FIST launches in Detroit

By Derek Thacker
Detroit

Detroit FIST

The founding meeting of the new Detroit chapter of Fight Imperialism, Stand Together — FIST — was held on July 22.

Detroit has not had an active branch of the militant youth organization for about a year. But since late 2010, new youth have begun taking an interest in activism and have gravitated to work with the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice, the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions & Utility Shutoffs, and Workers World Party.

Some of these youth moved to form a new FIST branch in Detroit in order to combat the effects of imperialism at home and abroad. The attendance was excellent at the initial meeting and the discussions were meaningful. Introductions were conducted, and the revolutionary program of FIST was introduced and reviewed.

Socialism: What it is not

By Caleb T. Maupin

To more and more people in the world, it is abundantly clear that the capitalist system doesn’t work. At least not for the majority. The system that generates war after war, that allows millions in the U.S. to be unemployed, millions more to go without health care, while fomenting racism, sexism, and anti-lesbian/gay/bi/trans/queer bigotry, and offering no future to the next generation is a disaster for the workers and oppressed people inside the U.S. and worse yet for the rest of the world.

In this time of crisis, as capitalism shows its true face, many are thinking and talking about the alternative system — socialism.

It is important to point out that there are many political parties around the world, especially outside the United States, whose name is “Socialist Party,” although they may have no relationship at all to socialism as defined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels or as developed in the Soviet Union starting in 1917 or in the People’s Republic of China or in Cuba.

The rightist sections of the media have made a big deal out of the fact that Dominque Strauss-Kahn is part of the political party in France called the “Socialist Party” (PS) since its founding in 1969. DSK, as he is known, is facing charges in New York that he raped a housekeeper in a luxury hotel where he was staying. He was, until his recent resignation, the head of the capitalist International Monetary Fund — which brutalizes the working class, indeed entire countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America and now even those in Europe.

What choice do we have? A letter to fellow youth in the United States

By Caleb T. Maupin , Cleveland FIST

All our lives we’ve been told to work hard, study hard, get an education and go to college. If we just do this, the mythology goes, we can “get ahead” and maybe even “get rich.”

Some of us grew up in relative comfort, getting some of the “glitter” that came from living in an imperialist country.

However, the days of the so-called “American Dream” are over.

We are the generation that takes Adderol, not to “get high,” but to stay up all night studying, and that has to take an endless stream of standardized tests, designed to discredit the public schools and destroy public education.

We’ve certainly worked hard. We are a generation of workaholics. Yet, despite our hard work and high levels of stress, we find ourselves amidst poverty and hopelessness.

There is no factory work for us. There is no house in our future. The hope we’ve been fed about “making it” if we just “try hard enough” is a lie. No matter whether we are college graduates or how skilled, intelligent or determined we may be, we are coming of age amid capitalism’s ruins.

High school student prefers socialism

My teacher assigned my class to write an essay on whether we are for capitalism or socialism. I chose socialism.

Here is my essay. I got 100 on it.

The system of socialism is far better to me than capitalism. Socialism, in which the people own public property and have equal distribution among the people, was an idea brought up because people were sick of capitalism. Capitalists show self-interest by the tactics to make profit for themselves; some means can be by corruption for these profits. In a system of socialism, a community of comrades work together to form profit and it’s fair when it would be done.

I could also agree with socialism on different standpoints. Socially, everyone is united and helps each other through socialism. Through capitalism, people care about themselves and not the welfare of their community. It’s financial, which leads to people’s ideas that socialism couldn’t work.