In March, the YS moved its national office from San Francisco to New York in response to new political opportunities for building the YS as a nationwide revolutionary socialist youth organization.

Kern joined the Young Socialists in November 1996 as a high school student in Spokane, Washington. After attending Mills College in Oakland, California, for a while, she took a job in a meatpacking plant in San Francisco. She served on the national fraction steering committee of socialist workers in the United Food and Commercial Workers union from October 1998 through April 1999.

During the summer of 1998 she represented the Young Socialists on a trip to north Korea as part of an international delegation organized by the World Federation of Democratic Youth. She reported for the Militant on developments there.

This past February Kern was part of the Militant reporting team covering the International Book Fair in Havana, and she participated in several well-attended reportback meetings to discuss the opportunities for building the communist movement today, held in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco the following month.

In April she attended and helped cover for the Militant the 12th Congress of Latin American and Caribbean Students, which also took place in Havana. This gathering attracted some 6,300 students and youth from throughout the world.

Kern has also been a regular contributor to the YS column over the past year.  
 
 
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