Editor’s note: The following are greetings given by Maicol Lynch, CPUSA youth leader, at the World Federation of Democratic Youth general assembly meeting in Cyprus in December.

The Young Communists of the United States of America salute you in this time of revolutionary change and resistance! This particular gathering of the 20th general assembly of the World Federation of Democratic Youth in Cyprus is taking place precisely at a time that the youth of the United States of America, like in many other parts of the capitalist world, are facing a crisis. American capitalism has been intensified over the past three years as a result of the neo-fascist, anti-immigrant, anti-labor, and anti-people policies of the Trump administration.

For the past three years, our organization has stood firm against the policies of Trump and worked alongside young workers and students in the resistance who are growing more and more frustrated with the political situation and are looking for revolutionary alternatives.

In the midst of this year’s strike wave led by teacher and autoworker unions, our organization joined the picket lines and offered solidarity and support.

Inspired by Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, our country’s youth flocked to the polls a year ago to back candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib: women of color who pose a threat to Trump’s racist, anti-labor domestic policies and his imperialistic foreign policy to the point where they themselves, progressive Democrats, were red-baited this past July by being called “communists” and were later met with threats of deportation by Trump himself.

Progressive candidacies like these have motivated U.S. youth to search for more revolutionary and socialist alternatives to capitalism on the Left, which often brings them to the ranks of our organization. It is estimated by recent polls that as much as 40% or more of the U.S. millennial population believe that some form of socialism is better than the system we have right now. This number grows each day as youth realize that we need more than a temporary bandage on our problems both domestically and internationally. The march to the ballot box began last year, which resulted in the biggest defeat of the GOP in recent U.S. history, and is continuing.

The U.S. has entered a new political moment. The fight against the Trump administration is now centered on the impeachment hearings. Young Communists are working for what we call a “workers’/people’s and youth impeachment.” On campuses and in workplaces all over the country, young people are taking a stand against Trump by holding up banners at football games, stopping traffic, kneeling during the National Anthem, and so forth.

Our organization rallied with the masses of young workers and students for the international Youth Climate Strike in which we condemned global capitalism’s neglect to put people and planet before corporate profits.

In an effort to spread our organization’s influence and message, we established a podcast channel known as “The Specter,” which can be found on media platforms such as Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify. The topics of this podcast series range from “A Communist Analysis of the Boliviarian Revolution” to “50 Years since the Venceremos Brigade in Cuba” to “Green Strategy: A Communist Analysis of Climate Change.”

Our organization will continue to rally young workers and students to our ranks while we focus our attention on the elections to come in 2020. We will mobilize the masses of young workers and students to register to vote and to educate others about the most pressing issues that are at stake in 2020, including universal healthcare, student debt forgiveness, the Green New Deal, and, of course, defeating Trump and the extreme right.

We will continue to circulate anti-imperialist petitions at our workplaces and college campuses calling on senators and representatives to stop all acts of aggression around the globe.

Young American workers and students are often categorized as “separate” from the masses of the industrialized workforce, which was defined by 20th-century standards. In 21st-century USA, the millennial workforce includes workers employed in Amazon warehouses and in department stores. It includes underpaid teachers, restaurant workers, and kitchen staff. It includes Uber and taxi drivers, construction workers, and call-center employees. Young people are often told to go to college to acquire “middle class” job occupations after graduation, when in reality, college graduates often find themselves working two to three jobs just to pay rent and to buy enough food for survival.

This is the same “American Dream” that immigrants, young and old, are often confronted with upon arrival to the United States shortly before they are detained in detention centers where they are held in cages like animals, separated from their parents/children, and deported back to their country of origin.

Our organization will continue to seek the broadest unity possible to take down Trump, the extreme right, and all the other reactionary neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan–like forces that fuel their fires of hatred and division. We will continue to combat Trump’s imperialist policies against Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and others. We will fight within the belly of the beast and never abandon our international comrades in their struggles, which are our struggles as well. We have a long road ahead of us, but we shall overcome! Long live socialism, long live international solidarity, and long live WFDY!

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