YCL school in Edmonton forges local connections

From June 24 to 26, the Edmonton club of the YCL hosted a vibrant and engaging school themed “Education through Connection.” The school focused on a variety of areas of struggle and featured multiple speakers. The themes of the presentations included legal rights during protests and de-escalation strategies, information on upcoming climate justice demonstrations, naloxone training and education on the opioid epidemic, the housing crisis in Edmonton and the city’s response to it, tenant rights and organizing, the blockade against Cuba, and youth and student mobilization in support of the Chilean constitutional reform process. During the weekend, the local club engaged with some of the wider Edmonton community in discussing these issues and built stronger bridges with partners with whom we have organized with in the past, while forging new connections in these respective struggles. 

We recognize from our experience of building up the YCL club in the past few years that a part of the foundation of our mass work is hosting open spaces for political conversations that combat reformist or redactive understandings of the revolutionary struggle. Through community education initiatives, we help forge alignment through dialogue on a mass line across different youth organizations. Through our involvement in different struggles and campaigns, we develop a material analysis of our conditions, which is reflected in our demands at local actions and demonstrations in which the YCL participates. To forge new connections with young workers and students, we need to establish ourselves in the areas where we live, reaching out to the communities that are within our closest proximity to build the nucleus of community-based organizing, while inviting our neighbours in the apartment complex next door, in our workplaces, and in our places of study to join us in expressing our solidarity with the international working class. Through giving space for solidarity with other workers and students, we organize ourselves amongst our networks that can create and sustain resilience in our movement for liberation and courage for the crisis unfolding around the globe, which impacts our communities in many ways. Capitalism is the root issue and needs to be dissected with precision and consistency in our messages and teachings. Practicing solidarity across a variety of struggles facing youth through community-based education and organizing is essential for building up the organs of people power and youth participation. 

We are grateful to the support that the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians has shown us in allowing us to use its space to continue to host our educational work. The Edmonton YCL club intends on hosting multiple events in the weeks and months ahead to establish a robust centre for socialist education in the neighbourhoods in which we live and work.