Lokomotive293
8th December 2013, 20:51
The 18th World Festival of Youth and Students has begun.
Quito, Dec 7 (Prensa Latina) Around 10,000 young people from over a hundred countries will march at the Bicentennial Park today in this capital to start the 18th World Festival of Youth and Students.
The agenda of the meeting which will run until Friday includes discussions on topics such as peace in Colombia, the situation of students in Chile, and the process of the Citizen Revolution in Ecuador.
As usual at these festivals that began in 1947 in the former Czechoslovakia, the Anti-Imperialist Tribunal will be installed to judge and try the imperialism.
The cases to be judged cases include that related to the U.S. oil company Chevron, which refuses to take responsibility for the pollution caused its subsidiary Texaco in the Ecuadorian Amazon region.
The unilateral U.S. blockade on Cuba for more than five decades will also be in the dock.
The Cuban delegation, one of the largest after Ecuador, also intended to detail among the youth of the world the case of the five Cuban citizens who were jailed in 1998 in Miami, for monitoring the anti-Cuban terrorist groups in South Florida.
Among the participants is the young Cuban Elian Gonzalez, who was 13 years back center of a legal dispute between Washington and Havana, after surviving a shipwreck in the Straits of Florida in which his mother died.
The opening ceremony, scheduled for this afternoon, will be attended by President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, cabinet members, mayor of Quito, Augusto Barrera, and several foreign personalities.
The youth festival, fourth to be held in Latin America after the two held in Cuba (1978, 1997) and Venezuela (2005), is dedicated to the leader of the Ecuadorian Liberal Revolution, Eloy Alfaro, the missing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the Ghana's Independence Hero kwame Nhkrumah.
http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2155401&Itemid=1
Leftsolidarity
30th December 2013, 22:14
Figured some folks might be interested in this:
http://fightimperialism.org/2013/12/29/all-over-the-world-youth-are-fighting-back/
It reads better if you go to the link.
“All over the world, youth are fighting back!”
Reflections on the World Festival of Youth and Students and the Bolivarian Process in Latin America
Based on remarks made by Caleb Maupin at the Workers World Forum on Dec. 20th, 2013.
Workers World Party and FIST are organizations that who have come together for the purpose of radically changing society. We are inspired by the ideology of Marxism-Leninism.
We see the world as exists today as one divided into classes. There is a very small class of wealthy people, who own the banks, the land, the natural resources, the factories, and essentially have control of the economy. These people are called capitalists.
In addition to this very small class of billionaires and exploiters, there are the rest of us. We are the working class. Because we don’t own any banks, or factories, or big box stores, or oil wells, we have to sell our labor power to those who do own those things.
This situation where one class owns, and the other class works, is called Capitalism.
Capitalism has been around for a long time, but in the modern period, it has become more complex.
The capitalists of the United States, the capitalists of Britain, the capitalists of Germany and France, do not just exploit the workers of their own countries, but they exploit the workers of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. They are not just capitalists. They are imperialists.
Workers in Latin America, in Africa, and in Asia are not simply exploited by the capitalists, they get so little in exchange for their labor and face such horrific conditions, that they are super exploited. The imperialist capitalists in the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, make so much money exploiting the workers of almost the entire world that they don’t just make profit, they make “super profits.”
And if some government or some workers in Asia, or Latin America, or Africa, decide they don’t want to obey to the capitalists, or they want to demand a better deal from the capitalists, the imperialists call up their employees in White House and the Pentagon, or on Downing Street, and they send in the tanks, and the drones; they impose sanctions, they overthrow governments. They murder and kill in order to keep the world subservient and keep their profits flowing in.This international economic order of global capitalism is called “imperialism.”
FIST marches with Syrian delegationin opening ceremony of WFYS
As a delegation of five revolutionary youth from the United States we already knew about capitalism and imperialism. What we learned on the recent trip we took to Ecuador to attend the World Festival of Youth and Students, was that this international order, this global economic set up, is being threatened and challenged. I saw for myself, that there is a rising, global people’s movement that is fighting back.
The imperialist global set up is far from stable or permanent. It is on the defensive, because people everywhere are loudly saying “We aren’t going to take this any longer!”
The Crimes of Neo-Liberalism
This trip was not the first time I had been in Ecuador. Not for political reasons, for unique circumstances in my life, I was able to visit Ecuador in the year 2000. The Ecuador I visited in the year 2000 and the Ecuador I visited last week, are two entirely different countries. So much has changed in just 13 years.
When I visited Ecuador in the year 2000, I flew in around 2 in to the morning. Outside of the airport, there was a crowd of roughly two or three thousand desperate starving people, begging everyone who came out of the airport for money. Between the airport entrance and the street, there was a line of cops, who had the jobs of keeping the crowd of desperately starving people away from the tourists.
