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Issues & Ideas
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Get your words and thoughts on.
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Organizing
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Tools to organize and get organized.
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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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Spotlight
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2008 Elections
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Check back soon for more information!
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More 2004 - March
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© Jose Venturelli
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On February 24, protest Halliburton, Bechtel, and the other corporations that are making millions in Iraq, and speak out for Iraqi workers\' rights and self-determination.
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Cover - 2003/November
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Momentum is building across the globe for the Global Day of Action against War and Occupation on March 20, the one-year anniversary of the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq.
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Speakerboxxx / The Love Below
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Atlanta-based duo OutKast has delivered another black experience in their latest and most innovative album yet, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Big Boi and Andre 3000 each took one half of the double-album to develop their own material for what is their fifth album...
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"Salt of the Earth" Movie Poster
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The whole history of the American continent is full of heroic figures that resisted racism, colonialism and exploitation. Those who struggled during the McCarthy era are among the most brave and valiant of all time. In the face of segregation, violence, red baiting and political repression, many stood up for what was right against all odds...
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Matthew Hall 1984-2003
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At 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 24, someone shot young activist and poet Matthew Hall in the back. The bullet hit vital internal organs, leaving Matthew lying on the corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue in New York City. He was rushed to Harlem Hospital for treatment, but at 4:30 the next morning, in spite of doctors’ efforts and the hope of family and friends, our dear comrade Matthew Hall was pronounced dead.
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Every night is an opportunity to
break night
to vanquish sleep...
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Matthew Hall lived like most
Revolutionaries I know, smiling,
He was a true Revolutionary,
romantically in love with his people.
Only Revolutionaries approach
war & chaos,
death & destruction
with laughter & hope
for possibilities of resistance.
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During the week of November 17-21st tens of thousands of workers, unions, environmental groups, youth and student organizations, global justice groups and civil and human rights organizations throughout North and South America and the Caribbean will be participating in a week of educational activities, protests, marches, speak-outs and forums focused on defeating the ratification and implementation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA; ALCA in Spanish) agreement...
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Members of the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST) and other groups, carrying a banner reading: "no to FTAA," protest against the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) in front of the U.S. Embassy, in Brasilia, Sept. 17, 2002. Representatives of various labor and political organizations protested to demand Congress call a plebescite on whether Brazil should join the FTAA.
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No recent world event better exemplifies Latin America’s situation today than the stand-off at the World Trade Organization rounds in Cancun, México. Led by Brazil, twenty-two large developing nations united to face economic hegemony imposed by bourgeoisies of the United States and Europe...
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The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement has many hidden negative effects on the lives of people throughout the Western Hemisphere. One of the most malicious of these is the agreement’s assault on public education...
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Oct. 17, 2003 - U.S.-led coalition forces try to resuscitate a soldier, left, as another has a head wound treated, right, after an attack on a Humvee on the main road about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad. The U.S.-led occupation army faces harassing attacks from a shadowy array of Iraqi and possibly foreign foes – die-hard Sunni Muslim loyalists of the toppled Baathist government, other Iraqi nationalists who want the Americans out, terror bombers who may be driven by Islamic fanaticism. In Shiite Muslim areas, the Americans have an uneasy, sometimes bloody coexistence with the armed militias of clerical factions.
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"My husband is in the army national guard and has been deployed since Feb. 13th. We have two beautiful children, a 16 month old and a four month old. He missed our sons first steps and our daughters birth. He has seen her only through pictures, and why? Because our governing officials are a bunch of liars..."
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Judge Baer Jr.
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On 7 May 2003, Harold Baer, Jr., Federal District Judge for the Southern District of New York, handed down a decision awarding damages against Iraq for the deaths of two men in the 9/11 attacks. While the judge admitted the plaintiffs presented “few actual facts of any material support that Iraq actually provided,? he commanded Iraq to pay up to $64 million...
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Mahmoud Darwish
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Mahmoud Darwish is one of the most important poets of the Palestinian resistance to occupation and war. As a poet, activist and commentator, Darwish has become an international symbol of the Palestinian cause and represents the status of a people without a state, exiled from their homes and histories...
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