The first sentence of the post reads:

"How do we involve the working class youth in our movement?"

Okay, let's take that again, with the pronomial stuff in brackets and the collective noun in the object swapped with an equivalent pronoun:

"How do [we] involve [them] in [our] movement?"

The point?

First, why is it "your" movement?

Second, why must [they] be taught by [we], instead of the other way around?

Third, why are [we] distinct from [them]?

Starting to get a picture?

I am 15 years old and am against the capitalist system. Capitalists find 'kids' as the best people to draw in with their advertisments and promotions for example: most sportswear and sportswear offers are aimed at teenagers because they know their the biggest market to capitalise on.
I've tried explaining to people my age,and believe me, it's a bloody 'ard job, they seem so drawn into it. All they seem to bother about is their reputation, their style and drugs.
There must be a way though, something that will finally widen their minds.
I don't mean to sound authoritive or biggoted by saying this, but we really need to get the teenagers attention, lets face it, teengers are most likeliest age group to stand up for their views

nope missed your point completely silas, so dont get the picture. what i figure that this is exactly the reason that the anti capatilist movement(yours,ours,theirs, whoevers movement) will not grow from the working class. so your educated and can rip into my writing- pronomial stuff, nouns-pronouns and all that bollocks. them/us what the fuck you on about? i am one of them - i merely was asking the question how do we involve more working class kids- i get the picture alright silas prehaps you dont really want change - prehaps its ok playing at being rebellious, but if things really change prehaps you may stand to loose to much, mammy and daddys share price will crash will it? loose out on a holiday abroad once a year will ya? of course you can learn from the working class, thats exactly why we need to appeal to them, look throughout history all change comes from below, you see the middle class can be as polictical as they want, but the simple fact is they will not change the system, they aint got the numbers for starters but more importantly the real will to do so. alot of people have nothing to loose any more, guess you have though - and b4 you waste time analyzing this.........."okay lets take that again....."my point is i except that their is some very genuine middle class people who really want to make the world a fairer,better place, but i am also working class so know whats what in shitty run down towns, where your friends are dying from smack and someone will waste you for fifty quid. thats a fact- these are the kids that will benefit, these are the kids i want to show an alternative to,- you ask why should they be taught by we - and not the other way round? nobody has the right to say this is the way life should be lived -if thats what your implying- but i think its a shame, if you think theres a alternative and you dont bother to share - you want it the other way round? wanna learn from the likes of me, i can show you how to inject, how to blag, how to rob ,to twoc etc,etc- how to participate in arranging your mates funerals -coz their familys dont want to know, how to deal with o.d's , the list is endless -....... but another world is possible - for fucks sake - how do we widen this movement-? anybody got any postive contributions (thanks sum) sorry for going on somewhat - but i was hoping to try and bridge the gap between the right on middle class and the likes of myself (dont know why i botherd ) last thing silas you ask what makes you distinct from them - well certainly what makes you distinct from the kids i'm on about, is that whilst you use your computer to analyze my writing, they use blagged computers to pay for smack theres one distinction but and without meeting you its hard to be sure, i have a feeling the gap between us and you if a bridge too far, hope you make it as a school teacher or social worker or some other right on swp surporter type job, and never forget to lock up.......

I can see your point,coming from a working class background
and getting booted out of school at fifteen could tell matey where to shove his english lesson. It's a tricky question, which and whathisface comment only serves to complicate the issue. How we go about getting our message across is vital,resenting "our" side of the story to big mac munching "working classes" in a way that they will get the mesaage means that we will have to be really together.
I am sick of these radical chic green/lefties from a cosy middle class environment, they all get progressively more conservative as the years go by and have all the connections,
within the professional classes, and are well placed to change sides if their is a fast buck to be made.
It's the profesional classes that do most to maintain the status quo, Lawyers/bankers/local councillers they all club together through Freemasonary and other old boy networks to fuck over the working classes. But they seem to like getting
shafted and telling them about is very difficult.

The EEC gives out loads of cash for Formation, and most of it goes into the coffers of scum bags who serve corporate NWO.
perhaps "we" could apply... not joking !!!

LB

Im a 17yr old college student.I am writting this as brief insite into the way young "activists" have to survive on corporate mother earth.

