BY BRIAN TAYLOR
MONTREAL - "I'm looking toward joining the Young Socialists," 18-year-old Erick Lafleur from Quebec told this reporter during the October 31-November 2 Young Socialists founding convention here. About a dozen young people who were not members of the YS attended the convention.

Explaining his first contact with the YS, Lafleur said, "I went to a Che commemoration in Quebec where the YS had a stand to sell Pathfinder books. There, I met [YS member] Carlos, who told me about a Militant Labor forum on the work of Che in Latin America." He continued, "I was interested in how the YS works so I asked if I could participate in the forum and possibly join the Young Socialists. That's when he invited me to come" to the convention. Most impressive to him, Lafleur said, was the international character of the event.

Quebec independence activist Maude Prod'Homme, 16, was impressed by the fact that the convention was overwhelmingly held in French. Prod'Homme, a high school student, participated together with a Young Socialists member in a lunchtime discussion group. Formerly a member of the anarchist group Food Not Bombs, Prod'Homme said she wanted to see what the YS is all about. "I think the independence struggle is a great example of a fight," she said. "It is an historic oppression, whose injustice is so evident. The question is how to fight."

Fabián García had joined the YS just before the convention. He was most impressed by the seriousness of the political discussions that took place during the delegated sessions of the convention. García bought Pombo: A Man of Che's `Guerrilla' and Le visage changeant de la politique aux États-Unis. Following the convention discussion on defending the YS against harassment and victimization from the state and its cop organizations, García also bought Cointelpro: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom.

Andrew Sovran joined the YS in Woodstock, Ontario, two weeks before the convention during a tour by YS leader Maria Isabel Le Blanc. Young Socialist Kevin Austin found out that Sovran was doing a high school project on Fidel Castro's political history, and invited him to "check out some Pathfinder books." Sovran had scrounged his high school library and read The Communist Manifesto. During the convention he bought copies of The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions and New International no. 3, which includes the articles "Communism and the Fight for a Popular Revolutionary Government: 1848 to Today" by Mary-Alice Waters and "National Liberation and Socialism in the Americas" by Manuel Piñeiro.

Sarede Switzer, 17, came on the last day of the convention. "I was always interested in socialist ideas," she said. Switzer bought a subscription to the Militant and attended a class on the 1917 Bolshevik-lead revolution in Russia.

Julien Boisvert, 19, is a student at the College de Maisonneuve and a journalist for the student newspaper there called Trait d'Union. He met the YS at a literature table when the posters on it caught his attention. One was of Che Guevara, another called for support for the unionization drive at McDonald's, and the third was on the fight for Quebec independence, which surprised him because there is no referendum currently taking place. "I've wanted to get involved for a long time," Boisvert said. "Last year I participated in a protest at Quebec City during the student strike there. A bunch of us would discuss the fact that we were against the cuts, but I would never be able to come up with what we could do instead. That's why I was interested in the YS," he said. The political arguments of the Young Socialists are the "way to convince people."  
 
 
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