For a middle-aged person, it is encouraging to read the testimonials of so many young people whose political consciousness has clearly been awakened at a relatively early phase of their lives.

In my own political development and maturation, belated though it may be, nothing has played a more important role than wsws.org. I cannot remember exactly when or how I first started reading, but it must have been at some point during Obama’s first term.

Coming from a middle class American background, I was still in what I now consider my middle-class protest politics phase. I had long been aware that the two major capitalist parties serve the ruling class, but, I recognize in retrospect, I nevertheless bought into the reformist mentality of incremental change and lesser evilism. (I confess that I voted for Obama in 2008, even though I knew better!) As a child of the Cold War era, I had little more than a superficial knowledge of what socialism was. The far right, by preposterously calling Obama a socialist, aroused my curiosity as to what terms like socialism and Marxism really meant. It’s entirely possible that my first encounter with wsws.org was the result of a Google search for those very words.

In 2009 I was involved in the single-payer health care movement, and felt betrayed and deeply disgusted at the way most of the liberal establishment lined up behind Obama’s bogus reform legislation. In retrospect, I now see this as a pivotal moment: I was finally ready to break decisively with liberal and pseudo-left politics. When I stumbled upon wsws.org, I was struck by its penetrating insight and unrelenting honesty and bluntness.

Virtually everything I read here is enlightening, but I am especially grateful for the coverage of Obama’s drone assassination program and its wider implications. I’ve yet to see anything else on the Web that compares.

Through the World Socialist Web Site I discovered the Socialist Equality Party, and became an avid and active supporter. I began to learn about Marxism, both in theory and in practice. This learning process is of course a work in progress. But the web site has been instrumental in raising my political understanding and consciousness to a much higher level. I am confident that it will likewise continue to inform and inspire its ever-expanding readership to mobilize, so that we may carry out the difficult work required to bring civilization itself to a whole new level.