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Cambiare Rotta
The Communist youth organization Cambiare Rotta’s “Fighting as Soldiers of Ideas” camp was held on July 22-23-24. It was a three-day event of training, debate, and assemblies, as well as sociability, music, sports tournaments, aggregation, militant engagement and internationalist solidarity.
The name of the camp refers to a speech by Fidel Castro: a non-random choice meant to make clear what must be the model for a generation that, just at the beginning of a process of change that has put an end to U.S.-led capitalist globalization, aims to seize the opportunity of the structural crisis we are experiencing, committing itself to rebuild an active momentum and a revolutionary organization equal to the problems facing our generation.
This path, built mobilization after mobilization, from schools to workplaces, has tangible examples to refer to: foremost among them the example of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and the Cuban people, who year after year are demonstrating that an alternative to this present state of affairs is not only possible, but that it will only be possible within a socialist revolutionary process. For this reason, during the camp we had the opportunity and honor to meet with a delegation from the Cuban embassy in Italy. A moment where we exchanged testimonies and reasoning about the history of the Cuban revolution, lessons that can speak to our generation as they do to the Cuban youth. On this occasion we were able to demonstrate our internationalist and active solidarity with Cuba, which was then continued in the following days with the July 26 celebrations.
Also important were the moments of internal discussion, which questioned the youth structures of OSA and Cambiare Rotta about the year that opens with this September. The student side of OSA, building on a year of struggle and conflict agitated in schools against school-to-work alternation, focused on the issues of how to strengthen mass intervention in schools, how to engage and leverage representation to consolidate the conflict that students express, and the issues that press our generation, such as psychological distress and gender issues. Similarly, the youth sphere of Cambiare Rotta focused in debates and planning for political intervention in universities and on the environmental issue, which for our generation represents a strategic hairpin turn that shows the structural limits of the capitalist mode of production. Similarly, the issue of youth precariousness, of the exploitation to which our generation is subjected, has been addressed: a series of conditions that impose an alliance with class unions such as USB, and in particular the Federation of Social, which deals precisely with all that atypical work that affects our generation.
It was not just words, however, that stopped. The week before the camp, in fact, the Piacenza prosecutor’s office had opened an investigation on charges of criminal conspiracy against USB’s logistics delegates. A clear attack on those who daily bring conflict to workplaces, strengthening the class movement and forging alliances of struggle with our generation, as has been done throughout the year of student mobilization. A clear warning to anyone thinking of opposing the ongoing capitalist reorganization and the imperialist plans of the European Union that we have seen materialized with full support for the war in Ukraine.
The example of the workers blocking arms is being heard by the younger generation of our country, ready to demonstrate alongside the workers themselves in the ports, in the warehouses, in the squares the opposition of our generation to the caravan and the war.
That is why we were at the demonstration that took place in Piacenza, alongside USB and comrades affected by repression. It was an important day of struggle that marked a clear response to the ongoing employers’ attack, which, given the international crisis we are experiencing, put in place a quantum leap from previous years.
The camp concluded with a moment of discussion involving the entire youth organization, together with the Rete dei Comunisti, to address the revival of the new and the goals that a communist youth organization must set for itself. In the face of a new phase that has opened with the war and of an autumn that promises to be hot, given the exacerbation of the contradictions the West is facing, it is necessary to develop all the political and organizational tools to be equal to the challenges of the present. Working in every school, in every university, in workplaces, throughout the country, to strengthen the case for revolutionary communist organization in the 21st century, against NATO and EU imperialism.
