New York, March 14—Tens of thousands of students walked out across the United States in a nationwide call for gun control after 17 students and staff members were killed last month in yet another mass school shooting, this time in Parkland, Florida. We salute these students’ courage in confronting the capitalist bosses’ utter disregard for the lives of young working-class people.
It’s essential to recognize, however, that the latest anti-gun campaign is being orchestrated by liberals in the ruling class. Extreme alienation and anti-worker violence are integral features of the bosses’ profit system. Only a communist revolution can put a stop to them.
The liberals’ job is  to channel workers’ natural horror at mass shootings into an embrace of the Democratic Party. That’s the same Democratic Party that has been led by some of the biggest mass murderers in modern times, from Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama.  
Liberal bosses try to manage student anger
In New York City, the racist, anti-student teachers union and the racist, anti-student schools chancellor collaborated seamlessly in an attempt to control the walkouts.  But youth anger is substantial and hard to contain—and the ruling class fears that anger, especially among Black and Latin students. Coming out of months and years of political education and base-building, a number of young people in New York in and around Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were able to take their protest beyond the stage-managed and censored limits imposed by local education bosses.
Public schools are an important part of the rulers’ state apparatus. They are designed to repress students’ anger at capitalism, and to build patriotism to induce young workers to kill their class sisters and brothers in the next global conflict. At the March 14 walkouts, however, limits were pushed.
Pushing the limits
At one school, students refused to follow the directions set by the administration, which treated the protest like a fire drill. Instead, the students marched to Brooklyn Borough Hall to join hundreds of other protestors.
They held signs that read “NRA=KKK” and “SOS: End Gun Violence in Schools, Overseas & on Streets,” pointing to the racist, imperialist nature of the whole capitalist system.  
At another school where recent protests have been harshly criticized, with participants threatened for engaging in silent sit-ins and wearing political stickers, students secretly organized a walkout of hundreds. The administration, who presumed that the student body would have no interest in it, was shocked. The racist idea that Black and Latin students don’t care about societal issues—or are being “manipulated” by adults to act because they can’t possibly think for themselves—must always be exposed and confronted.
At yet another school, so many students walked out that they filled multiple streets. These students coordinated with those from other schools in the same school building to organize the walkout in spite of the Department of Education’s continued attempts to divide them.
A single spark
The following day, 30 students organized a protest at an AT&T store across the street after discovering that a racist worker there had videotaped the previous day’s walkout while calling the protestors “monkeys.” These students quickly responded by putting out a leaflet and calling on AT&T to fire this racist. After parents joined their protest in outraged calls to local elected officials and AT&T bigwigs, the worker was indeed fired.  
As a revolutionary communist party, PLP is tasked with joining the top-down reform “movements” the ruling class seeks to launch and control, and then to lead workers and youth to break out of the box of dead-end electoral “solutions” presented by capitalist misleaders.  Modest but significant progress along these lines is being achieved among anti-sexist workers and youth activated in the #MeToo movement.
The Saturday after the March 14 walkouts, more than 50 New York-area members and friends of PLP attended a vigorous conference on capitalist education that brought together parents, youth, and educators.  (See next issue for details.)
Another national walkout has been planned for Saturday, March 24. PLP will continue to fight alongside students, workers, and parents and infuse communist politics in the struggle.
In 1930, when the communist movement in China appeared to some to be too small to make a difference, the communist revolutionary Mao Tse-Tung referred to a traditional Chinese saying:  “A single spark can start a prairie fire.” This week, we saw a few sparks fly.