BY JAMES VASSILOPOULOS
Leigh Hughes joined the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) in November 2000 following the tumultuous events at the S11 protests in Melbourne. He is 17 years old, and is a Year 12 student at Tuggeranong College, a college in an outer southern suburb of Canberra.
" I wanted to get more involved to change the world, more involved in campaigns, and I wanted to do more to fight injustice", he told Green Left Weekly.
"I went down to S11. It was an amazing experience. I've been to protests before but not of that scale. S11 showed a better world is possible, people don't have to live in a world of alienation.
"One of the chants I really liked was: whose streets, our streets! We can run this society. With so many people coming down to S11, it looked like we really could. It cut through the fake ideas that protesting achieves nothing. With S11 people can unite and fight. We are not doomed to have protests of 12 people."
Hughes believes a revolutionary party is necessary for revolution. "A lot of people are thinking things are fucked but they also believe they can't do anything about it. You need a party of politically educated and committed people to express the ideas of socialism — that people don't need to be ruled, that we can rule ourselves."
" Many people at school equate parties and politics in general, with Howard and Beazley. They are turned off by these parties. My friends think there is no alternative. But I think there is an alternative. The DSP is certainly part of the alternative. It is democratic, active and stands up for the poor", said Hughes.
He first became interested in politics because of the glaring social inequalities in the world. "Fifteen million people die each year from poverty, yet if you're wealthy enough you're swimming in food. Cultural injustices also had a big impact on me — I saw music become so commercialised — with profit being the only thing.
"I was so shocked that not only were these injustices so apparent and devastating but also that so many people didn't know about them. I thought, 'What can I do? I've got to change this, to fight the system because it is fucking us all over'."
" I started reading more, going to the library and picking up books. I also was looking at info on the web and I found some socialist web sites."
Hughes joined the Resistance socialist youth organisation through the 1998 anti-Hanson secondary school walkouts.
"Before I joined Resistance, I was calling myself a socialist but I didn't know that there were any socialist groups. I thought I was perhaps the only socialist in Canberra."
At his college Hughes talks left-wing politics to other students. "Soon people came up to me. I've done a film screening on S11. I've had stalls on issues that can radicalise people, like East Timor. I thought my friends wouldn't ever get involved but we formed our own contingent to go to the East Timor walkouts in 1999.
"In my history class I organised a DSP speaker to come and address the class on the Russian revolution and Marxism. That was cool! The capitalist media have been so triumphant. That Marxism is dead, long live capitalism! But students were listening to the talk the DSP speaker gave. After the speech was over they found it as relevant, as it has ever been."
Hughes sells Green Left Weekly at the Gorman House markets. "I think it's important to get out Green Left to a lot of people, but not just as a sale. It is vital in getting our, that is pro-working class, ideas out to people."
"I would be lying if I wasn't excited about the possibilities for the future", said Hughes. "In this next period — a period under the long shadow of S11 — people can be won to the idea of socialism."