In Quito, we went around to various different sites, classical churches, etc. At each of these sites, there was a big crowd of desperate people begging us for money. The circumstances were horrendous.
At this time, Ecuador was suffering because of Neo-Liberalism.
In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed. The capitalists and imperialists of the United States were jubilant. They said “we can take it all! We don’t have to give even the slightest crumb to the people any more!” They felt there was no real opposition to them, so in the colonized and oppressed countries of the world, they went for the kill. They imposed extreme free market policies.
Of course, they promised that the result would be prosperity, based on all kind of Milton Friedman nonsense about capitalism, but the result was actually mass poverty and suffering.
In Bolivia, they privatized all the water in the country. They sold it to Nestle and Coca-Cola and other US imperialist corporations. They went so far as to make it a crime to collect rain water on your roof. If you did that, they would arrest you for “stealing” the water that belongs to some US corporation.
Organizations like the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, forced countries to give up everything.
The international bankers forced Ecuador to accept the US dollar as their currency. Ecuador was not even allowed to have its own currency, because this could serve as a basis for economic independence. The forcing of Ecuador to accept the dollar caused a huge economic crash. Indigenous people all across Ecuador were thrown off their land. Unemployment grew to record levels. Poverty and starvation shot up.
We, as Marxists, we know nothing in the world is permanent. Things change. “Oppression breeds resistance.”
Latin America in Revolt
The people of Ecuador started fighting back. Indigenous people fought against the land grabs. Workers went on strike. Huge protest movements erupted throughout the country.
These uprisings against Neo-Liberalism happened all over Latin America, and the Cubans played an important role in this. The Cubans organized conferences in Havana to discuss how to plan the fight back.
In Ecuador, the result of years of organizing, fighting back, and resisting, has been the election of President Raffael Correa in 2006. Correa is a president who has been identified with the protest movement. His election was a referendum on Neo-Liberalism, and he won overwhelmingly.
After President Correa was elected, the US imperialists tried to overthrow him. They turned to the Ecuadorian police, who kidnapped him. But the people of Ecuador poured into the streets, and fought back. They rescued their President, and beat back the CIA.
President Correa leads a coalition of anti-imperialist forces. Some of the people in that coalition are social-democrats and reformists; people who think that you can gradually fix up capitalism until it gradually just becomes Socialism. Some of the other forces in the coalition are Communists, Ecuadorians like us in Workers World Party, who know that you need a revolution, to put the people in power, and overturn capitalism.
The coalition also includes some capitalists. Many of the capitalists of Ecuador are being pummeled by the imperialist capitalists of the United States. Because the imperialist capitalists of the US are so powerful, the only chance the Ecuadorian capitalists have to preserve themselves and compete is to enter an alliance with the working class.
President Correa has said he wants to move Ecuador toward “socialism.” But we all know that Socialism is a word that has many different definitions to many different people.
What is happening in Ecuador is also happening in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and other countries in Latin America, is called the “Bolivarian Process.” It is the formation of governments that are anti-imperialist and strive for independence from the dominion of the capitalists in the US, Britain, France, and elsewhere.
This is an exciting process. We don’t know where it will end up. But one thing that we saw with our own eyes, is that it is greatly improving the lives of millions and millions of working class people.
In Ecuador, we saw free dental care. Dentists were set up in tents, and if you wanted to get some dental care, you just got in line, and they took care of you, for free.
In Ecuador, millions of people who have no health insurance can now go to free healthcare clinics run by Cuban doctors. Poor people in Ecuador, who were blinded because of poverty, now have their sight back, thanks to free surgery provided by Cuban doctors.
Ecuador’s economy has improved by leaps and bounds, not just because of these social programs and reforms, but because the country isn’t being forced to trade with the United States and the imperialists, and get ripped off and robbed. Now, Ecuador is trading with other countries from the oppressed world. Its trading with countries like Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and this trade is mutually beneficial. These countries are pulling together to pull themselves out of poverty. Its not imperialist exploitation, its cooperation among oppressed countries. I saw some homeless people in Ecuador, but nowhere near the thousands and thousands I saw when I first visited the country 13 years ago.
Its important that as revolutionaries and scientific Marxists, we don’t belittle what is happening in Latin America. Its not enough to just point out that these countries are still capitalist. Yes, these are capitalist countries. The economy is largely still under the control of capitalists, there are some nationalizations, there are worker’s cooperatives being built, but these are not the dominant economic form. Capitalism remains intact.
But something is happening in these countries. The working class is in motion, and the imperialists are being pushed back. This is a process, and we do not know exactly how it will end up. We should be studying it, analyzing it, and learning from it.
