BY DAVID ARGUELLO
SAN FRANCISCO - The Young Socialists chapters from San
Francisco, Santa Cruz, and Los Angeles participated in a
number of activities here over the June 5-6 weekend. With
banners demanding, "U.S.-NATO out of the Yugoslavia!" and
championing "Self-Determination for Kosova!" we marched in
the 4,000-person-strong June 5 demonstration protesting the
U.S.-NATO war against Yugoslavia.
Youth came from the Bay Area and from as far as Los Angeles, San Diego, and Eureka, California.
At the demonstration we built that night's Militant Labor Forum, a special program cosponsored by the Young Socialists on "Youth and the Political Struggles of Today." Four YS members and two other young fighters spoke on the platform there.
YS members from Los Angeles discussed their involvement in the fight against police brutality, and in the struggle for Puerto Rican independence and the release of the independentistas held in U.S. jails.
YSers from Santa Cruz also presented the various struggles they've been involved in. These included the United Farm Workers unionization campaign among the 1,400 strawberry workers at farms owned by Coastal Berry Company; the coal miners strike against unfair labor practices at the Deserado mine in Colorado; and actions in defense of the Cuban revolution. The Santa Cruz YS helped to organize a large meeting at the University of California at Santa Cruz with two youth leaders from Cuba in late April. And it supported the political, diplomatic, and athletic victory by the Cuban National Baseball team in their match with the Baltimore Orioles in early May.
San Francisco YS members described their participation in the Cuban youth tour, the response of coal miners to the Militant, and actions against the U.S.-NATO imperialist assault that targets workers throughout Yugoslavia.
The day's events ended with a party to raise money for the national fund drive. Between the forum and party, we raised $325, including pledges by those in attendance at the forum.
The next day Young Socialists, members of the Socialist Workers Party, and supporters young and old kicked off a Socialist Summer School.
The first class was on the preface written by Mary-Alice Waters to Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium and on the book's first chapter, "A Sea Change in Working-Class Politics" by Jack Barnes. The summer school will continue with classes in San Francisco and Los Angeles, as well as several more statewide weekends, and end with caravans to the August 5-7 Active Workers Conference in Oberlin, Ohio.
SEATTLE - Students, professors, and others gathered at Seattle Central Community College (SCCC) May 28 to hear a presentation entitled "Eyewitness Report from Yugoslavia." The speaker was Argiris Malapanis, a staff writer for the Militant newspaper and co-author of The Truth about Yugoslavia. The event was sponsored by the Student Leadership, the Middle Eastern Student Organization, and the Central Students Against War. It was built broadly on campus by the sponsoring organizations and professors, as well as through several literature tables on the campus staffed by members of the Young Socialists and Socialist Workers Party. More than 30 people attended.
Dick Burton, a professor at SCCC who helped to publicize the meeting on campus, welcomed people to the event.
In his presentation Malapanis outlined the roots of the conflict in Yugoslavia, as well as the devastation currently being wrought by the U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign. Malapanis exposed the reality behind the lies presented by U.S. imperialism to justify its assault on the working people of Yugoslavia by sharing what he learned through the dozens of interviews conducted with workers, farmers, and youth in Yugoslavia, Albania, and Macedonia.
A lively question-and-answer period followed. One participant asked if the motive behind U.S intervention in Yugoslavia is to control the rich mineral deposits throughout Yugoslavia. Malapanis replied, "They're going after something much bigger: to dismember Yugoslavia and to bring the entire country under the domination of capitalism."
Another participant asked Malapanis to describe the "relationship between workers and capitalists" in Yugoslavia. Malapanis explained that the Yugoslav revolution that triumphed after World War II overturned capitalist property relations in Yugoslavia. Since the collapse of the Stalinist regimes throughout eastern and central Europe in 1989-90, a few capitalists, mainly from Europe, have been able to buy partial ownership in a handful of factories. But the fact remains that the vast majority of factories are nationalized and that there is no capitalist class in Yugoslavia to exploit workers and farmers. Workers in Yugoslavia have a history of resisting attempts to privatize factories, which continues to this day.
A June 5 march and rally in Seattle calling for "U.S./N.A.T.O. out of Yugoslavia" was announced at the meeting. Several young people stayed afterward to continue the discussion with Malapanis and others at the meeting. The Young Socialists had a table at the event, which included a range of Pathfinder books.
Later that evening Malapanis spoke at the Montlake Community Center to a meeting of more than 60 people. The event was organized to raise funds for the Socialist Workers Party-Building Fund. Several carloads of people came from Vancouver, British Columbia, including members of the Young Socialists, and the Communist League, and a number of other young people and workers.
LOS ANGELES - Young Socialists here have participated in several demonstrations against the U.S.-led war in Yugoslavia. One of them was a May 23 protest organized by a young garment worker from East Los Angeles. A parade in honor of Andrew Ramirez, one of the three U.S. soldiers who had been captured and held by the Yugoslav government for several weeks, was planned that day in the predominantly Chicano working-class community, and the garment worker decided to call an action against the war there.
The parade was part of the campaign of the U.S. ruling class to create an atmosphere of patriotism in support of the war. It included soldiers from different divisions of the armed forces, ROTC regiments and marching bands from local schools, the Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera, the Los Angeles sheriff, other cops, Jesse Jackson, local politicians, and some groups of veterans.
"With all the soldiers and the police parading, they are trying to say that if you participate in this war you are an American hero, that the war is glamorous, but it is definitely a tragedy," said East Los Angeles high school student Eric Anderson, who participated in the protest along with a dozen other young people. Although it was small, the action was one of the most spirited protests against the war that we have participated in here.
"I feel really proud that I was part of this protest. To actually get out there is the only way that you can change things. I want to do it more often," Anderson said. We chanted continuously for at least two hours slogans like: "We don't want your bloody war!" and "End the bombing now!"
The YS also participated in a teach-in about the war called "Dissenting Voices" sponsored by a radio station on May 23. We set up a literature table where we sold 16 copies of The Truth about Yugoslavia and raised our demands of "U.S./NATO out of Yugoslavia" and "Self-determination for Kosova."
YS members also took part in a protest against the bombing called by several Chinese student organizations on May 12, where 400 people participated, and in a teach-in against the war at California State University-Northridge hosted by the Central American Students Association, who played an important role in the recent Cuban youth tour on that campus.