Students strikes, baseball games, anti-war meetings, fighting for jobs, and fights with fascists; Ruth Wilner with vignettes of six months activity of the Yipsels as the world heads to war.

‘The Young Peoples Socialist League in Action’ by Ruth Wilner from Challenge of Youth. Vol. 3 No. 7. July 1, 1939.

A Fighting Youth Movement.

Thanksgiving, 1938, Chicago: The last session of the Ninth National Convention of the Young Peoples Socialist League is drawing to a close. The last vote on the last motion is taken. The Chairman rises: “Comrades, we will adjourn this Convention with the singing of the International.” The delegates rise in a body, and with a lustiness that belies the late hour and the fatigue of long sessions, they sing the Workers’ Anthem. Every fist is clenched, every arm shoots up, straight and true, as they swing into the last chorus, “tis the final conflict, let each stand in his place…” As the last strains of the song die away, a delegate shouts, “Three cheers for the Y.P.S.L.!” And three hoorahs resound through the hall. The Ninth National Convention is over.

The delegates have been home for six months now. Six months of working to make the Y.P.S.L. the mass organization for America’s Disinherited Youth. Six months of activity during which the League has brought its Program for the Rights of Youth before ever-increasing numbers of unemployed, student and working-class youth everywhere in the United States. Six months of anti-war and anti-fascist actions; six months which have seen scores of new members welcomed into our ranks; six months of good times together, of being comrades together, of working and playing together; six months of fighting the battles of Youth on every front, six months of Building for Socialism.

SMASH FASCIST GANGS

Back from the Convention: The first, post-convention issue of the Challenge of Youth appears. “Smash the Fascist Gangs”, reads the banner headline, dramatically setting the tone for the campaign to drive the Fascist rats back into their holes.

“Open the doors to the Refugees”! With these words on their lips and painted on the placards they hold aloft, groups of Y.P.S.L.’ers parade through the streets of New York collecting funds for the refugees from fascist tyranny. In Chicago, in Los Angeles, in Boston, wherever there are members of the Y.P. S.L., the League acts to aid the refugees.

“We demand shoes and clothing”, shout picketers at a relief bureau in Jamaica, N.Y. Leading the line and shouting the loudest is a 15-year-old member of the Y.P.S.L. Several of New York’s “finest’ appear on the scene, break up the picket line and arrest the pickets. (The Y.P.S.L.’er, several months older, wiser, and undaunted by this experience, is still fighting the battles of the unemployed in Jamaica.)

FIGHT WAR BUDGET

“Not one cent, Not one man, to defend Wall Street Profits!” is the bold red headline of the Challenge of Youth, in answer to Roosevelt’s two billion dollar war budget proposals. And from the East Coast to the West Coast, the Y.P.S.L. organizes anti-war mass meetings where speakers condemn the war plans of the Roosevelt Administration, and honor the memory of the three greatest anti-war fighters of all: Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, and V.I. Lenin. At these meetings new members are inducted into the League, taking the pledge of allegiance to the fight for Socialism.

At the New York meeting, the Y.P.S.L. Dramatic Group deals its blow against the war machine by putting on its first, and very successful production, a playlet based on the lives of Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht.

The Stalinist controlled, pro-war American Student Union Convention comes to New York. A picket line of 150 Y.P.S.L.’ers appears from “nowhere” to demonstrate at its opening session, shouting “The A.S.U. supports Roosevelt’s War Plans, the Y.P.S.L. Fights against War.” Afterwards, the demonstrators march down Broadway singing anti-war songs and shouting anti-war slogans.

ATTACK NAZI RALLY

The Fascists are mobilizing at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Fritz Kuhn and his Nazi Bund, the Coughlinites, anti-Semites and the labor haters of all stripes are planning a display of strength. The Socialist Workers Party and the Y.P.S.L., in a manifesto to the workers of New York, call on the anti-fascists to stop the meeting. 50,000 workers answer that call to action. Thousands of voices take up the cry, “Drive the Fascists out of New York”. Skirmishes with LaGuardia’s mounted police, called out to protect the Fascists; battles with the foot police. Fascists going to the meeting are required to hold up their tickets of admission to the Garden to pass the police lines, an unmeant signal for indignant anti-fascists to grab the Nazi by the collar and hold a “discussion with him…” The cops grow more vicious. They wield their clubs. Many of the demonstrators are hurt. After a fierce fight in front of the Rivoli Theatre, several demonstrators are arrested. Workers wait for the Fascists to come out of the meeting. Anti-fascist arguments are “impressed” upon the thick skull of many a Storm Trooper.

And in Los Angeles, hundreds, led by the S.W.P. and Y.P.S.L., are fighting in the streets with Fritz Kuhn’s Storm Troopers, driving them to cover at a George Washington celebration meeting.

At the University of Chicago, 100 Yipsels picket a lecture given by the Fascist Prof. Roselli, representative of the Italian Embassy.

