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Dynamic Magazine
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The quarterly magazine of the YCL
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YCL 8th National Convention May 2006
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Our Future, Our Fight: Youth Beat Back the Ultra-Right!
Young Communist League, USA
Eighth National Convention
May 27-29, 2006 * New York City
Our Future, Our Fight: Youth Beat Back the Ultra-Right
On Memorial Day Weekend members of the Young Communist League, USA refused to sit back while ultra-right attempts to destroy our future by holding our 8th National Convention in Brooklyn, New York. During the weekend, over 250 delegates and guests from Oakland, Chicago, Maine, Providence, Florida, St. Louis, New York and many other communities came together to celebrate the successes of the YCL in the last 4 years and to plan how to move the YCL forward in the struggle for peace, jobs and education for young people.
Convention highlights include:
Convention-goers attended “War and Peace”, an art exhibit and hip-hop performance co-sponsored by Dynamic Magazine, World Up and Upper Playground
Convention-goers demonstrated outside of a Brooklyn military recruitment center demanding money for schools, jobs and not for war
Convention adopted a national Action Plan, a document that provides a foundation for our work over the next 4 years
Convention approved resolutions covering our approach to the struggle of immigrants, the struggle for peace, and aid to survivors of Hurricane Katrina
Convention elected of new National Council and National Coordinator, Erica Smiley
The convention opened with a rousing speech from out-going National Coordinator Jessica Marshall, setting the tone for the rest of the weekend by noting “This country needs a radical youth organization, a strong and vibrant multi-racial organization. The YCL knows that unity is not a secondary vision. We are not victims, we are fighters!” Also addressing the convention were Congressman Major Owens (D-NY) who welcomed us to Brooklyn “on behalf of all the progressive forces of the nation and world”, Jarvis Tyner, executive Vice Chair of the Communist Party USA who reminded us that “Tomorrow is Yours”, and international guests from the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), YCL of Canada, YCL of Greece, YCL of Israel and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) of El Salvador.
Throughout the weekend YCL members and guests participated in workshops on topics ranging from issues such as “Youth and the Poverty Draft”, skills-building sessions on how to get involved in the upcoming elections to ideological workshops highlighting the YCL’s approach to fighting racism, the struggle women’s equality and the fight for democracy.
As we all return home, pumped from the Convention and ready to hit the streets in the upcoming elections, we invite you to join us in the fight for the rights of young people and for a better future for all youth. You can do this in many ways, signing up for the upcoming YCL School where you can dive deeper into the many ideological questions raised at the convention, you can participate in our elections work, and be a part of implementing our Action Plan in so many ways.
But before you do anything, consider joining the YCLUSA.
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Upcoming Events
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2008 Elections
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Check back soon for more information!
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Photo courtesy of Carl Lipscombe. Marching against Bush's privatization scheme.
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Social Security wasn’t in crisis until Bush started attacking it. There is no “crisis? coming in 2018. Today, benefits are paid with interest that is made on treasury bonds. In 2018 the system is supposed to begin using the fund’s surplus to pay benefits. That will be the only immediate change if the system is left unchanged.
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photo courtesy of author. Two young women receiving information about the "poverty draft".
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The Coalition Against Militarism in our Schools (CAMS), comprised of family members and school staff, has a Student Education Campaign that includes information about optout and military recruiting. Students taking the lead in this campaign, along with adult supporters, strategize about how to inform their specific communities.
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A very good friend of mine voted for Bush last November. It shocked me then and it continues to bother me now.
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The Sixth Annual National Student Labor Week of Action was a huge success! In the tradition of Cesar Chavez and Dr. Martin Luther King, students and workers stood as one in the fight for economic justice and workers’ rights on campuses and in communities nationwide. This year thousands of students participated in over 250 actions and events. Students demanded that their universities pay workers fair and livable wages, provide adequate medical benefits, respect workers’ rights to organize and bargain and more.
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If you have organized a YCL club and want to officially register as a club with the national office than this is the form for you!
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Click here to check out what will happen at the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students!
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cover - 2005/March
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Mother Bloor committed her entire life to the class struggle, fighting tirelessly for women’s suffrage, workers’ rights, trade unions, peace, international solidarity and socialism. Mother Bloor fought whereever, whenever she was needed.
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More 2005 - March
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America (The Book) A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction by The Writers of the Daily Show and Jon Stewart
Warner Books
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Olga: Revolutionary and Martyr
by Fernando Morais • Translated by Ellen Watson
(Grove Press)
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The Freedom Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq, by Christian Parenti (New Press, 2004)
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More 2005 - March
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Beautiful Struggle - Talib Kweli – (Geffen Records, 2004)) &
New Danger – (Universal Music, 2004)
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Love + Revolution is the second full-length album from New York-based ‘Puerto Punx’ Ricanstruction. (Uprising Records, 2004)
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A delegation of military family members whose sons died while fighting in the Iraq war traveled to Jordan from December 27, 2004 to January 4, 2005. The Families for Peace Humanitarian Aid Delegation delivered $600,000 worth of humanitarian supplies for refugees from the U.S. attack on Falluja. Dynamic speaks with Hany Khalil of United for Peace and Justice, who participated in the delegation.
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Photo: Dahr Jamail
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More 2005 - March
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Imagine a show about seven strangers picked to live together in a house. Their challenge? Find a real job (not one given to them by MTV) that provides a living wage, health insurance, and a career path. There’s no way out - not finding a job means the contestants on this show fail to support themselves or their families. That’s the real challenge facing us—young people in the US—and it’s rarely shown on TV.
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Prisons are unnecessary, yet we continue to fund them. They are supposed to change the criminals that are sent there into contributing citizens – yet everyone in a cell is just getting a kick in the ass from society.
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On a Saturday afternoon in La Vega, classrooms are packed with women of all ages returning to school, seeking higher degrees thanks to Mission Ribas. Photo: Noah Friedsky
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The host country for the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students has seen amazing changes over the past few years. Recently, the US has started to indirectly threaten intervention with Venezuela’s internal affairs, claiming that the state ‘supports terrorism.’ Omar Sierra, a founding member of the Bolivarian Circles, talks to Dynamic about people power at work in Venezuela:
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