At a socialist educational conference held here following the youth festival, a panel of Young Socialists who participated in the youth festival pointed to the Algeria gathering as one example of the expanding openings for the communist movement in the world today. At the world youth festival, said Jacob Perasso, Young Socialists National Executive Committee organizer in the United States, "there was a tremendous hunger for ideas, for Marxism, and a desire among many revolutionary-minded youth to build the kinds of organizations capable of effectively leading the toilers in their countries in struggle against imperialism."

The panel included young socialists from the United Kingdom, Iceland, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States, many of whom joined a solidarity visit to the refugee camps of Western Sahara following the festival (see article on page 8). Several more participants in the festival from the United Kingdom, Sweden, Iceland, France, and the United States were part of the audience of 65 that attended the London event here on August 25.

The International Socialist Educational Conference was hosted by the Young Socialists and the Communist League in the United Kingdom. It also featured a Militant Labor Forum with Norton Sandler from the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States speaking on "The Working-Class Road to Peace and a Livable Environment."

Chairing the panel were Anne Howie from the Communist League in the United Kingdom and Yonathan Moldanado from the Young Socialists. Both participated in the 33-person delegation that attended the Algiers festival from the United Kingdom. "The world festival was a very successful event for every one who is working to build a worldwide anti-imperialist youth movement," said Howie.

The process of building the festival in several countries enabled the Young Socialists to establish new links with revolutionary forces in Asia and the Pacific, said Annalucia Vermunt speaking for the Young Socialists in New Zealand. "We advanced our collaboration with organizations from Bangladesh, India, Japan, north Korea, Nepal, and Vietnam," she said. The YS in New Zealand was invited earlier this year to join the World Federation of Democratic Youth, the main organization that has initiated the youth festival.

Struggles led by students in Papua New Guinea grew in July, Vermunt said, and protests pushed back government plans to introduce individual title to the communal lands. Other austerity measures, including proposals to privatize the banks, were also met with protests.

"As soon as we contacted student leaders there," she said, "they were enthusiastic about the opportunity the festival presented to collaborate with others resisting similar conditions. They faced many obstacles getting to Algiers, including the university administration freezing student funds that eventually precluded their attending the festival, but we have already received an invitation to go there and report to them on the Algiers event," she told the crowd.

"Those involved in the struggle for independence of New Caledonia, a French territory in the Pacific," Vermunt said, "sent two delegates to Algiers who took advantage of being there to discuss with other participants their struggle for independence from French colonial domination."  
 
Place of communist program
Carlos Cornejo was part of the 14-person delegation from Canada at the festival, which included four participants from Quebec. "When you participate in this kind of event with such wide-ranging discussions you can appreciate better the place of our communist program, codified in Pathfinder books and the New International. Our world movement sold nearly 600 books," Cornejo said. "The best seller was The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning, followed by Capitalism's World Disorder, both by Jack Barnes, Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle by Thomas Sankara, and issues of New International." The YS table became a center of discussion that hundreds of participants stopped at, said Cornejo.

"Just one example was a delegate from Paraguay who ordered 30 copies of The Communist Manifesto in Spanish for use by study circles organized by his group and met with Young Socialists to plan further political collaboration.

"We saw the reward for the tremendous effort that goes into editing our books, and the work by volunteers to translate them into French, Spanish, Farsi, Icelandic, and Swedish," Cornejo stated, "and the importance of the effort reprint volunteers around the world put into making sure these books are in print."

Jack Willey, from the United States, said that the success of the festival "came as a result of hard work by a number of youth organizations around the world who participated in several international planning meetings for the gathering.

"What was registered at the 1997 festival in Cuba was the decisive break with the traditions of the previous 13 gatherings. The 1997 meeting was open to all groups and individuals who wanted to join in an anti-imperialist gathering and was marked by wide-ranging discussions and debates on central questions of revolutionary working-class politics. Many youth groups around the world are now building on this new tradition. All groups and individuals who support the anti-imperialist character of these events are welcome to come and join in the debate.

"It was a battle all the way to the end between forces who wanted to build on the victory of the 1997 festival in Havana to bring thousands of anti-imperialist youth together again, and those who raised objections to another gathering open to everyone who agrees with the anti-imperialist slogans and where no organization has veto power over who can attend. It was a great victory," Willey said, "to be able to hold the event on the African continent, near the center of the unfolding battle of the Palestinian people fighting against Israeli occupation and an accelerating war drive. It was a victory to hold the festival in a country like Algeria, where workers and peasants carried out a victorious revolution against French imperialism.

