These are certainly questions that we have to try to answer. What we learned from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist countries has made me more insistent on democratic forms of socialism. I think that particularly now in the US with the education crisis, the housing crisis, the health crisis, the jobs crisis, we need to place discussions of socialism on our agenda. It depends on our ability to rebuild some of the movements that have fallen apart as a result of the collapse of socialism. I do think it's important now to support Cuba, and even with the enormous problems that exist in the Cuban economy, we should point out that education is free in Cuba from kindergarten through the postgraduate level.
Health care is free.
It seems to me that even if we don't develop movements that are ideologically based, we can encourage people to think about the kinds of changes that would move us in the direction of socialism, such as a system of health care that is accessible to everyone. Much of the work that we have done on our conference has been done via e-mail and our website. But I don't think the internet has the power in and of itself to unite radicals. We can use it but we also need to use other sites in our various modes of organizing. Which is the way it should be.