One hopeful sign of the where these revolutions are headed, is that they all take inspiration and guidance from the Cuban Communist Party. The Bolivarian leaders all look up to great Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leaders like Che Guevara, as well as Fidel and Raul Castro. Raffeal Correa, Evo Morales, and Nicolas Maduro all study the works of Marx, Lenin, Mao Zedong, and other revolutionary Communists. Exciting things are happening. History is marching forward in Latin America, and we have a lot to learn from it.
Communists are the “Democratic Youth”
Its very significant that the World Festival of Youth and Students was held in Ecuador.
The first World Festival of Youth and Students was held in 1947 in Prague, the capitol of Czechoslovakia. It was a gathering of hundreds of young Communists from hundreds of countries. They formed an international organization of Communist youth. It was called the “World Federation of Democratic Youth.”
Now, why did they call it this? Why didn’t they call it the “World Communist Youth” or something?
This was a very different time than we live in today. In 1947, Europe was still in the process of rebuilding itself after the Second World War. In modern times, we often hear people say things like “Fascism and Communism” are the same thing, or “Stalin and Hitler were equally bad.” But no one could say that back in 1947. Why? The reason that the Nazis did not triumph, the reason fascism was defeated, was because of the Soviet Union and the Communists of the world. The capitalists loved Hitler.
Henry Ford, one of the leading capitalists in the United States, got a Iron Cross from Hitler. For a time, he even distributed Pro-Nazi newspapers and Magazines at his car dealerships. The King of England had to step down, because he was so well known as a Nazi sympathizer. Coca-Cola invented “phanta orange” so they could keep selling soda to the Third Reich. IBM designed the punch card machines used to run the concentration camp system.
Inside Nazi Germany, the Communists got jobs in factories that made bombs, and they sabotaged them from within. They filled up Nazi bombs with pepper instead of gun powder. Young Communists from all over the world went to Spain to fight against Hitler’s ally, Franco. The Soviet Red Army was already marching toward Berlin long before the first US troops landed in Normandy.
They called it the “World Federation of Democratic Youth” because when the Red Hammer & Sickle flag of the Soviet Union was unfurled in Berlin, everyone knew that Communists were the real defenders of freedom and democracy. Fascism is an ugly outgrowth of capitalism and imperialism, and it was Communists who defeated it.
Every four years there would be a World Festival of Youth and Students. It was usually held in a country that was building socialism. It was place for socialist countries to let the world see what they were achieving, and why capitalism, poverty, and exploitation were no longer necessary.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, they didn’t have a World Festival of Youth and Students for a brief period. But in 1997, it was the Cubans who made clear that this great tradition of World Communism had to be revived. Since 1997, every four years, young Communists met for a week, to discuss the struggle to bring down capitalism.
Life Without Capitalism
During the festival we met with over 20 different Communist youth organizations from around the world. The most inspiring meetings were with the youth who live under Socialism.
We met with youth from Cuba. In fact, two members of the Young Communist League were assigned to work with us throughout the week. In addition to formal meetings, we had many relaxed, social dinners and such with these youth. We asked them a lot about Cuba, and they gave a small glimpse of what life is like in a society where capitalism has been overthrown.
During one of our meetings, one of us asked what the conditions were like for homeless youth in Cuba. The Cubans responded that there are no homeless youth in Cuba. They said the Cuban government makes sure that all citizens have adequate housing, and that especially the youth, the future of the revolution, would never be allowed to be homeless.
What was inspiring about the meetings with the Cubans was their honesty. We asked about the rights of women and LGBTQ people in Cuba. They said that in Cuba they are still struggling against patriarchy, and the idea that men are the heads of families.
They said that in recent years, there has been a very campaign to bring equality to Lesbian, Gay, Bi, and Trans people in Cuba. They said that there are advertisements on display promoting LGBT rights. They said that anti-LGBT violence is being cracked down on and has basically been eliminated.
They said that there are still problems. They said sometimes if a youth comes out as LGBT and their parents are being hostile to them, that the Young Communist League will intervene, and work with the family, counseling them, in order that they can become accepting of the youth.
The Cubans had questions for us also. They asked about education in the United States. When we told them that there are police in US schools, arresting students, they were horrified.
The Young Communists of Cuba communicated us that one of their most important tasks is winning young people to support the revolution. They said in the former Soviet Union, one of the big problems was that young people did not read the works of Marx and Lenin, they just read textbooks. Young people were not unleashed to be thinkers and to learn the methods of analyzing society. They simply were told to repeat what the party leaders said.
They said that in Cuban schools, the youth read not just Marx, and Lenin, and Che, and Fidel. They also read Lincoln, and Kennedy. They said that young people are taught to be independent, critical thinkers, who can analyze the world, and use the methods of Marxism-Leninism to understand the world around them. They said that the youth must learn to understand Marxism for themselves, and really embrace it, if they are going to continue the great traditions of the revolution.
