Hanlon, 17, a pre-university student in London and a Young Socialist, was one of nearly two dozen young people and workers who were attending an international socialist gathering for the first time. He said it helped prepare him politically for the upcoming World Festival of Youth and Students in Caracas, Venezuela, in August. He will be among the 40 youths attending the festival from London.

“I’m going to be joining the YS,” said Nathan Thrower, 17, a high school senior in Philadelphia. “Seeing the movement on an international scale, from Los Angeles to Stockholm, is inspirational.”

Sarah Friedman, 16, a junior at the same high school, said, “I’m new to work with the Socialist Workers Party, and learned a lot more about the party and its political ideas. I intend to do a lot more reading and work” to find out more about the YS.

The convention “was the best way to find out what’s happening with the working class in this country,” remarked Otilio Padrón, a bus driver from Houston. Padrón’s route takes him between Mexico and North Carolina, passing through Houston, where he first met socialist workers and began to subscribe to Perspectiva Mundial and purchase books on revolutionary politics. One of the classes he enjoyed was on the decisive place of Black workers in the United States in the line of march of the working class toward taking power.

Mike Slavik, 20, works as a sandblaster in a small shop in Cleveland. He recently joined the Young Socialists after taking part in a Militant sales team in the coal areas around Price, Utah. Slavik said he attended the class on “World Capitalism, Proletarian Solidarity, and the Declining Hold of State-Enforced Obscurantism” twice, he said, because there was so much there he wanted to absorb about the changing influence of religious beliefs on working people.

Jonathan Smith, 20, a University of Pittsburgh student, said he learned a lot about the importance of the union-organizing fight by coal miners in Utah. The miners “are so steadfast and organized, so the lawsuit is not going to work,” he said, referring to a harassment lawsuit by the C.W. Mining bosses against the workers and the United Mine Workers, the Militant, and two Utah dailies.

Brian Williams contributed to this article.
 
 
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