YS leader Arrin Hawkins presented introductory remarks. "The Young Socialists is a revolutionary youth organization that takes part in the building of a movement to overthrow capitalism and build a workers and farmers government," she said. "We don’t just study working-class history but also take part in struggles today, such as the strike by garment workers taking place in Lykens, Pennsylvania. We link up with youth who want to fight the brutalities of capitalism."

Sarah Katz, a representative of the Róger Calero Defense Committee, spoke about the government’s attempts to deport him and the defense campaign being organized in response. The defense committee set up an information table and display at the event.

Chairperson Darryl Sheppard encouraged participants to get involved in building the upcoming speaking tour by two representatives of the Union of Young Communists in Cuba. "This is an opportunity for youth and workers in the U.S.," he said.

YS members and socialist workers distributed a flyer on the event during the day’s protest. It included a statement on fighting imperialism and its wars that YS leader Olympia Newton had given at the December congress of the Continental Organization of Latin American and Caribbean Students, held in Guadalajara, Mexico.

The college students and young workers who attended had come from as far as Kannapolis, North Carolina; northern Vermont; and New York, as well as Washington, D.C.

"I don’t agree with the war and I am trying to understand why it is happening. I’ve heard different opinions and this meeting was different," said Heidi Osgood, 19, a college student in Vermont, who attended with two friends.

Two students from Japan came. They talked to volunteers staffing a table of revolutionary literature, and described antiwar demonstrations in Saitama, the city in which they are studying.

Hawkins’s remarks sparked some discussion and questions--particularly her statement that working people should avoid falling into the trap of the patriotism expressed by the "antiwar" camp of the ruling capitalist class. When the shooting starts, she said, that camp will fall in behind the war using the same appeal to patriotism.

One high school student from St. Paul, Minnesota, asked, "Why wouldn’t you say that peace is patriotic?"

"The capitalist rulers try to impose a ‘we’ as though there is one unified America, and as though working people have similar interest to the bosses," Hawkins replied. "The truth is we don’t. The ‘we’ hides the reality that there is the ruling class and the working class whose interests are counterposed."
 
 
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Tens of thousands protest U.S. war drive
Young protesters open to revolutionary ideas  
 
 
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