John Howenstein, a 20-year-old student from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, met socialists who had set up a table of revolutionary literature on campus and became interested in working-class politics because of his experiences working in factories during school breaks. "Bosses have a way of dehumanizing you," he said. "I realized how little we are treated like human beings." Howenstein was among the 5,000 people who participated in the Rally for Justice and Workers' Rights in Columbia, South Carolina, in defense of five longshoremen indicted by the state on felony charges of inciting to riot as part of an antiunion assault.

"I see a lot of problems with the way people are treated under capitalism," said Layne Mostyn, 19, from Columbia, Maryland, who also went to the rally to defend the Charleston Five. "I believe there should be a revolution in the United States," she continued. Mostyn also participated in a march in defense of women's rights in Tucson, Arizona, and in actions against rightist vigilantes who have rounded up immigrants and turned them over to the INS Border Patrol.

The conference was "a chance to see those you read about in the Militant and talk to them about what they've been doing," was one thing Liz Wayman, 23, liked about the gathering. Wayman, a student at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, was particularly interested in the panel presentations during the conference. "I especially liked hearing from YS member Roberta Black about the struggle at the Long Prairie meatpacking plant in Minnesota." Black and other participants at the conference are currently involved in a fight to win a contract at Dakota Premium Foods, a meatpacking plant in South St. Paul.

Drew Cheduhar works in the cafeteria at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. He said he is attracted to the Socialist Workers Party because it points to the need to emulate the Cuban Revolution in the United States as well as by the work of party members in basic industry who are "in the thick of the class struggle in the United States today." He said, "I like the party's approach toward building a worker-farmer alliance and the fact that its members came to Iowa because of the meatpacking struggles."

One of the panel presentations about how socialist workers are involved in the fight against police brutality was given by Osborne Hart, mayoral candidate for the Socialist Workers Party in Detroit. Hart spoke about the significance of the events in Cincinnati, Ohio, in response to the killing of Timothy Thomas, a 19-year-old Black youth, by the cops.

"The fights against police brutality are important because they show that it's not just isolated families trying to do something," said Kadiyatou Scere, 22, a student at the University of Minnesota, and member of the Africana Student Cultural Center there. She was unable to attend a march against police brutality in Minneapolis that she had heard about on the radio but did attend a Militant Labor Forum in St. Paul where two brothers of the victims spoke.

Scere had traveled to Senegal, West Africa, and said she had "learned how capitalism continues to exploit the raw materials of semicolonial countries and exports to them higher-priced finished goods, maintaining the economic dependence of these countries." She said she returned to the United States looking to see how she could get involved to change this situation.

"I became radical through the class struggle in Laredo, Texas, and growing up under the conditions there," said Francisco Gómez, 29, a meatpacking worker in Los Angeles. He met the Socialist Workers Party in Los Angeles while at the Latin American Book Fair "looking for Che Guevara's writings on the economy." Gómez has been active in various labor and other struggles in Los Angeles together with the SWP and has contributed a number of articles to the Militant. During the conference he decided to become a candidate member of the party.

Among the international guests was Ingvar Bildt, a 22-year-old baker from Gothenburg, Sweden. Bildt first met the Young Socialists three years ago at a Pathfinder table at the Gothenburg Book fair at a time when he was looking for answers to broader political questions. "What really interested me," he said, "was reading some of Leon Trotsky's works, such as The Revolution Betrayed," a scientific work describing the impact on the Soviet Union of the policies of the counterrevolutionary Stalinist regime. Trotsky was a central leader of the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik Party. When asked about his plans after the conference Bildt responded, "Join the Young Socialists and build a chapter in Gothenburg."
 
 
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