Candid Camera: Check out a few of the 250 people who participated in this event.

Preaching to the Choir
Published in the University of Washington Daily, Tuesday, November 12, 2002
There was bound to be no confrontation at Saturday's social justice teach-in. Approximately 200 dedicated socialists and interested parties crowded into the School of Social Work and were positively abuzz with the excitement of being there and the prospect of the day's events.

Wandering around the room before the first session, snippets of many conversations could be heard:

       "I've been trying to do everything that my parents did, but it just doesn't seem to be working anymore."
       "I don't feel like there is a political party existing today that truly represents the people."
       "Learning about all of this has really opened my eyes."
       "It's great to see so many people here, we've got to do whatever we can."

This last point was echoed by UW professor Dr. Raya Fidel during her opening address at the event. Fidel was representing the Campus Radical Women — a major sponsor of the event, along with the Freedom Socialist Party and the Ethnic Cultural Center. Fidel called the day an "educational conference for optimistic rebels," and went on to discuss the need for a viable alternative to the current capitalist system to be developed. "The world will change; this is a given. It never stays the same and nothing lasts forever. The question is: How will it change?" she said. "In the better world, we imagine education … would be a basic right and free of charge. … There would be no homeless people and no one will suffer from lack of medical care," she continued, and stated that the purpose of the conference was to "discuss how we can get there."

And discuss they did. The conference consisted of three panel discussions featuring writers from Salvador, Australia and many parts of the United States, after which it broke up into a series of workshops as varied as "Poetry and Rebellion," "History of Queer Radicals" and "How to Talk Radical and Influence People."

There were a wide range of ages and ethnicities, and therefore a diverse range of opinions, present at the conference, though all were in agreement about the bigger picture — that capitalism is not the wave of the future. Author and Marxist scholar Mel Lieman summed up the feelings of many in the room, and his statements were greeted with loud rounds of applause. He said that capitalism is not a workable system in the long term and that socialism is the best viable alternative. "The defects of capitalism are very clear and they occur regardless of human will. Capitalism sets up certain rules, the system unrolls, crisis is inevitable. [When] you look at America, you see a society of enormous economic development with political underdevelopment. And that reveals the role of those who want to change society," he said. "We are at the crossroads and the choice is either an advance to socialism or chaos. And we can make it happen," he concluded.

Elias Holt, a member of the Freedom Socialist Party and a student at Seattle Central Community College, said he believed that the conference was especially important and relevant in the current political climate.

"I think it's really important to have conferences like this to promote collective discussion and to get together people from all walks of life and talk about solutions to the problems of today's world," he said. In his opinion, it is extremely important for the younger generation to get involved and take control of its own future. "[We] as students and youth must take an active role and that's what today is all about. Today is about solutions, today is about the future; it's about looking ahead to a better world and manifesting how we can make it happen."

This was also true for Chris Williams, a third-year law student new to Seattle. "I'm trying to get hooked into the things here that I was interested in back where I came from in Milwaukee," he said. "For me, it's about getting connected, and a lot of times the left is isolated, so I think it's important to organize and get together," he continued.

Fifth-year senior Emily Hicks first heard about the conference through her department, the Community and Environmental Planning Program. "The title, 'Imagine Revolution,' interested me right away, and knowing that it was going to be dealing with current events and not just discussing the negative things that are happening in our country and around the world but coming up with solutions, that's what really got me in. It's good to be in an atmosphere with people who are thinking positive and thinking ahead," she said during a break in the proceedings. But as to whether she believed that a wholesale adoption of socialism immediately would solve all the world's problems, she was more reserved. "I think a lot of the socialist solutions could work, but on more of a local level. I think it would be really hard to do at a global level. These ideas are definitely incorporated into the grand solution, but I don't think it's the only solution," she said.

Some attendees were even younger, but no less interested and informed. Katie Bradshaw, a sophomore at Franklin High School, came along with her dad, a member of the Freedom Socialist Party, in order to gather some more information about socialism and its wider implications. "My dad and I have been talking a lot after I attended his group, and in my history class we brought up Marx and Engles, and that made me more interested in it too. All of a sudden, high school students weren't thinking about football games and stuff, but after we moved on people didn't talk about it anymore. That interest didn't really go away for me, and I wanted to learn more about it," she said.

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Inspiring Talks: Debbie Brennan and Nancy Reiko Kato give their take on the state feminism in Australia and the U.S. while Megan Cornish examines what a socialist world would and wouldn't look like.

Conference Agenda: From poetry to electoral alliances, this conference covered the world!