BY NAOMI CRAINE
Recruitment to the communist movement was one of the aims of the four regional socialist educational conferences held over the New Year's weekend. The events were a success in this regard. About 15 people asked to join the Socialist Workers Party in the United States, the Communist League in Canada, or the Young Socialists.
The decision of the communist organizations to carry out a working-class campaign in opposition to imperialism's war drive against Yugoslavia had a big impact on many of the people who decided to join.
Ryan Lewis explained that what impressed him about the Young Socialists and members of the Socialist Workers Party at the Detroit conference was the "tough questions" they asked in order to hammer out an effective response to the imperialist war drive. Lewis, a 20-year-old student and bus driver at Kent State University in Ohio, decided to join the Young Socialists.
"I see more clearly now why the U.S. military is moving into Yugoslavia," said Lionel Taylor from Dalton, Georgia, who joined the YS at the Atlanta conference. "The real reason is securing the country for investment, not peacekeeping." Taylor, 18, has been reading the Militant for about a year. He originally contacted the Socialist Workers Party after finding it listed in a student source book at his high school.
April Holland, 20, from Birmingham, Alabama, also decided in Atlanta to join the YS. She described the conference as a "reality pill about the imperialist persecution of the working class."
Several YS members asked to join the Socialist Workers Party over the weekend.
Like party's working-class perspective
Brian Black and Linda Jarven, both leaders of the
Seattle YS chapter, decided to join the party. Black was
working in a warehouse as a union organizer for the
Teamsters, but had become disillusioned with the
bureaucratic misleadership of the labor unions when he met
members of the YS and SWP, and was attracted to their
working-class perspective. He and Jarven are now trying to
get industrial jobs where they can do political work in
the unions together with other party members.
The Seattle YS chapter grew from six to eight members during the conference.
Jarven is also part of the Seattle-Cuba Friendship Coalition. She worked with Ty Moore, who joined the Young Socialists, and coalition activist Scott Winn to staff a table and display at the conference to sign people up for a summer youth brigade in Cuba.
Joellyn Manville, a high school student from Salt Lake City, also joined the SWP during the Seattle conference. Manville, who has been leading a young socialists group at her school, attended the Cuba Lives youth festival last August.
Carlos Catalán, a leader of the YS group in Montreal, decided to join the Communist League there. "I like how the Communist League comrades act in an organized, disciplined, and serious manner at an international level," said Catalán, who had just returned from an international team selling revolutionary literature in France.
"We are part of building something." He spoke at the Boston conference about the worker and student revolt in France, and about the fight for Quebec independence.
At all four conferences, the Young Socialists organized meetings for young people interested in learning about and joining the communist movement.
In Detroit, YS members organized a "Meet the Young Socialists" panel discussion that was a highlight of the conference. The panel included five YS members from the U.S. Midwest and Canada who have been active in fights against police brutality and supporting the Boeing, Caterpillar, and Detroit newspaper strikes and other struggles.
They outlined the organization's plans to hold a conference in April in Minneapolis. Also speaking on the panel was a student who traveled to Detroit from Paris. She described the explosion that occurred among youth in France following attacks on their education benefits.