Many students and workers new to the Party for Socialism and Liberation and Marxism attended a Los Angeles Regional Conference on Socialism on December 1. The conference was held at a recently renovated auditorium on the East Los Angeles College campus and drew over 120 attendees from all backgrounds.
Many young people in attendance were attentive and participated in detailed political discussions. Edward, 23, told Liberation News, “All the talks were very insightful, especially Brian Becker’s talk about the prospects for a socialist movement”.
The opening plenary ended with solidarity statements from some of the PSL’s allies in the ANSWER Coalition, including Christine Araquel of KmB Pro-People Youth and Jim Lafferty, director of the National Lawyers Guild. Araquel stated that KmB was proud to work with the PSL for so many years because the PSL “shares the same revolutionary spirit of the anti-colonial Filipino revolutionist, Andres Bonifacio,” who continues to inspire members of KmB in ongoing struggle.
Lafferty pointed to historical struggles of the masses for Civil Rights and against the Vietnam War as the inevitable outcome of the ongoing organizing efforts of Party members and praised the Party’s dedication and participation at the front lines of class struggle today.
The conference continued with packed workshops on everything from imperialism in the Middle East to women’s rights to the ABC’s of socialism. Another workshop focused on Latin America with a special emphasis on Cuba as an example of the superiority of the socialist system. The conference closed with the message that the only way forward to the badly needed system of socialism was to join the revolutionary movement and help to build the PSL. This call was taken up by many at the conference who committed to either joining the PSL or continuing to work alongside the PSL toward common, revolutionary goals.
