Delegations to the National Leadership Council from Chicago; Los Angeles; New York; Tucson, Arizona; and St. Paul, Minnesota, were joined at the meeting by YS leaders from Canada, Iceland, and Sweden, and a delegation from the Socialist Workers Party.

The meeting focused on two reports that were given by Jacob Perasso and Olympia Newton, members of the YS National Executive Committee (NEC). Perasso opened the meeting by reporting on a victory won the previous day when Cuban youth leaders Yanelis Martínez and Javier Dueñas received their visas to travel to the United States.

YS members have been an active part of organizing the visit of the two young communists from Cuba, who began a three-week speaking visit to college campuses in Illinois, Minnesota, and southern New England March 23 on invitation of a number of professors and student organizations. Winning the visas in order to have an exchange between young people in the United States and Cuba--something the U.S. embargo of the island and its travel ban seeks to prevent--is a victory for all working people, Perasso said.

Perasso explained the importance of the work by the YS over the years to help bring Cuban youth to speak in the United States, distribute books and newspapers that tell the truth about the Cuban revolution, and organize actions against the U.S. government's assaults on Cuba. This has deepened the understanding of the Cuban revolution among youth and working people and strengthened the political relationship between young leaders of the Cuban revolution and a layer of revolutionary-minded young people in the United States.

Coming out of the leadership meeting, the YS NEC has decided to make building the upcoming Second Cuba/U.S. Youth Exchange, to be held in Cuba July 22–30, a central part of its work. Sponsored by Cuban student and communist youth organizations, the exchange will be an opportunity for young people in the United States to learn how workers and peasants made the revolution and the challenges and opportunities facing the Cuban revolution today. It will also be a chance for young people in Cuba to learn about the class struggle in the United States.

Through building the youth tour, organizing participation in the July exchange, setting up street tables with revolutionary literature, and joining social protest actions, strike picket lines, and other struggles, Young Socialists members will also find revolutionary-minded youth interested in participating in the 15th World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS) that will be held this August in Algiers, Algeria. The WFYS is a gathering of thousands of young people from organizations around the world who want to fight imperialism. Several Young Socialists representatives participated in an International Preparatory Meeting for the WFYS in Rome as part of this effort.

The Young Socialists also decided to launch in the coming weeks an eight-week national fund drive. Raising funds for the national treasury of the YS is an essential component of building an organizationally independent communist youth organization, Newton said.

The drive will be intertwined with building the Cuban youth speaking tour and the July conference, and winning revolutionary minded youth to the communist movement. Individual members of the YS will be making pledges to the fund along with organizing weekly fund-raising activities, such as classes, socials, and raffles. Chapters and members at-large of the Young Socialists are planning to set local goals by the end of March.

Discussion by a number of participants in the meeting, led by a YS member from Iceland, pointed to the importance of sending articles into the Militant and reestablishing a regular Young Socialists Around the World column. YS members agreed that coverage of the YS's activities, campaigns, and participation in class-struggle actions helps bring young communists from around the world closer together and gives those interested in the YS a better idea of the kind of revolutionary organization they can become part of.

Newton opened her report with a description of the recent three-day strike by a majority of the 1,600 meat packers employed by Excel Corp. in Fort Morgan, Colorado. The workers, who are mainly from Mexico and Central America, demanded a three-year contract, regulated line speeds, union representation on the floor, a lower insurance deductible, and the end to the company's abusive behavior against the workers.

The communist movement responded by rapidly sending a sales and reporting team to Fort Morgan, which met with a number of participants in the strike. At the same time, a team of socialist workers visited coal mine portals and met with supporters of the Militant throughout the coalfields in Colorado.

Through the course of the political discussions over the weekend, the YS leadership meeting decided that a few of its members should move to Colorado to join with members of the Socialist Workers Party there in reaching out to students, coal miners, and other workers who are looking for answers to the increased attacks by the bosses and the world crisis of capitalism.

The National Leadership Council elected a National Executive Committee of Jason Alessio, Olympia Newton, Roberto Guerrero, and Jacob Perasso.

The meeting adjourned March 18 in time to join 170 other participants from up and down the West Coast in a meeting to commemorate the 1961 victory of workers and farmers in Cuba who defended their socialist revolution by routing a U.S.-backed invasion of the island. The meeting celebrated the publication of Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs: Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas and launched a campaign to sell that book, together with Making History: Interviews with Four Generals of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces, through June 10. YS members plan to throw themselves into the campaign.  
 
 
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