Absent for 12 years, the Young Communist League (YCL) is back on the Canadian political scene. Young members of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) have reestablished the YCL across the country.
The YCL’s resurrection began last year, explains Aaron Ekman, communications director and member of the YCL’s National Preparatory Committee. Ekman and other young CPC members felt that the need for a YCL was greater than ever. In his estimation, while earlier attempts were made to reconstitute the YCL, they failed because activists were too focused on international events. “We focused our new efforts on building local clubs rooted in the community that dealt with local issues.�
The YCL now has several hundred members across Canada and clubs in many urban centers. Ekman states that the YCL is growing on a daily basis. During the May - June national elections alone, one to two young people each day were applying to join the organization through the its web page.
Ekman says that the economic issues that drew people to the YCL in the past are drawing young people to the organization today. “Young people are facing massive unemployment and poor economic conditions on a scale that has not existed since the 1930s.� The mainstream political organizations in Canada are not addressing these issues.
The YCL is currently immersed in a range of activities, from anti-poverty struggles to union organizing campaigns and the student movement. The YCL was heavily involved in the most recent Canadian elections where a number of members ran as CPC candidates for Parliament.
Part of the Canadian political landscape since the 1920s, the YCL had been one of Canada’s oldest youth groups. Its dissolution in 1991 was a result of political infighting and turmoil in the CPC, as the crisis facing the communist movement worldwide spread to Canada.
The organization’s rebirth is not going unnoticed, Ekman concludes. “Whenever I go to demonstrations and people see our [YCL] banners they come up and tell me how they can’t believe that we’re back and that they had been members of the organization in the past. It’s a real base from which to organize, there is that cultural connection to the country and to the people,--it invigorates you constantly.�
reprinted with permission from the People’s Weekly World www.pww.org
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