BY MARK GILSDORF
This column is written and edited by the Young
Socialists (YS), an international organization of young
workers, students, and other youth fighting for
socialism. For more information about the YS write to: Young
Socialists, 1573 N. Milwaukee, P.O. Box #478, Chicago,
Ill. 60622. Tel: (773) 772-0551.
Compuserve: 105162,605
PITTSBURGH - Young Socialists here are gaining reinforcements this week in their efforts to build the upcoming Active Workers Conference being held in Pittsburgh July 11-12. Harry Suparto, a young worker from Indonesia, recently joined the Pittsburgh chapter. He has been actively building the conference through the petitioning effort to place Socialist Workers candidate Dorothy Kolis on the ballot for U.S. Congress in the 14th district. Asked what attracted him to the YS, Harry responded that going to the strike at MSI in Marietta, Ohio by steelworkers; participating in an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally; and talking to coal miners at mine portals helped convince him to join. "I also liked the fact that the socialist movement supports independence for Puerto Rico and discusses other events from around the world, instead of just focusing on narrow local issues," said Harry.
As part of the effort to build the conference, Jacob Perasso, a member of the YS in San Francisco and Manuel Gonzalez, a college student from Santa Cruz, California, have come to Pittsburgh a week early to join teams of socialists selling the Militant to coal miners and other industrial workers in the region.
The chapter has also been holding a weekly class series at the University of Pittsburgh where it is an official campus organization. The classes, held on Thursday evenings, have helped the chapter attract a new layer of young people around the socialist movement and involve them in petitioning teams. Some of the readings used in the classes have included The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Socialism on Trial by James P. Cannon, and the interview with Cuban general Enrique Carreras that was printed in the International Socialist Review as a supplement to the July 6 issue of the Militant. The next class the chapter is planning is on the pamphlet Puerto Rico: U.S. Colony in the Caribbean and the recent coverage of the telephone workers strike from the Militant, which the chapter will use as part of its efforts to help build a delegation from Pittsburgh to the July 25 March on Washington for Puerto Rican independence.
Mark Gilsdorf is a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 14213.