For many yrs now I have seen myself as a strugling activist as I seem to spend alot of time trying to explain my liberal/environmental/anti-capitalist beliefs to other people my age who either flatly refuse to listen to these views or are toatally ignorent to the causes involved. At my secodary school..it seemed me and 2 other friends of mine were the only ones that cared about the way that everyone went round wearing sweatshop produced clothes, that the school was branded from head to toe(from the P.E rooms to the coke machines round the school), that our general freedoms were being encroached upon by church based governers etc etc(the list is endless!)Other students just laughed bcause we wern't "cool" and/or disscussed issues other than what car we were going to get when we passed our test; and the teachers wern't much better either- on the official end of yr feedback forms, complaints about teachers or facilities were removed by form tutors with red pens, before you had to then re-write them for re-submission!

So we used to try our best to make a difference and make our voices heard...we used to paste up posters and stickers in our local area and round school, and spread the word about different events and information around school by mouth and even wrote it in our essays! Now I am at college and things seem a little easier here. A larger gathering of people in the one place means I have met a larger number of like-minded people...and we are trying to make the most of it!Because college is so much bigger, you can paste posters around the campus for longer before they are censored, you can jam the vending machines and not get caught!You can get larger groups of people to attend disscusions/demos etc..we are even producing a free zine. But I can't help but feel that young people could play a much larger part in the "revolution" if only they were given more assistance and resources. Schools and colleges are where the next generation are taught what is right and wrong and how to live; and at the moment the majority of them are being taught that money is everything and that we should accept that we no longer control our destinys.

If we are to succeed in reclaiming our lives from the multi billion dollar companies that are running them at the moment, then we must educate the young too. In an environment where so much pressure is applied to do nothing but work in the belief that you will be happy if you are rich, alternative viewpoints are struggling to be heard.

first, good discussion...nice to see people talking about widening 'the movement', something i've been racking my brains about for a while. As usual, its mostly white, middle class males in on the anti-capitalist movement and its message definately does need to reach more people.
I don't want to wave my own working class credentials about but i have experienced personally a lot of the desolation and just fucked up shittyness of life at the bottom without any kind of authentic joy or happiness except from drugs, theiving or vandalism that people here have been talking about above (and indulged in more than my fair share of all three).
however, unless i've totally misunderstood him/her, i agree with silas. we can't get pulled into the vangaurdist trot trap of getting 'them' to join 'us' in our struggles. personally, i think we need to establish alternative ways of working, of living, of relating to each other. that, combined with the best distribution of propaganda/alternative media we can manage should get people thinking.
imagine stumbling across an illegal street party (as i myself did) without real previous knowledge of the kind of political analysis that inspired it. same goes for social centres etc. the best way to tell people what we're about is by giving them the chance to experience a fraction of what life could be like all the time if we can shake off this oppressive, malignant liberal capitalism.
and then, hopefully, the people who experience it can go away and try to build it within their own communities, amongst their own friends, experimenting, trying to find what works best for them.
i'm not into missionary work.
i'm more into infection.
love to y'all.

to mooneyswooney - one of the few true strengths of this movement, in my experience, is that whileit is still, sadly, largely white and middle class, there is at least a decent female representation, in contrast with almost any other movement besides feminism itself. This obviously doesn't apply to the rumps of the far-left and black-flag contingents, who still seem to be stuck in an earlier era, gender-wise.

laura,
i think i know what you mean, and i think that's even more true in the global south. but marcos? caserini? everytime i see a spokesperson from GR on tv they're male. spokespeople and representatives are often not very representative and that breeds a whole heap of other problems. maybe i'm wrong (and will be happy to be told so) but i do think that the female voice is not heard enough - at least when the movement communicates to people outside of itself, if not internally.
and yes, i know the theory about marcos and i know female zapatistas have acted as spokepeople and i also know that female tute biance have acted as spokespeople. but not much. frankly, especially at the moment, i'm a bit sick of seeing so many fuckin white blokes on telly telling me about the world.
its difficult to escape the patterns and programmes schooled into us for years, and activists are not immune.

as this posting has slipped off the front page i guess that
it is out of site and out of mind. we should definately
take it on a couple of stages. I reckon thhat there are not many peeople who are willing to give up their time to fight against global (social) injustice, as we are so few against so many it seems stupid to fight amongst ourselves, class and gender should not matter, mixing politix is a bit harder
personally I think that politcal types should not be trusted
I couldn't give a shit about some old russian bore's ideas
which are a very slight variation on western systams of oppression .... hope this argument re surfaces asap.

LB