For over three days, youth from the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Arab-Maghreb regions gathered in Venezuela alongside 500 representatives of social movements, labor unions, and left parties. There, we met with the goal of determining a shared agenda for building an alternative future—one that refuses the bleak future that the US-led superpowers impose upon us—in favor of one that is bolder and brighter for working people all over the world. From the culmination of the gathering, we declare the following:
We, the anti-imperialist youth of the International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA), declare our unyielding commitment to defeat our one common enemy, US imperialism, and to advance socialism throughout the world.
We are and will be forever grateful to Venezuela and its people for organizing the gathering, hosting us, and treating us like their own, amidst the blockade and economic sanctions that they are facing. The Bolivarian Revolution has once again shown us what solidarity, love, and hope looks like.
We agreed that the imperialist powers offer no solutions to the problems of our times. Instead of diplomacy, the US empire deals with its issues through armed force and destruction. Instead of working towards a sustainable planet, they continue to destroy the ecosystem in pursuit of profit and at the cost of the most vulnerable. But we are seeing the decay of the empire: US military initiatives and investments are failing in Ukraine and Palestine, the Sahel is rejecting the military presence of the US and France, and countries around the world are rising up for true sovereignty, self-determination, and new pathways for cooperation.
But like a wounded monster, imperialism is unleashing even more barbarity upon the masses of the world as it struggles to survive, resorting to even more violence and repression. While billions of people across the world go hungry, we see the US empire fund the ongoing genocide in Palestine, incite conflicts all over the world, and place unilateral coercive measures on Cuba, Venezuela, and other countries of the Global South. In our gatherings, we addressed the dangers to humanity and the urgent need to combat the ever-growing threat of an imperialism that has accelerated beyond excess, exploiting the planet and its people to no end: hyper-imperialism. Imperialism is the one enemy to the working class everywhere. The imperialists are few but powerful, we are many but scattered. It will only be through hyper-solidarity in the form of a united internationalist project that we can take down this enemy.
This gathering was the start of developing a plan for a common minimum project against hyper-imperialism. We affirm and commit to this plan for an alternative social agenda for the world which includes concrete proposals and demands regarding democracy and the world order. We demand justice for the environment, new structures for finances and debts, and improved health, housing, food, education, work, social care, rights for women and LGBTQ+ people, culture, and the digital world—all restructured in the service of the people and solidarity. In particular, we see the youth as an essential part of this project, bringing in unique perspectives that build on the lessons of past struggles. We can and will be mobilized by this agenda that counters the nihilism and defeatism that so many young people deal with.
As anti-imperialist youth, we must fight for the present and the future, for the planet and humanity. We will use all the tools at our disposal to advance socialism and to defeat imperialism. Utilizing political education, revolutionary arts and culture, and mass mobilizations, we will bring more youth into the global mass movement against imperialism and build unity along the alternative social agenda developed during this time in Caracas. Through coordinated actions and messaging, young people in every part of the world will engage in struggle together.
