NATIONAL FIGHTBACK CONFERENCE
Build a youth organization, build FIST
Excerpts from a talk by Julie Fry at the Nov. 13-14
National Fightback Conference.
Now that the presidential election is over, there is blame
being thrown around at people who supposedly are responsible
for the defeat of John Kerry. The worst of it is targeted
toward the lesbian and gay community for daring to assert their
fundamental right to equality during a capitalist election
cycle--but there is also much head shaking and finger pointing
at the youth of this country, who supposedly did not turn out
in sufficient numbers on election day to ensure a Kerry
victory.
We are being called apathetic, stupid, selfish. But what
have we in the movement learned about youths during this last
election cycle?
For one thing, we know that there were tens of thousands of
young people in the streets this past summer, demonstrating
against both the Republican and Demo cratic conventions.
Everyone here knows how strong the Anybody But Bush tendency
has been over the last year or so--how it pulled so many
thousands of progressives and activists out of the streets and
convinced them that getting Bush out was more important than
stopping the war, fighting for workers' rights, fighting the
oppression of the lesbian, gay, bi, trans community. But among
those who rejected this so-called logic, among those who stayed
in the streets and rejected both of the ruling class parties'
offerings, a large proportion were youth.
And this fact gives us a lot to be hopeful for. Consider
that youths today have very little or no living memory of a
time when the Soviet Union existed or when any of the great
socialist revolutions took place just a generation or two ago,
revolutions that gave hope, inspiration, and guidance to the
youths of that period. Consider that almost all youths today
are taught that the fall of many of the largest socialist
countries means that socialism is impossible--that it is at
best naïve and at worst evil and wrong.
With the exception of a few wonderful examples provided by
countries like socialist Cuba, young people today have little
to look to in the way of alternatives to capitalism. Worse
still, they are taught that capitalism is some sort of natural,
indestructible process and that any attempts to change it are
futile.
And yet we have seen a large, sustained youth movement now
over several years. It is a movement that took on capitalist
globalization, first through a struggle against sweatshops and
then through open anti-capitalist battles in places like
Seattle, Washington, D.C., Quebec, Philadelphia and many
more.
This movement has given strength to the struggles against
the prison-industrial complex through its strong solidarity
with Mumia Abu Jamal, its anti-police-brutality initiatives
like the Million Youth March, and through organizations like
FIERCE, which is a lesbian/gay/bi/trans youth organization that
has initiated several strong, militant campaigns against police
attacks on LGBT youths in Greenwich Village here in New
York.
Youth have fought and won the struggle against eliminating
affirmative action in education through years of organizing and
demonstrating. They have mobilized by the hundreds of thousands
in the past few years to stop the war on Iraq. More and more,
they are showing their solidarity with the Palestinian
people.
One of the most significant things about all these struggles
is that large sectors of the youths that take part in them are
not just fighting for these concrete demands, as important as
they are. They are fighting against the capitalist system as a
whole. And they articulate this clearly.
So how can we move the struggle forward--the youth struggle
in particular, which in some ways is already very vibrant and
strong? The younger members of this party have already
partially answered this question by creating a youth
organization--Fight Imperialism, Stand Together or FIST--and we
are very excited about it.
The purpose of FIST is to unite with young people in their
existing struggles, assembling a group of dedicated youth
organizers who will work to make the move ment grow bigger and
stronger. Second, we can use the party's strong independent,
anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist politics to push the movement
forward--to unite youths with workers as with the Million
Worker March, to build strong anti-racist solidarity in the
youth struggle, and to combine the brave and militant tactics
of youth activists with brave and militant politics as
well.
FIST is the way to bring the strong politics and experience
of our Party directly into the youth struggle. Build FIST!
Build a workers' world!
Reprinted from the Nov. 25, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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