The Militant (logo) 
   Vol.66/23            June 10, 2002 
 
 
Socialist summer school
prepares SWP convention
(front page)
 
BY GREG MCCARTAN  
A nationwide socialist summer school will help prepare the forty-first convention of the Socialist Workers Party. The three-day convention is scheduled to begin the morning of July 25 in Oberlin, Ohio. The SWP has branches and organizing committees in 25 cities and towns in the United States and is collaborating with the Young Socialists to organize the school around twice-weekly sessions in June and July.

A concerted program of study and discussion through the summer school will enable participants to deepen their knowledge of the world program and continuity of the communist movement, and respond more effectively to the opportunities in the class struggle today.

Every branch and organizing committee of the party will be holding the twice-weekly class series around a common syllabus. The Young Socialists has decided to make Chicago and Los Angeles centers of the summer school and is working with individual members to move to one of the cities in order to jump into the school and political work over the summer months. YS and party members are planning to organize caravans from the two cities to the convention, stopping to sell the Militant and meet with workers along the way.

The Militant will carry a regular column on the summer school, reporting on the political questions under discussion and other aspects of how participants are digging into the rich material and historical lessons contained in the readings.

Concurrent with the school, SWP branches are organizing preconvention discussion sessions around documents submitted by the party leadership and other written contributions to the Discussion Bulletin, which is open to all party members.

Pathfinder Press and its supporters in the reprint project are engaged in a big effort over the coming weeks to publish several new books and editions allowing participants in the summer schools to mine their wealth in preparation for the convention.

These include a 2002 edition of The Changing Face of U.S. Politics, by Jack Barnes, in English, with French and Spanish soon to follow; The History of American Trotskyism, by James P. Cannon, in French and Spanish for the first time; and a new edition of the book in English. All three will include a 24-page photo section. Another new publication in Spanish is Their Trotsky and Ours: Communist Continuity Today, by Jack Barnes, along with a new English edition, and a French edition soon to follow.

The summer school will be an opportunity for a number of participants to read the material for the first time, along with others who can reconquer the works through the lens of the experiences of the SWP in the class struggle and the unfolding of the world political situation today.  
 
 
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