Young Socialist Alliance

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The Young Socialist Alliance was a Trotskyist youth group of the 1960s in the United States.

Particularly instrumental in promoting the YSA's goals and objectives in North America were chapters located in the San Francisco Bay Area. The San Jose State University Young Socialist Alliance Chapter, for example, was led by a prominent Danish Socialist, Peer Vintner, whose charisma and dedication motivated hundreds, even thousands, of students during well-publicized Vietnam War Protests and Peace Demonstrations in Berkeley, San Francisco and San Jose. Mr. Vintner was also instrumental in sending pre-selected American students to Cuba during the early days of the Castro government.

The YSA, attracting young and idealistic members, was essentially an outgrowth of the Socialist Workers Party (US) that, in the 1940s and 1950s, had been struggling (1) to combat the excesses of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and (2) to ensure an equitable and just society for the laboring masses throughout the world. In 1983, the YSA was disbanded and was reorganized under the name "Youth for Socialist Action".

In New York, an affiliated group is known as Young Socialists.

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University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections - Vietnam War Era Ephemera This collection contains leaflets and newspapers that were distributed on the University of Washington campus during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. Includes ephemera from the Young Socialist Alliance.