BY RYAN KELLY
This column is written and edited by the Young Socialists
(YS), an international organization of young workers, students,
and other youth fighting for socialism. For more information
about the YS write to: Young Socialists, 3284 23rd St., San
Francisco, California, 94110. Tel: (415) 824-1429.
E-mail: 105162.605@compuserve.com
SAN FRANCISCO - Fifty young socialists from around the world met the morning of April 4, immediately following the Socialist Workers Party's 40th constitutional convention. Members of the Young Socialists from the United States, Canada, Sweden, and New Zealand, along with other young activists interested in joining the YS, took part in the meeting. They discussed the campaigns of the YS leading up to the Active Workers Conference to be held in August. Four people asked to join the Young Socialists during the convention, and two were voted into membership that weekend.
"We stand with the Kosavar people's struggle for self- determination. This is the road to defending the workers state in Yugoslavia, just as is demanding that Washington and NATO stop the military assault against this workers state," said Samantha Kern, the organizer of the National Executive Committee of the YS in the United States. Reporting from a meeting of the YS National Committee that took place two days earlier, she encouraged every member of the YS to get out on picket lines, sell the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial at plant gates, and organize educationals and forums opposing the escalation of Washington's war drive.
"Building the Cuban youth tour is a central project of the YS in the next four weeks," Kern continued. She was referring to the speaking tour of Itamys García Villar and Luis Ernesto Morejón, two youth leaders from Cuba, at campuses across the United States. "If we function competently, revolutionary minded youth who are attracted to the Cuban revolution can be won to joining the ranks of the YS by seeing our organization as a tool to be used to do what the Cubans did," said Kern in. All chapters are encouraged to organize classes on the Cuban revolution to be built at the meetings where the Cuban youth are speaking and cover the tour events in their area for this column.
"We should think ahead of time about the questions and comments to bring up during the discussions at the Cuban youth tour meetings," added Olga Russi, a YS member who is part of organizing the tour in the Los Angeles area. "Our political participation can make a difference in the success of a meeting."
The discussion at the YS meeting took up the class struggle internationally, challenges in building revolutionary youth organizations, the role of the Young Socialists in the Socialist Workers Party's campaign to deepen the party's political work in the industrial unions, recruitment, and building the active workers conference in Ohio.
In a contribution to the discussion on how to respond to the U.S. aggression in the Balkans, Ryan Lewis from New York said, "Demonstrations are important, but our working-class campaign against the war on Yugoslavia also has to bring us to the plant gates with the Militant, Perspectiva Mundial, and Pathfinder books and door to door in working-class areas." Especially important is joining in the campaign to sell Capitalism's World Disorder. YS chapters and members will be taking goals as part of this effort.
The Young Socialists also launched a $9,000 fund drive to be completed by the end May. The funds are needed for the expenses in building a proletarian youth organization that is financially independent and can respond rapidly to political developments and maintain its national office. It was proposed that all chapters have their goals in for the fund drive and goals for Capitalism's World Disorder in one week.
The meeting concluded by sending greetings from the YS to the National Committee meeting of the Union of Young Communists taking place in Cuba that day.