|
Top level
| |
Category: |
Description: |
|
|
Issues & Ideas
|
Get your words and thoughts on.
|
|
|
|
Get what you want and fundraise too.
|
|
|
Organizing
|
Tools to organize and get organized.
|
|
|
Dynamic Magazine
|
The quarterly magazine of the YCL
|
|
|
YCL 8th National Convention May 2006
|
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.
|
|
|
Spotlight
|
|
|
|
2008 Elections
|
Check back soon for more information!
|
LOS ANGELES - A group of public education advocates have begun a movement to tax oil extraction here and throughout the state of California. The revenue will be put into funds for public education, a service that has seen scaled-back funding and rising costs for college students.
|
Last week, Ryan Dunn of Jackass, the television stunt show where cast members put themselves in dangerous situations for laughs, died in a fiery Pennsylvania car crash.
|
According to a recent Stanford University Medical School study, described in Science Daily, the big tobacco companies are trying to lure minority youth into smoking menthol cigarettes.
|
NORWAY, Maine - People in this central Maine town will be giving a July 1 send-off to three Mainers heading off to Cuba next week. Under the auspices of the Maine group Let Cuba Live and Pastors for Peace, they are taking humanitarian supplies donated from Maine and Quebec.
|
MINNEAPOLIS - Online activists, trade unionists and supporters nationwide convened here last week during the Netroots Nation annual conference.
|
ORLANDO, Fla. - As city police officers here arrested four people for distributing food to the homeless, June 8, a crowd of mostly young activists chanted, "Food is a right, not a privilege!" In two weeks of civil disobedience, 15 people involved with Food Not Bombs have been arrested so far in the city. Hundreds more supporters, many of them students, have come to rally behind the homeless and people who are feeding them.
|
Republican operatives seem to have found a new organizing tool: dancing in the dark at the Jefferson Memorial.
|
At a recent town hall meeting in Marshalltown, Iowa, Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told assembled voters that young people should be required to take a poll test before being allowed to vote.
|
CHICAGO - Young people from all over the rust belt converged on the spot of the Haymarket Massacre when the "Red School Bus" tour stopped here for the Midwest School for Young Activists.
|
The right wing's widespread attack on workers has a new target: the nation's youth. Currently the number of youth who are unemployed, especially youth of color, has risen to a level not seen in the last 60 years. It is estimated that only one in four youth who are looking for summer jobs this year will find one.
|
In England when Parliament attempted to nearly triple the cost of tuition for university students last year, thousands took to the streets in mass protest.
|
Cornell Hood II, a 35-year-old from New Orleans was handed a life sentence under Louisiana's repeat offender law. His crime? Possession of and intent to distribute marijuana. Hood had previously pleaded guilty to this crime three times before and had received a five-year suspended sentence for each charge as well as probation.
|
SEATTLE- At least 25 students were arrested after occupying a campus administrative building in protest of the University of Washington's contract with Sodexho, a giant food service provider.
|
The Texas Senate approved, in a 19 to 12 vote, a bill to allow the carrying of concealed handguns on public college campuses. The bill's backers say the move is a necessary reaction to an incident that took place seven months ago when a University of Texas student carrying a gun opened fire while on campus.
|
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - On April 27, nine students launched a "study-in" at the office of Rutgers University president Richard L. McCormick. The students soon found themselves in a kind of "lock in" as they were not allowed to retrieve their back packs or get food from supporters outside.
|
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - As Michigan public schools struggle under Republican Party budget cuts, a new study released earlier this month revealed that most of the state's public school students are exposed to high levels of pollution.
|
Recently House Resolution 1 (H.R.1) passed in congress cutting $60 billion from the federal budget. One of the programs hit hardest is the Pell Grant program which was stripped of $5.7 billion. Pell Grants provide financial assistance to working class youth who are attempting to get a degree and better themselves, at the same time bettering the economy and society.
|
"young people from all over the region are preparing for the next stop on the Young Communist League, USA's Red School-Bus Tour in Chicago Illinois!"
|
A letter of solidarity from the Progressive Student Union Block, the student wing of the Palestinian People Party
|
With today's climate of international terrorism the U.S. justice system still continues to deny freedom to five Cuban patriots who were arrested for monitoring extremist terrorist groups in Miami. The YCL says ENOUGH!
|
|