In Oakland, Calif., Myra Tanner and Roland Bates of the Y.P.S.L. are slugged and arrested by the cops at an anti-Franco demonstration. FASCISTS CANCEL MEETING. In Philadelphia, the S.W.P.-Y.P.S.L. call to demonstrate against a Fascist meeting, receives such popular response that the Fascists are forced to call it off. A militant victory demonstration is held outside the meeting hall.

The S.W.P. and the Y.P.S.L. have shown how to fight the Fascists.

Legionnaires and police, at the instigation of a “patriotic” professor, try to intimidate a Y.P.S.L. meeting at Fresno State University, Calif. But the Fresno Unit of the Y.P.S.L. comes through with flying colors, conducting an orderly meeting with 40 interested students attending FIGHT FOR JOBS Akron, Ohio, April 1: The National Council of the Y.P.S.L., holds its first full meeting since the National Convention. Reports are heard, discussions held, future campaigns mapped out. From the meeting emerges the decision to put out the CHALLENGE OF YOUTH twice-monthly and to OPEN FIGHT FOR JOBS! around a three-point program demanding W.P.A. projects at trade union wages for youth and aid to needy students.

Los Angeles, Calif.: Under the leadership of the S.W.P. and Y.P.S.L., a demonstration is held against a meeting run by a Franco-Fascist agent. Police protect Francoites, tear gas the anti-Fascists. The picket line is broken, but demonstrators retreat singing the “Internationale.”

Students, Strike against Imperialist War! reads the student anti-war strike call issued by the National Council of the Y.P.S.L. 4000 students in high schools and colleges throughout the land respond to the only genuine anti-war call issued this April…

LIFE IN THE OUTDOORS.

The season of hikes, beach parties, camping and outdoor fun, starts in the League when the New York Yipsels hike to Tibbets Brook on April 23. Over 250 turn out, in uniform. Singing, banners aloft, they march to the picnic grounds. Lunch, drill in preparation for May Day, doing the “shoe-fly”, rowing, a baseball game between the National Council and Division Council members (the Division Councilers bit the dust), and a wind up campfire in the evening with revolutionary songs sounding through the night air.

The Lynn, Mass. North Shore Council of the C.I.O. endorses the 3-point program for Jobs for Youth…

Several hundred youth at a Chicago NYA occupational conference wildly applaud a speech calling for the 3-point program for jobs…

The Youth Section of Local 544, Federal Workers Section, Minneapolis, endorses Y.P.S.L. 3-point program.

INTO THE STREETS

Akron, Ohio: Five Y.P.S.L.’ers arrested distributing leaflets urging students to support Jobs for Youth Program. Progressive Labor in Akron, recognizing that civil liberties are threatened, rallies to their support.

Out into the streets May 1st! The Y.P.S.L. parades through mid-town New York. At the New York S.W.P. demonstration in Columbus Circle, Lou Becker speaks for the Y.P.S.L., calling upon youth to Live, Fight and Conquer with the Y.P.S.L…

From across the seas, comes news from France: The “democratic” Daladier Government sentences our French Comrade Steve to six months’ imprisonment. His crime: He spoke out boldly against imperialist war.

The Stalinist Youth hold a national convention in New York City. The Y.P.S.L. has 100 members on the spot with leaflets addressed to Y.C.L.’ers calling upon them to leave their pro-war organization and join with the anti-war forces in the Y.P.S.L.

The Urban League of St. Paul endorses the 3-point program and sets up a Jobs for Youth Committee.

JOB FIGHT GETS SUPPORT

The Workers Relief and W.P.A. Union of Newark gives its support to the 3-point program. The Liberal Club at the University of Newark gives its endorsement and several Workmens Circle branches say “Aye” to the fight for jobs…

Three locals of the Illinois Workers Alliance rally behind 3-point program…

The Jane Adams Club of the Chicago Young Circle League of America joins the fight for the 3-point program.

Lavenburg Corner House Council in New York endorses the Jobs program.

The New York Y.P.S.L. joins in a demonstration at City Hall against the cuts in the educational budget.

The first issue of the Twice-a-Month CHALLENGE OF YOUTH appears!

The Young Peoples Socialist League is on the march! United, we Live, for our lives have a purpose, together we Fight, for we have great ideal, on the morrow we will Conquer, for our cause is invincible.

Challenge of Youth was the newspaper of the Young People’s Socialist League. The paper’s editorial history is as complicated as its parent organization’s. Published monthly in New York beginning in 1933 as ‘Challenge’ associated with the Socialist Party’s Militant group (the center/left of the party around Norman Thomas). Throughout the 30s it was under the control of the various factions of the YPSL. It changed its name to Challenge of Youth in 1935 and became an organ of Fourth Internationalists, leaving to become to the youth paper of the Socialist Workers Party in 1938. In the split of 1940, the paper like the majority of YPSL went with the state capitalists/bureaucratic collectivists to become the youth paper of the Workers Party.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/challenge-of-youth/390701-challengeofyouth-v03n07w16.pdf