Flyer for the European Social Forum 2008 in Malmö, Sweden

This is the fifth time we’re meeting up for the European Social Forum. In the last six years, the ESF – the biggest meeting of the left in Europe – has had high points and low points: from 2002 in Florence, when one million people marched against the Iraq war, to 2004 in London, where police ejected young people protesting against the ESF organizers.

Despite all its problems, the ESF remains an important opportunity to organize resistance against the plans of capital in Europe. It is one of the few times (besides the protests against G8 summits) when students from Greece can meet trade unionists from France can meet left-wing intellectuals from Poland can meet squatters from the Netherlands can meet socialists from the US… We can use the ESF to share experiences and coordinate protests across the continent.

The problem is that the ESF is dominated by bureaucrats from trade unions, reformist parties and NGOs, so there’s usually a lot of talking and very few concrete plans for action.

Many of the ESF’s participants are young people, but our participation is hardly encouraged: there are high fees (so it’s mostly “professional youth activists” who can attend), few young people on the podiums and no focus on young people’s issues in the official program. We believe that youth structures within the ESF – a theme about youth in the program, a space for youth at the location of the ESF etc. – are essential. They would provide, in the middle of the ESF’s bureaucratic chaos, a framework for students and young workers from across Europe to coordinate the resistance against cuts in education, imperialist wars, and attacks on social rights.

We will work to develop the networking between left-wing youth organizations across Europe, at the ESF and at every opportunity. But faced with capitalism’s endless wars and crises, it is clear that we need more than a network. To fight against the capitalist system effectively, we need to to organize our class, the working class, across borders. The goal is an international organization to unite our struggles and lead the fight for another world, a socialist world: a revolutionary youth international and a revolutionary workers’ international!

REVOLUTION is an independent youth organization which is based in multiple countries. We believe young revolutionaries need their own organization so they can take responsibility and learn from their own successes and mistakes. This does not mean we want to divide ourselves from older activists – on the contrary, a revolutionary youth movement must fight to set the entire working class in motion.

Off to Berlin for the weekend of January 10-11, 2009! On the 90th anniversary of the German Revolution and the Spartacist Uprising, there will be the Luxemburg-Liebknecht-Lenin-Demonstration (a long tradition of the radical left) in East Berlin, as well as meetings and a party from REVOLUTION. If you’re interested, contact us: info@onesolutionrevolution.org

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