As the only weekly newspaper in Australia to regularly house news, discussions and debates on capitalism's crises and socialist solutions, Green Left Weekly is proud to be hosting the World At A Crossroads conference, to be held at Sydney Girls High, over the Easter weekend (April 10-12).
The conference will undoubtedly be one of the most important gatherings of left and progressive-minded people to occur this year in Australia.
Significantly, the conference will have a strong international flavour, with 20 speakers attending from 14 countries and five continents.
From a participant in the construction of the mass United Socialist Party of Venezuela and advisor to Venezuela's socialist government, to a founder of the Ecosocialist International Network and a Filipino trade union militant, a leader of a mass women's organisation in India, a Pakistani democracy activist, a leader of the Cuban Revolution and a South African Palestine solidarity campaigner — representatives of some of the most important political struggles in the world today will be present.
This international collaboration is extremely important. While the leaders of the G20 will have already met to try to cobble together a plan to save their system, it is vital that we — the six billion who lose out as a result of the profit-driven capitalist system — find spaces to come together and discuss the real reasons behind capitalism's crises but also our solutions and how to fight for them.
Of course, we know that, as activists in Australia, our main role as part of this global fightback is against the local capitalist elites and their governments. How to build a powerful climate change movement, what kind of working-class response we need in the face of the economic crisis and the struggles of Indigenous people today will all feature at the conference.
While GLW, as a vital weapon in fighting for a better world, is hosting the conference, it is the efforts of the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) — a Marxist tendency in the Socialist Alliance — and Resistance who are the official organisers. These are the same organisations that — along with other SA members — are the backbone of producing and distributing GLW, week in and week out.
DSP not only seeks to deepen collaboration and co-ordination amongst socialists and working-class forces internationally. It seeks to build a mass socialist party that is capable of organising working people to win socialism.
The DSP sees the struggle to build a broadly based anti-capitalist party as a stage in the struggle for a mass revolutionary party in this country. That is why today it functions as a tendency within the Socialist Alliance, a modest step forward in the direction of building such a party.
GLW not only encourages all our readers to attend the World at a Crossroads conference, but to get involved in the fight for 21st century socialism, because on our own we can make little changes, but together we can change the world. The best way to do this is to get involved in the Socialist Alliance, the DSP and Resistance.
To find out more or to join these organisations, see the advertisements throughout the paper.