NEW YORK CITY, May 14—In the French Revolution Georges Danton came up with the slogan “Boldness! Again, boldness! Always, boldness!” That describes the rally today of sixty City University of New York (CUNY) students and a few faculty, multiracial, multi-gender, and all ages marched from Hunter College to John Jay College. Their demand: abolition. Abolish the police, prisons, the carceral state, settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and imperialism.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) would add that all these forms of oppression are a necessity under the capitalist system, and we cannot eliminate them without abolishing capitalism itself, altogether and everywhere! That means building an organization, an international revolutionary communist party, PLP, which works explicitly to abolish capitalism and all its oppressions and build egalitarian communism.
These new keywords of struggle come close to but don’t quite say “Abolish capitalism.” But they inspire a new wave of militant youth, and here they lifted up the important specific demand to remove police from CUNY.  Speakers from Hunter also described struggles to save Asian American Studies and the Center for Puerto Rican Studies there.
The march refused to get a permit, took the streets and blocked traffic, had its own medics and lawyers in our ranks, and prepared everyone to link arms and stay together in case of an incident.
A young PLP comrade joined another marcher to block traffic on Park Avenue with their bicycles. Following the 2020 summer of rebellion which taught us to rely on ourselves in struggle, these marchers were serious. You can get too used to obeying bourgeois laws.
Remove kkkops from John Jay
The boldest demand was to remove the Klan in blue from John Jay, which was founded in 1965 as the College of Police Science (COPS). “John Jay’s training programs target its majority working-class, [Black, indigenous, Latin, and Asian] student body...to work for the institutions of organized violence,” said the pamphlet from the Cops off Campus Coalition (see box). “We believe that police and prison abolition is the work of our present and the promise of our future.”  They declared May abolition month.
The event also highlighted CUNY’s collaboration with U.S. imperialist war: John Jay’s Certificate in Homeland Security, Baruch’s agreement to “a formal partnership” with the CIA, and, the program of York and City Colleges with the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC),  a college program training officers for the U.S. military. Education is one part of how the ruling class legitimizes its system; colleges function to reproduce oppressive class relations and support the bosses’ aims. We cannot separate colleges from its capitalist role.
The march attracted a heavy police presence as it exited Central Park into “Lenape Circle” (erase Columbus from that circle!), passing the Trump tower and heading for John Jay and CUNY’s Office of Public Safety. At these stops, speakers called for solidarity with Palestinian workers and slammed campus policing for attacking students who fight back.
The future will be bright with a new generation of anti-capitalists. The main danger continues to be nationalist and identity politics—on campus and in the streets.  PLP has to offer them the legacy of communist politics, boldness, and discipline; the organizational and political strength that comes from an experienced communist party; the long history and deep philosophy of communist workers the world over. The long march to abolish capitalism and build a society of comrades has a long past and a long future.
PLP invites every marcher at this CUNY event to come into our Party and build it up with their bold vision and action. Colleges are also an arena of fightback against tools of capitalism: cops,  ROTC,  and the CIA. Say it again: Join the PLP to abolish capitalism and build an egalitarian communist world.