Martín Koppel, editor of Perspectiva Mundial, and Romina Green, a national leader of the Young Socialists, both of whom recently returned from a two-week reporting trip to Argentina, were the featured speakers.

A number of those who attended found out about the meeting from a short article in the Spanish-language daily El Diario, including five women originally from Argentina who are now living in the New York and New Jersey area. Others got leaflets for the event on street tables of Pathfinder literature in the workers district.

Four Dominican political activists came to the bookstore that evening specifically to pick up their copies of the brand-new Pathfinder title From the Escambray to the Congo, In the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution by Cuban revolutionary leader Víctor Dreke.

Participation in the meeting was boosted as well by a number of volunteer socialists and youth who had come to New York to participate in a volunteer Red Weekend at the Pathfinder Building to help reorganize the pick-and-pack operation of distribution of Pathfinder books.

The openness to revolutionary ideas and the confidence among workers and youth in Argentina was pointed to by both Koppel and Green as they described the social explosion against brutal conditions that forced the resignation of four presidents over the course of a month.

However, the lack of revolutionary leadership in the working class and the strength of Peronism in the unions, has been an obstacle to charting a revolutionary course toward workers and farmers taking power, the socialists said.

Koppel pointed to the fact that no organization in the labor movement is calling for an end to payment on the country's foreign debt, which has reached $141 billion. They described how resistance to the capitalist crisis continues despite the misleadership of the union officialdom and how, especially among younger layers, there is an eagerness to study the lessons of other revolutionary struggles, many of which are contained in the Pathfinder books that the reporting team took with them and sold during the trip.

A lively discussion followed the presentations ranging from the debt crisis, to how Cuba is viewed among fighters in Argentina, to the role of armed struggle in forging a revolutionary movement.

A collection at the meeting toward a $1,500 fund to expand the stock of Pathfinder books in the new bookstore brought the fund up to $1,000, and a total of $140 worth of books were sold out of the bookstore that night.  
 
 
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