BY XOCHITL-ITZÁ LEAL
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - "For the next two weeks, Young
Socialists in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and
Vancouver will turn all of their efforts towards building the
West Coast Regional Socialist Conference in Seattle January
24 -25," said Verónica Poses, a member of the Young Socialists
National Committee in the United States. As part of this, YS
leader Joshua Carroll began a two-week west coast tour here. He
is speaking at campuses, house meetings, and forums, urging
protests against Washington's latest provocations against Iraq,
building the conference, and working to recruit to the Young
Socialists.
"In every city, we have the possibility to work with other young people to set up meetings on campuses and other venues to discuss the importance of coming to a conference like this one," Carroll said. "The conference will give an opportunity to vanguard workers and youth to discuss the kind of organizations we need to build in order to overthrow capitalism, and join the fight for socialism. The tour will be a success if in each city we can win a few revolutionary-minded fighters to attend the conference and join the Young Socialists."
The tour began in Vancouver on January 12 with a house meeting at the home of a member of the YS. On the following day, Carroll spoke at Langara College in the afternoon, and at the Pathfinder bookstore in the evening. He also visited an aerospace plant organized by the International Association of Machinists.
Carroll will travel to Los Angeles January 14, to Seattle on the 18th, and to San Francisco on the 20th. His schedule in each of these cities is still in formation. Below is a report on his first stop of the tour.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - We were able to set up a number of small meetings here in Vancouver to build the Seattle Socialist Educational Conference. The first was a house meeting at the home of a member of the Young Socialists January 13 that five young people attended. We began the meeting discussing the U.S. rulers' current war preparations against Iraq, and the importance for working people to oppose it. People agreed that William Clinton and the U.S. capitalist class were looking for an opening to launch another military attack against Iraq in hopes of accomplishing what they could not in their 1991 war: establishing a regime subservient to their interests in Iraq.
We also talked about the recent nationalist campaign by the trade union bureaucracy in Canada against the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC). In this campaign, liberal politicians and the trade union officialdom seek to draw working people into seeing themselves as having some "Canadian interest" in common with the Canadian capitalist class. We discussed the reactionary nature of the campaign to "free Tibet" and the fact that it is propaganda aimed against the historic conquests of the Chinese revolution. One participant pointed to the similarities between the call to "free Tibet," and the recent release by Disney of Anastasia - a movie that glorifies the reactionary historic role of the Romanov monarchy which the Russian workers and peasants toppled in February 1917.
Through the discussion, a high school student at Burnaby Central, Ian Roxburough-Smith, said that he would like to attend the conference in Seattle.
The following afternoon, I went to Avcorp, an aerospace plant organized by the International Association of Machinists. I met with several workers there including Billy Rhude, 26, who explained that he supported the right of the Quebecois to independence from Canada.
He related this fight to both the struggle by Irish republicans and the struggle by Scottish independence fighters against British rule. Rhude was also interested in talking about why socialists and other fight-minded people are so attracted to the Cuban revolution.
That evening, the Young Socialists organized an open house at the Pathfinder Bookstore. I spoke mostly about the U.S. rulers' war preparations against Iraq. After the meeting, Lenin Fernández, a 26-year-old immigrant worker who wants to attend the conference in Seattle, explained to me that he thinks imperialism is weaker today than ever before.
Fernández said, "Imperialism lost in Vietnam; it lost in Cuba; and it lost in Nicaragua. It's not as strong as it was before." I told him that I agreed, and that's why we need to work today to build the kind of revolutionary movement that can lead the fight to take power.
Xochitl-Itzá Leal is a member of the Young Socialists in Vancouver.