International camps

This year the international camp for revolutionary youth organized for the past 18 years at the initiative of the Fourth International in Europe will take place in Italy, near Rome, from Sunday July 22 to Saturday July 28, 2001. This will be an opportunity for hundreds of militant youth to draw the lessons of the mobilizations against capitalist globalisation - following the big mobilization of July 21 against the G-8 summit in Genoa - and to debate what "other world is possible" as an alternative to the barbarism of senile capitalism. Livio Maitan, a long-time leader of the Fourth International and its Italian section, will open the camp alongside young comrades from Italy on the evening of Sunday, July 21. A week of debates, education and fêtes will end with a big meeting on Saturday July 28.

IV spoke to Cinzia Arrucca, one of the organizers of the camp.

Plans to hold the 18th camp of youth organizations in solidarity with the Fourth International in Italy were first made in 1998. Initially the idea was to build on the work done by comrades in the Bandiera Rossa current of the Giovani Comunisti (the youth organization of the Party of Communist Refoundation - PRC) by giving them an opportunity to introduce the Fourth International in flesh and blood to their sympathizers and also to introduce their political work inside this mass youth organization to young people from other countries.

Olivier Besancenot will speak at the opening rally of the Fourth International youth camp on Saturday 27th July in southern France. One of the striking features of his election campaign, both in the meetings and in the votes, was the high percentage of young people who supported his candidacy. We asked Olivier, who was himself a leader of the JCR - the youth organisation in solidarity with the LCR - and was one of the group that organised the FI youth camps in the early 1990s, to tell us why he thought this was an important initiative.

More than 550 young participants met at the youth camp this year near the Umbrian town of Perugia in the largest FI youth camp since 1995. This was thanks to an impressive mobilisation by the youth of Sinistra Critica in Italy who brought 230 Italians to the camp. The 130- strong delegation from France and 70 from the Spanish State made it a camp with a strong Latin language dominance. It was of course a pleasant internationalist atmosphere that made the smaller delegations from Belgium, Britain, Scotland, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the Philippines feel “at home”.

From the 25th to 31st July, the 21st youth camp of the Fourth International took place in Ruesta in the province of Aragon in the Spanish State. The site was close to the Pyrenees, in beautiful surroundings close to a lake where you could go swimming during leisure time.

The complete programme of the camp, day by day.

Opening rally on Saturday 26 th July.

Sunday 27 th July Imperialism & ecology