BY STEFANIE TRICE AND DIANA NEWBERRY
ATLANTA - Young Socialists from around the United States and several other countries are making final preparations for the organization's second national convention, taking place here March 28-30. Young Socialists from around the world have come early to Atlanta to participate in full- time convention-building teams. Armed with the Militant newspaper and Pathfinder books, these teams are getting out to farms, campuses, and immigrant communities and factory gates. They are also organizing interviews with local media building awareness about the convention locally.

Leaflets in Spanish and English publicizing the convention and the Saturday night "Eyewitness Report From Albania and Yugoslavia" by Militant staff writer Argiris Malapanis, who will have just returned from a Balkans reporting team, have been posted throughout the greater Atlanta area.

YS members Paul Pederson and Gabe Siert flew in from Minneapolis to be part of this effort. The Young Socialists in Sweden have also sent two members of their chapter to build and attend the convention.

Young Socialists in France, Iceland, New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom are all sending representatives. These young revolutionaries will be bringing with them the experiences of struggles by workers and youth in those countries, and their perspectives on building the communist movement internationally.

Throughout the United States, regional teams have built the convention through participation in conferences and meetings on issues ranging from defense of the Cuban revolution, farmers fight for land, the fight against racism, and the environment.

Diana Newberry from Morgantown, West Virginia, en route to help organize the convention in Atlanta, went to Miami to participate in a meeting on U.S. policy towards Cuba featuring Felix Wilson, a diplomat from the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, D.C. Two hundred people attended the event and bought a wide range of Pathfinder books, as well as several subscriptions to the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial. At the event, Young Socialists had a table from which they sold t-shirts as a fund-raiser for travel to the Atlanta Convention. As part of the political work that week, one person asked to join the YS.

In Enfield, North Carolina, Doug Nelson of the Atlanta YS chapter attended the Black Land Loss Conference. "Workers and farmers are indispensable allies," Nelson said. "We saw the interest of many farmers at the conference in the socialist press." Communist workers and youth sold six Militant subscriptions, seven copies of the Marxist magazine New International, and $200 in Pathfinder literature at the conference, and one Black farmer there expressed interest in attending the convention. Nearby in Greensboro, where an environmental youth conference was taking place, John Armstrong from Greensboro and Stefanie Trice from Newark, New Jersey, took part in debates over the question of reforming the capitalist system or revolution, and had long discussions with youth who were trying to figure out the way to fight oppression.

In Los Angeles, Young Socialists member Walter Lopez reported that when Craig Honts, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of that city, spoke at a high school class, there was a heated debate over the campaign's demand for a world without borders, with the overwhelming majority of students speaking in defense of immigrant rights. There was also interest in Hont's demands for "U.S. hands off Cuba," "Defend affirmative action," and "Jobs for all - 30 hours work for 40 hours pay." At the event, four students decided to work with Young Socialists there to fight to get to the Atlanta convention.

In Newark, Young Socialists have been having recruitment meetings almost daily with growing numbers of youth interested in the convention. This includes several students involved in responding to a racist incident that took place at Seton Hall University on March 19. One student planning to attend the convention bought New International no. 10, with the article "Imperialism's March Towards Fascism and War," as well as Leon Trotsky on Black Nationalism and Self-Determination, at a book sale held by the YS chapter to raise money for travel to the convention.

Opportunities to spread socialist ideas
In Atlanta, in the aftermath of the bombing of abortion clinics and a gay and lesbian nightclub, teams publicizing the convention locally are talking to youth about the place of the convention in resisting the onslaught of reactionary forces. Participants will discuss how this reaction is emboldened by the rightward shift of both the Democrats and Republicans. Following the YS convention, an April Young Feminists Summit in Washington, D.C., and the World Festival of Youth and Students in Cuba this summer will be other arenas to explain a working-class approach to the political and economic turmoil of capitalism in crisis.

Central to doing this is explaining the role of study and propaganda in arming young rebels and working-class fighters for the struggles of today and the future. One special feature at the convention will be a massive sale of communist literature for Pathfinder Readers Club members that will enable youth to stock up on revolutionary ammunition.

"World politics is producing more explosions and resistance to the brutal measures capitalists are trying to force on workers and youth," said Joshua Carroll, the organizer of the Convention Organizing Committee. "Young Socialists will be discussing the opportunities for young fighters around the world to be part of building a centralized, disciplined youth organization that can win youth to socialist ideas and be part of taking power out of the hands of the war-makers.

What a young communist should be
In explaining the role of organization in building the Young Socialists, Carroll referred to Che Guevara's 1960 speech to the Union of Young Communists of Cuba, entitled "What a Young Communist Should Be." An excerpt of that speech is printed in the Young Socialists' pamphlet on its founding convention last year. Guevara states:

"Without organization, ideas, after an initial momentum, begin to lose their effect. They become routine, degenerate into conformity, and end up simply a memory. I make this warning because too often, ... many great initiatives have failed. They have been forgotten because of the lack of the organizational apparatus needed to keep them going and accomplish something."

Rallying to this task, Young Socialists from throughout the world who are part of fighting the capitalist offensive will be coming to this convention, having debated and discussed out how to meet the challenges ahead. They are bringing with them other fighters who are looking to advance the struggles of which they're a part. Socialist Educational Conferences, sponsored by the Young Socialists and the Socialist Workers Party that were held in Canada, Iceland, and Sweden over the last few months, have been an important part of advancing the perspective of building an international proletarian youth organization.

Diana Newberry and Stefanie Trice are members of the Young Socialist National Committee presently assigned to the Convention Organizing Committee in Atlanta.  
 
 
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