Those attending the meeting ranged from garment workers in Philadelphia to groups of students from Albany, New York, and Amherst, Massachusetts.

Arrin Hawkins and Brian Taylor, who were part of the five-person team that participated in the book fair with Pathfinder books, described the hunger among young people at the event for books on struggles against imperialism. “The book fair became a place for discussion of culture and politics. The Pathfinder literature we brought was part of this,” said Taylor.

The response we got from many, noted Hawkins, was “We need these books!” That was especially true of titles by Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, and Thomas Sankara, leader of the Burkina Faso revolution in the 1980s, as well as on the Cuban Revolution.

Mary-Alice Waters, president of Pathfinder Press, who led the team, pointed to the growing class contradictions sharpened by the rapid development of oil extraction operations in Equatorial Guinea. Many in that country hate the imperialist plunder of their wealth, while at the same time, “many working people have the illusion that the development of an oil industry will lead to a qualitative improvement of their situation.”

She pointed to Nigeria, where 50 years since the beginning of the oil industry, controlled by Royal Dutch Shell and other imperialist corporations, the impoverishment of working people has deepened. In Equatorial Guinea, the oil-driven economic changes are leading to the birth of a hereditary working class, one that will begin to gain self-confidence and seek to transform its living and working conditions.

In the discussion period, Dean Debrosse, a worker from Newark, New Jersey, referred to discussions he has had with workers originally from Nigeria. Many working people know about their exploitation, but, he asked, what will it take to get to “a higher stage of militancy” to combat these conditions?

In Equatorial Guinea, as well as other countries, “working people will have go through some struggles and experiences for consciousness to change,” Waters responded. “In that sense it’s no different there than for working people in the United States. Confidence is born out of struggles and only the working class can lead this struggle,” she explained.

Martín Koppel, another panelist, cited recent articles in the big-business media about the “curse of oil” in some African countries. They seek to portray working people in Africa as helpless victims, but there have been important struggles such as those in Nigeria, from strikes by oil workers to the fight by the Ogoni people to protect their land. “Oil is not the curse in Africa,” Koppel said, “imperialism is.”

At the meeting, a fund collection to help defray the team’s expenses raised more than $4,100.

Discussion continued the next day among more than 80 people who attended a Sunday morning brunch at a Senegalese restaurant in Harlem. A number of the young people present attended a meeting beforehand organized by the Young Socialists.

During the brunch, Taylor, Koppel, and Waters were interviewed by a reporter for a weekly cable television show directed at the growing African immigrant population in the New York City area.

Two of those attending the weekend events were Christine Crowe, 20, a student at Arcadia University near Philadelphia, and Alfredo Huante, 22, who goes to school at the University of California in Los Angeles. They recently spent 10 weeks in Equatorial Guinea participating in a biodiversity program. At the National University of Equatorial Guinea they attended the book fair, where they met Hawkins, Taylor, and the others who brought Pathfinder books to the fair.

Crowe said that the New York program “was great. It really illustrated how imperialism has affected the country.” She said she learned about the role of the U.S. oil companies in exploiting Africa. “I hope meetings like this one continue to raise awareness,” she added.  
 
 
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