."
Mun~oz first heard about the upcoming Cuba youth exchange from an article in Voz Fronteriza, a Chicano paper published in California. "I met the Young Socialists at a Youth Exchange meeting in San Diego," he said. "That's how I got interested in coming to Oberlin." Munoz began preparing for the trip to Cuba by reading books by Ernesto Che Guevara and Fidel Castro and articles in the Militant. "I can't believe I never read a speech by Fidel Castro before. I thought Cuba was a different trip that had nothing to do with the Chicano struggle. Now it's the first thing I read."
Munoz has recently participated in La Marcha, a demonstration through California to defend affirmative action and immigrant rights. As soon as he gets back from Cuba he's planning to rejoin the march that will culminate with protests around these social issues in San Diego during the Republican Party convention.
About two dozen other participants at the conference were also getting ready for the trip to Cuba. "The biggest reason for coming was because I'm going to Cuba and I wanted to learn more about the revolution and meet others who are going," said Calen Frolkis, a 17-year-old student from Cleveland. "Now I have a better idea what the Cuban revolution means."
Frolkis, like many others at the conference, said her interest was piqued to study more the lessons of the working- class movement. "Now I want to read The Long View of History, The History of the Russian Revolution and on, and on," she said. Frolkis also said she plans to join others in report-back meetings to share her experiences from the trip and help broaden opposition to Washington's economic war on the Cuban people.
Several people who came to the conference for the first time also decided to get more involved in picket lines and other working-class struggles. A group of youth from Illinois and Wisconsin area are now on their way to St. Louis, Missouri, to join the picket lines of machinists on strike against McDonnell Douglas. "It's a pretty big strike," said Rajeev Prasad, a student in Milwaukee who is in Chicago for the summer. "So I wanted to see it, talk to the workers, get their perspective." Prasad joined the newly formed YS chapter in Chicago days after the conference.