Vol. 77/No. 34      September 30, 2013

“The festival is a space where young people can see that they can be actors who can change the condition caused by the world capitalist crisis,” Leira Sánchez of the Union of Young Communists of Cuba (UJC) told the Militant at a festival planning meeting held in Madrid in June.

The UJC of Cuba is among the organizations that play a leadership role in the World Federation of Democratic Youth, whose member organizations work together to organize and promote the festivals.

This crisis is beginning to propel working people into actions to defend themselves — from strikes and mass demonstrations by garment workers in Bangladesh and Cambodia to workers in the U.S. standing up to the bosses’ drive against wages, working conditions, unions and the very dignity of working people.

The scourge of long-term high unemployment afflicting the working class throughout most of the world has come down especially hard on young people, increasingly disillusioned by what they see capitalism has to offer. In the U.S., nearly a quarter of young people are jobless or too discouraged to look for work and millions are increasingly finding only part-time work. From Greece to parts of Africa, official youth jobless figures approach 60 percent and beyond.

“The festival will be of interest to young people from the U.S. who are drawn to working-class struggles, such as rallies by fast-food workers pressing for pay raises and unionization, fights against police brutality, protests against government attacks on immigrant workers and defense of women’s right to choose abortion,” said Rebecca Williamson, a leader of the Young Socialists, which together with the Young Communist League is organizing a delegation from the United States. “We’re asking interested youth we meet campaigning with the Militant door to door in working-class neighborhoods to consider joining us in Quito.

“The festival will be a unique opportunity to talk with young people attracted to anti-imperialist struggles around the world about the need for a revolutionary working-class political course independent of the capitalist class and their political parties,” Williamson said. “And about the socialist revolution in Cuba as the living example we can emulate. There workers and farmers, through a popular insurrection, wrested political power from the ruling class and overthrew capitalism.”

The last festival in 2010, which brought together some 15,000 delegates, was held in South Africa. The festival venue this year is significant “because in Latin America today you can see an alternative in the process of integration,” said Sánchez, referring to trade blocs and other initiatives between a number of governments in Latin America and the Caribbean to counter the economic and political domination of Washington and other imperialist powers.

Today PetroCaribe, an energy cooperation agreement initiated by the Venezuelan government in 2005, provides Cuba and other countries in the Caribbean and Central America with oil at preferential prices, weakening the stranglehold of the imperialist-dominated oil conglomerates. Other anti-imperialist initiatives include the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), which promotes trade and economic cooperation among certain countries of Latin America and the Caribbean as a counter to U.S.-dominated trade blocs, and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), an initiative launched in 2010 to counter the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States.

Venezuela’s PetroCaribe program and other cooperative trade agreements have been a lifeline for the Cuban Revolution, helping defend it from the ongoing economic war against it led by the U.S. government. The international campaign opposing Washington’s 52-year trade and financial embargo against Cuba will be among the topics discussed at the festival.

At the festival preparatory meeting in June delegates approved a statement celebrating “the return of René González to Cuba. His release, a victory won through the political struggle worldwide for the freedom of the Cuban Five, has helped breathe new life into the struggle for the freedom of Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, and Ramón Labañino, who have been imprisoned for 15 years.

“The five were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit espionage, and in the case of Gerardo, conspiracy to commit murder,” the statement continued. “Their real crime in the eyes of the U.S. imperialist rulers, however, was their bold and steadfast defense of Cuba’s socialist revolution. … Join us in making this festival a powerful vehicle in the battle to free the Cuban Five!”

Cuban Five: ‘Revolutionaries we seek to emulate’
“For the young socialists in the United States the Cuban Five are examples of the kind of revolutionaries we seek to emulate,” said Williamson.

The festival takes place a few months after the 60th anniversary of the cease-fire that registered the defeat of U.S. war aims in the Korean War in 1953. Delegates from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea will be present to talk about the fight that continues for unification of Korea and for the withdrawal of the 28,000 U.S. troops that still enforce its division.

Among the political questions under debate at the festival will be the grinding civil war in Syria. WFDY released a statement Aug. 30 condemning the threats of U.S. imperialist intervention in Syria. At the same time, there are sharp disagreements between those who support the struggles of working people in Syria and those who defend the course of the Bashar al-Assad regime. Workers there began over two years ago to fight to bring an end to the brutality of the Assad government as they press for political rights.

One of the struggles that has gotten attention at recent festivals has been that of the Saharawi people of Western Sahara, who have been waging a fight for self-determination for decades, first from Spanish colonial rule, and today against occupation by the Moroccan government of King Mohammed VI. “For us the festival is a space where we can raise our voices and where we can communicate to the world what is happening in the occupied zones of Western Sahara and in the refugee camps,” Omar Hassena told the Militant at the meeting in Spain. Hassena came to the meeting from the refugee camps in Algeria where hundreds of thousands of Saharawi live in exile.

The two member organizations of WFDY in the U.S. — the Young Communist League and Young Socialists — have established a National Preparatory Committee to build the U.S. delegation. If you are interested in learning more, you can contact the distributors on page 10 or email the USNPC at WFYSEcuador2013@gmail.com.

Tom Baumann contributed to this article.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home