Young Workers See Need of Change here ā¦ Need to build new communist collectives in El Salvador here ā¦
Young Workers See Desperate Need of Change, Recommit to Communist Work
LOS ANGELES (USA), April 11 ā āAfter not being able to attend ICWP meetings for a long time, the party welcomed me like the first day,ā said a comrade who used to write poetry for Red Flag. She is a part of our legacy of organizing working-class Black and Latinx high school students, but had become inactive. She recently attended a Zoom meeting where we discussed trying to navigate life under continuously declining capitalism.
āIt was extremely refreshing to see and listen to my comrades whom I hadnāt seen in so long, reminding me what I once stood for. As we heard each otherās stories, I felt a sense of belonging, something I hadnāt felt for a very long time. This meeting was an eye-opener, because after ten years, nothing has changed. We are reminded daily that capitalism does not work for the people,ā she continued.
āPeople are having conversations left and right about the injustices the working class faces during this pandemic and systemic racism. Although these conversations are important and must be had, we must remember that we must fight this at the root, capitalism. Communism is the only solution,ā she concluded.
Another inactive young woman comrade added, āBeing able to get with everyone especially during these quarantine days was amazing! Life got extremely busy but our mentality towards these injustices never changed. It reminded us why this party is so important and why we should continue to work towards gathering the masses for communism. We live in different areas in Los Angeles and wherever we go the injustice follows. Thereās no running from it.ā She attended the party club meeting later in the week and hopes to be able to join us on May Day.
A young comrade organizer commented, āIāve remained in the party mainly because I understand that the system will never work for the working class. Iāve had moments where I stepped away from party work to get myself together mentally, but Iāve always come back because I know that our work is a means to end this system. We are taught individualistic ideas that we can solve our problems on our own rather than collectively. We canāt continue in this way as this system declines.ā
A teacher added, āWe all struggle with the contradiction between the demands of everyday life under capitalism and our commitment to fighting for a communist world. The isolation of the pandemic has made this harder and itās easy to get discouraged. But nothing stays the same. If a comrade is less active now than they were in the past, we shouldnāt be surprised or discouraged by that. We should continually reach out to them in comradely struggle. If we want to wināand we must wināwe need each other.ā
The enthusiasm and our increased confidence in the working class carried over in the club meeting and spurred us to go out in the streets the following Saturday (see page 4).
Collective in Los Angeles
Need to Build New Communist Collectives in El Salvador
EL SALVADORā For years I have wanted to see the International Communist Workersā Party grow even more. In recent years, I began a plan to win more young people to communist ideas. To do this, I shared Red Flag among students from the National Institute. I helped them with their homework and took advantage of the time to talk to them about communist ideas.
Three young people got excited about this. But when they commented to a teacher that the person helping them with their homework talked to them about communism, their teacher started a struggle to get them to stop this. They stopped visiting me. Later they told me that the teacher said that he believed that communism was bad. I explained that they were making a mistake, but only one continued to meet with me. At the end I lost contact with him too because he transferred to another school.
With this experience in mind, I started another struggle, in the school where I work, with youth from Junior High School. When a teacher was absent, I covered their classes. I was always aware of their Social Studies topics and when a teacher didnāt come to work, I took the opportunity to introduce communist ideas. I managed to build a group of five young people. They were very interested. The problem was that when they left to go to high school, I lost contact with some of them because they left the school.
By 2020, I set myself the goal of resuming this strategy to win young people to our communist party. We were in the process of gaining their confidence so that they would accept my help with their studies and I could take the opportunity to talk to them about communist ideas. But everything got paralyzed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, all these experiences have helped me to realize that, yes, young people can be won over to communism. I have not given up and I will not give up on carrying out new projects to recruit more people.
Now I am in another project that I am initiating from the family group. I have four readers. I can tell them directly that only a communist revolution can help us defeat capitalism. I will continue struggling to win more people to communism.
All this experience has helped me to learn more about how to go about struggling better to win more young people to communism and to organize them into the International Communist Workersā Party.
Red Teacher