"Social democratic parties around the world organized a boycott of the festival and held their own event a couple of weeks before in Panama," he said. "This is the same world political current that heads the governments of the imperialist France and Germany today, and was part of leadership of the French government when it tried unsuccessfully to drown the Algerian revolution in blood. The boycott effort--led by the Front of Socialist Forces, a social democratic party in Algeria, and picked up by Stalinist Communist Party youth groups in Canada, France, Italy, Japan, and elsewhere--was a failure.

As an article in the August 17 Granma International put it, "The 15th World Festival of Youth and Students that took place in Algeria from August 8–16 signifies the continuity of an event reinitiated by Cuba in 1997 after it had been forgotten for close to 10 years."  
 
Attendance from semicolonial countries
The event was marked by the attendance of thousands of youth, mainly from countries oppressed by the imperialist powers who are part of popular struggles for national liberation, worker and peasant struggles, and student protests. The festival reflected the fact that imperialism is weaker today and unable to quell national liberation struggles internationally.

Òlöf Andra Proppè, a Young Socialists leader in Iceland and co-chair of the nine-person delegation to the festival from that country, described some of the experiences of the 14 youth who visited the Western Sahara refugee camps in southwest Algeria after the festival.

"The trip to the refugee camps came out of the initiative of the youth group of the Polisario Front, Ujsario, and was a natural extension of the work of the YS to link up with other groups and individuals fighting imperialism." Activists from Ujsario hosted meetings during the festival with delegations from around the world to help educate them about their battle for independence.

Proppè pointed to the major advances the Sahrawi people have undertaken to make life bearable in the desert refugee camps in order to be in the strongest position to carry out their struggle--building a hospital and clinics, immunization efforts, and creating schools and carrying out a literacy campaign.

There was a lively discussion following the panel presentation.

Vuk Krcmar-Grkavac, who went to the festival from Canada, spoke from the floor in response to a question about the participation of Algerians in the gathering. "Youth and students from Algeria made up the largest delegation to the festival, and they came with a wide variety of views," he said. "There were many Berbers from Kabylia who agreed with the festival boycott, but there were some 50 Berbers who participated and spoke about their struggle for language rights. The main thing that struck me was that regardless of their different views about the government of Algeria these youth recognized the pressures to boycott the festival-especially pressures coming from forces backed by the French rulers. These youth were united in their opposition to imperialism."

He also said the festival presented a real opening to reclaim the call of the Third International under Lenin, "Workers and Oppressed Peoples of the World Unite."

Panel co-chair Maldonado answered a question about Plan Colombia. He said there was unanimous rejection at the festival of the U.S. government's Plan Colombia, which is not a "war on drugs" as the imperialists in Washington claim, but an attempt to deepen U.S. military domination in Colombia and the whole region.

Anne Howie responded to a question from the audience about the role of delegates from the Middle East. "After another of the Israeli regime's assaults on Palestinians in the occupied territories was carried out, festival participants held a large spontaneous demonstration at one of the large discussion centers condemning the attack. The Palestinian delegation was one of the largest from the Mideast," she explained, and added to the anti-imperialist content of the meeting.

For example, a representative of the General Union of Palestinian Students spoke at one conference session, stating, "We need to reorient our debate towards rehabilitating the national liberation struggles in the progressive youth movement to guarantee dignity and freedom of the oppressed nations and eventually peace in the world." He argued that the "anti-globalization" protests, such as those held in Seattle and Genoa, Italy, did not have an anti-imperialist character, and have confused many youth because right-wing groups are so comfortable in taking part in them, and cannot be pointed to as an example to follow.

The discussion and debate at the festival was just the beginning, said Perasso. "This was the first time that Young Socialists from around the world have worked together in such an intense world political event. The international YS has emerged stronger and more cohesive and we now have increased responsibilities and tasks internationally.

"This trip has encouraged us to study more the history and lessons of the workers movement," he said. "When we return to our respective countries we will be better able to explain the world we live in and the need to build communist parties and Young Socialists organizations. We will work with everyone who was attracted to this anti-imperialist youth gathering to prepare reportback meetings on campuses and recruit every individual we can to building a proletarian youth organization."
 
 
Related article:
Western Sahara freedom fighters host revolutionary youth  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home