One-day Detroit Workers World conference: A great success

Workers World Party in Detroit hosted a one-day school and mini-conference on Marxism and Revolution on April 21. Activists came from Cleveland, Chicago, Grand Rapids and E. Lansing, Mich., as well from Detroit and the metropolitan area.

Some of the participants in the Marxism and Revolution conference in Detroit, April 21. WW photo: Leslie Feinberg

Party members and friends—including new friends and youths—heard the opening keynote talk by Leslie Feinberg from New Jersey, a Workers World newspaper managing editor and well-known author and leader in the lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) movement. Feinberg powerfully recounted her own introduction as a Jewish transgender lesbian worker to the Workers World Party branch in Buffalo in 1973 in order to explain concepts relating to Marxism as applied today by a revolutionary party.

A panel of leading women comrades then expanded on three key aspects: Debbie Johnson on the national question and national oppression, Cheryl LaBash on Marxist economics and the nature of capitalism, and Martha Grevatt on the origins of gender—women’s and LGBT—oppression and how ending class society will abolish it.

The afternoon session heard from Willie “JR” Fleming of Chicago on the struggle against rampant police brutality and anti-racist housing struggles in that city. Party leader Jerry Goldberg spoke on applying Marxism to today’s struggles by utilizing transitional demands and how to do it.

LeiLani Dowell of New York City, a Workers World newspaper managing editor and leader of the youth organization FIST—Fight Imperialism, Stand Together—ended with a talk on what it means to belong to a revolutionary party like WWP. After the conference, four young people signed up to go to Cuba this summer on a youth brigade being organized by FIST.

Between presentations, a lively discussion took place on many topics, with participants applying Marxist theory to today’s struggles and the ultimate struggle for socialism and communism. A short animated documentary, “The Manifestoon,” was shown, and an old-fashioned protest sing-along rounded out the program.

Conference participants left the day-long event uplifted by the high level of political discussion and focus on Marxism and the party.