On November 18 a march and vigil in support of the campaign to free Mumia Abu-Jamal to end of the death penalty took place at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Forty-three people participated, including students from the campus, two United Auto Workers members from Pemco Aerospace, two students from the University of Alabama at Auburn, and many more.

YS member Roberto Guerrero was among those who spoke at the rally. He encouraged those there to participate in the upcoming protest against the School of the Americas at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia.

Many of the conversations that took place at the table sponsored by the YS at the Tuscaloosa event involved the anti–World Trade Organization (WTO) protest in Seattle. YS members pointed out that the nationalist demands of the protest organizers, including the union officialdom, lead workers and young people into the fold of democratic imperialism, and increase their susceptibility to the America First rhetoric of ultrarightists such as Patrick Buchanan. Two participants in the rally bought subscriptions to the Militant, and others picked up February 1965: The Final Speeches by Malcolm X, Two Speeches by Malcolm X, and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Frederick Engels.

More than 10,000 people took part in the School of the Americas protest in Columbus, Georgia, November 20–21. The School of the Americas (SOA) is a separate training ground in Fort Benning that teaches methods of torture to paramilitary and other counterrevolutionary armed forces in Latin America. This is a school sponsored by Washington in their interest to repress struggles by workers and peasants in Latin America.

Members of the YS and Socialist Workers Party joined the demonstration and set up literature tables where they discussed politics with the participants. A woman from El Salvador said she was happy to see the books by Karl Marx in Spanish "because they are the basics to understand our struggle." Four copies of the pamphlet Farmers Face the Crisis of the 1990s by Doug Jenness were sold almost instantly off the table. Several people bought copies of the pamphlet Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It by Leon Trotsky as well. Fifteen people purchased Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium over the course of the two days, with the Young Socialists in the southern region, selling five copies of the book.

During the event members of the Young Socialists met with David Klier, a student from Valdosta, Georgia. They had discussions with him and other college students he brought with him about the growing threat of fascism and the importance of joining an organization like the Young Socialists. David asked to join the YS, explaining, "This is exactly the kind of organization I've been looking for!" He had participated in a recent southern regional Socialist Educational Conference sponsored by the Young Socialists.

At the beginning of December, Ro-mina Green went to Seattle to campaign for communism with other members of the YS and joined in a propaganda intervention at the protests that took place. On her return, she spoke at a forum titled "WTO: Why Protectionist Protests are a Trap for the Labor Movement." Several youth and workers came to the event, including a high school student YS members met during the SOA protest. Two youth from the University of Alabama at Birmingham came to hear a communist perspective on the Seattle events, and coming to future events sponsored by the YS. A coal miner also attended who had learned about the forum from a team selling the Militant at the mine portal where he works.

This week, YS members plan on visiting the picket line at Overnite Transportation in Memphis, Tennessee, with youth interested in the YS. They will also join YS members and other interested youth in Atlanta this weekend in attending a fund-raiser for farmers planning a trip to Cuba.

Romina Green is a garment worker; Roberto Guerrero is a textile worker.  
 
 
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