They told us that Cuba is having some economic reforms right now, but it will never be like China. They said Cuba will always remains a socialist society, in which the means of production are in the hands of the people. They said that there are some market mechanisms being implemented, but this is not some kind of big change. It is simply a means of strengthening the socialist system, by bringing in money from the western capitalist societies, and using it to strengthen Socialism.
We met with the Kim Il Sung Youth from the People’s Korea. I must say that delegates from DPRK were really the stars of the festival. They performed, singing beautiful music, not just Korean, but Cuban revolutionary songs. The Koreans seem like the happiest people on earth. When reading statements or giving a presentation, they were very serious, but you could see the real love and affection they had for each other. When we met with the Koreans, they told us that they hate what they called the “fascist imperialist government of the United States.” But they said they had no hatred for ordinary working people in the United States.
We were invited to special meeting by the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union of Vietnam. Bao-Hanh Tran, from the Los Angeles Branch played a very important role in that meeting, being Vietnamese. She spoke in both Vietnamese and English, representing the party very well. The Vietnamese described how it will take more than 300 years to repair all the damage done to their country by years of war. They said that they are not yet a Socialist country like Cuba or DPRK, but they moving in that direction.
They said that capitalism still exists in Vietnam, but the party is charge, controlling and regulating it. They are using capitalism to build up a socialist economic infrastructure, much like what Lenin did in Soviet Union during the New Economic Policy. They said they provided free healthcare to all young children, and they have gotten rid of illiteracy. They have reduced poverty to less than 5%.
We spoke as representative of Workers World Party, and we made clear that we are demanding every day that the US leaders pay reparations to the people of Vietnam for their crimes.
Imperialism Must Be Destroyed
We had so many important meetings during the week. We met with the Communist Party of Mexico, with the Communist Pole of Brazil. We heard so many inspiring stories of youth in the struggle. We met with British and Swedish Communists who explained the difficulties of building organizations among the youth. The Communist Party of Great Britain Marxist-Leninist told of some of the difficulties of expanding rapidly, after revolutionary forces have been weak for so long. The Revolutionary Communist Group described heavy police repression they are facing in Glasgow.
One common problem we noticed, that it seemed all the Communist youth are experiencing, is the problem of bringing Communism to the youth movements. In Brazil, there were just huge uprisings against the rise of transportation costs. All over Europe, there are uprisings of youth against unemployment and austerity.
These youth are full of rage. They want to fight, and they are fighting. But without a revolutionary vision, without something to fight for, these struggles are very, very limited.
The youth from Brazil, Mexico, Britain, Germany, and elsewhere all said that these rebellions of youth cannot just be a way for young people to blow off some steam, and then go back to getting exploited, imprisoned, unemployed and miserable. They said that we as young people need to find a way to bring revolutionary ideas to our peers, so they have something to fight for.
It was so humbling to walk through this festival, and be hugged by Koreans, by Vietnamese people, by Cubans. We know that the imperialist government of the United States has killed literally millions of people all over the world, and the fact that so many US workers have cheered and waved the flag, has been a big part of why these crimes continue.
At this festival, at every single meeting, we got a very clear message from the youth we met with. They said “the work you are doing is very important.”
During the opening parade of the festival, every different country marched, and was given a flag to mark their delegation. They gave us a US flag to mark our delegation. Well, we knew what we had to do. Toward the end of parade, we in the FIST delegation, we took the US flag and we ripped it apart. There was massive applause. The people knew what we meant when we ripped up that flag.
Some other people on the US delegation were angry at us for doing it. Comrade Colleen from Baltimore was very sharp when some people from another US organization started yelling at her for ripping up the flag. She said to them “the only people who are upset about this are other people from the United States.” She was right. Everyone who wasn’t a social-democrat from the United States was very happy that we had done it, and knew that what we did was symbolic. It was symbolic for what needs to be done.
US imperialism must be destroyed! The military bases around the world; The economic blockade against Cuba; The prison system here at home; the low wages; It all needs to be ripped apart.
We as Communists living in the United States have an extremely, extremely important job to do. Whenever we are on the picket lines here in New York, sometimes it might feel lonely, like a small protest. But when I was in Ecuador, I met 15,000 young people, who are with us on every picket line, every time we sell Workers World newspaper.
There are millions of Communists around the world, who are doing the same thing that we are doing every day. They are in solidarity with us, and they are depending on us, to do all we can, to fight for a better world, and point toward revolution, right in the center of imperialism.
That’s what I learned in Quito, Ecuador.
It's a reportback from the festival made by a member of FIST who was in the US delegation.
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