The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.42           November 25, 1996 
 
 
Socialists Hit The Road To Build Conferences  

BY JACK WILLEY

ST. PAUL, Minnesota - The Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists are fanning out across the country, from college campuses to factory plant gates, selling Militant and Perspectiva Mundial subscriptions and building toward regional socialist educational conferences taking place November 29- December 1. The conferences, in Atlanta, Peoria, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., will cap off the YS drive to recruit 80 new members. In the last two weeks alone, 17 more fighters joined the ranks of the Young Socialists.

Socialists in Peoria are traveling to St. Louis, meeting with two people interested in the Young Socialists, including a high school student who met communists at a debate on socialism at the University of Utah. In addition to several other universities in the Peoria region, socialist workers and YS members are building the conference at Western University, the site of a recent anti-Klan rally.

In Morgantown, West Virginia, socialists are working with some of the participants from a recent protest against the Defense of Marriage Act to come to the educational conferences. They are also discussing the regional meetings with activists in the demonstrations demanding prosecution for the cop who killed Jonny Gammage in Pittsburgh. A West Virginia University student is already set to go.

"We are building the conference by getting the socialist press in the hands of militant workers. Bringing along young fighters to sell at mine portals gives them a deeper understanding of the kind of movement we are building," socialist worker Estelle DeBates explained. She and other activists in Morgantown sold 12 copies of the Militant at a coal mine portal on November 13.

In Washington, D.C., the YS is setting up speaking engagements at high schools and local universities, explaining the political situation workers face today and the kind of movement that must be built to lead the working-class and its allies in the battles ahead. One high school student who met socialists at the October 12 immigrant rights demonstration, has come to Militant Labor Forums and Young Socialists classes and plans to attend the conference.

"The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Charting the Working- Class Road to Socialist Revolution" is the theme of each conference. They will center on building the kind of proletarian party and communist youth organization capable of leading workers and their allies in the historic struggle to overturn capitalism and pave the road toward building socialism.

Each conference will feature four major presentations, highlighting the growing world capitalist disorder and the class tensions, polarization and resistance it creates. Several classes will be held at each conference on a variety of topics, including the rise of the Chicano movement; the place of Black nationalism in the fight for socialism; the history of the Russian revolution; the fight against government and employer spying and harassment; women's liberation and the Marxist movement; the crisis facing working farmers; the counterrevolutionary role of Stalinism; and fascism: what it is and how to fight it.  
 
 
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