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.
We jumped off of the election victory right back into the middle of the global financial crisis. While we have a president that has openly supported workers against corporations and banks, we still have a financial system run amuck where working people foot the bill with our homes, our schools, and our jobs (or lack thereof).
Still, the parameters of what is necessary to turn the country around have been hugely expanded as so-called mainstream economists call for “at-least partial” nationalization of failing banks and companies like Ford and General Motors. Middle America grapples both publicly at town halls and privately at the dinner table about what a “just economy” would look like, all but defining a fetal path to socialism.
Legislation supporting gay rights is passing despite the defeat in California in states such as Iowa and Vermont. And I was just informed that the Presbyterian Church USA approved the ordination of gay ministers.
The YCL is having our National School August 15th-23rd in NYC. The school will cover the topics from political economy and the current economic crisis, socialism and what it means for young people today, understanding class in today's society, the fight against racism and sexism, and much more! Register online today.
The Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) has created a toolkit to help youth and students organize for the SLAP Week of Action March 30th-April 4th. Download it and so you can organize on your campus and be sure to sign up for SLAP updates.
For the past 7 years, the Bush Administration has led an on-going "war on terror" in Iraq and Afghanistan. While we condemn terrorism, both individual acts and state sanctioned, we oppose the continued US occupation of these countries.
The election of Barack Obama as president of the United States will forever be known as a major turning point, not only in US history, but in the history of the western nations and of the world. Although Obama’s election is no defeat of capitalism, it represents a changing tide in our on-going struggle for democratic rights, and a step forward in our long-term struggle for socialism. Obama’s election and the landslide victory over the Ultra-Right in Congress create the conditions for new advances for equality and democracy generally
Jobs With Justice (JwJ) is putting on their annual Grinch of the Year contest. Make your voice heard on who has done the most to hurt the working class.
Edwin Stanton, the tireless Secretary of War in President Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet said at the time of Lincoln’s death, “He belongs to the ages.” Much the same can be said about this election.
The election challenged long-held assumptions, broke voter turnout records, and shattered seemingly unbreakable barriers – none more historic than the election of an African-American president for the first time. And all this happened in the face of negative appeals to the worst angels of the American people. But to our credit, we repudiated the old politics of fear, division, racial code words, red-baiting, immigrant bashing, and nostalgic appeals to a country and time that never were.
If the election of Barack Obama was a monumental victory, election night itself was a magical moment
Beginning in 2009, Dynamic will move forward with plans to expand and improve our web presence and evolve into a primarily online publication. In the next few months we will be completely redesigning and upgrading the website. We are also planning to release an annual print compilation featuring a collection of each year's best writing along with artwork and photographs. Our aim is to grow bigger and broader than is currently possible with the quarterly print edition.
Like in the U.S. mass movements in the 1960s and 70s, the student and youth movement in El Salvador is considered one of the strongest and most influential forces in the social justice struggle.
Was Britney running around town again without panties? Oh my god! Look she shaved her head! Is Lindsay Lohan gay? Maybe so, but she’s definitely still on drugs! Did you see the new Paris Hilton sex tape? And when do you think Amy Winehouse will finally just die?
“[Religion] is the opium of the people.”
—Karl Marx, 1844
In the 1800s, people, especially philosophers, looked towards the future and saw a world free from religion, where human rationality reigned supreme. But a simple glance at the evening news, more than a century and a half after Marx’s famous statement, shows that religion is alive and well in all parts of the globe, and, moreover, it plays a major role in world events.
With the breakneck pace of today's "horse race"-style elections coverage this summer’s Democratic and Republican National Conventions may as well have taken place years ago. Yet, there are many Americans who watched or attended Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver that can still recall the lines wrapped around the stadium for miles, and the over 80,000 people who were in attendance that day.
At the time, some commentators attempted to portray this closing night of the DNC as a “rock concert” for a narcissistic and shallow “celebrity” candidate.
Some of Obama’s closing remarks addressing these criticisms at Invesco are important to remember now: "What they don't understand is that this election isn’t about me, it's about you...Change doesn't come from Washington. It comes to Washington."
Generation Vote, a national coalition of different youth and student organizations, has created a Youth Agenda for the 2008 elections. Read it, endorse it, download it and distributed it today!
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