BROOKLYN, NY—As we mark the midterm exam season, students, faculty, and members of the Progressive Labor Party at our CUNY (City University of New York) college campus have hit the ground running with antiracist, antisexist and anti-imperialist fightback! As imperialist wars ravage more and more workers around the world each day, antiracist students, faculty and PL’ers inspired by fightback in New Jersey are building a movement to smash capitalism once and for all.
Lead multiracial fightback
Following a gang-related shootout that killed twelve year-old Kade Lewin in the primarily Black working class East Flatbush neighborhood, the NYPD has launched a racist occupation force in the name of “fighting crime.” The NYPD has disrupted everyday life for thousands of workers with convoys of vehicles and floodlights. Each night at 8pm, NYPD helicopters hover close to the ground, making it difficult for children to sleep, all in the name of catching the criminals. As U.S. imperialism attempts to encircle its imperialist rivals Russia and China, this encirclement of the Black workers’ residences has nothing to do with “fighting crime.” Instead, it is about attempting to instill racist terror among the working class.
Meanwhile, in our campus club, PL’ers and friends had been tabling for weeks and showing the video of the racist police attack on the Rodwell-Spivey family in New Jersey, while collecting signatures to support the family’s legal defense of Justin Rodwell. Two young Black women students watched the video, and commented that the Newark PD behaves “exactly like they do in East Flatbush, especially since the murder of Kade Lewin.”
These young working-class women saw through liberal Mayor Adams’ racist lies about the nature of “crime”  in Black neighborhoods, and knew something had to be done.
No good politicians in a racist system
Following a rush of student support and more than 50 students joining our campus club, more students began drawing connections between the racist police terror in liberal Democrat strongholds of Newark, NJ and East Flatbush, NYC. Campus staff, as well as majority Black cafeteria and custodial workers and CHALLENGE readers have also joined in organizing. Our growing student-worker alliance is connecting racist police terror in the U.S. to the sharpening inter-imperialist wars — and the need for a mass revolutionary party, not “better” politicians.
The liberal racist NYC mayor Eric Adams uses the families of tragic murder to push his own racist police agenda. But we’re organizing against racist police terror and occupation, from Newark to Brooklyn. Through neighborhood student connections with the family of Kade Lewin, we plan to send a collective letter of sympathy and solidarity and call a rally in East Flatbush. The working class of East Flatbush must not be punished! The NYPD, racist Democrat Eric Adams and “Jim Crow” Joe Biden are the real criminals and terrorists responsible for heinous crimes through the racist capitalist system they represent, and want millions of working-class youth to fight for U.S. imperialism and to die defending it!
Onward to May Day!
As we approach midterm exams this semester, our progress report so far includes more than 50 new Black, Latin and immigrant students organizing for fightback, and nineteen of our regular CHALLENGE readers among the students and campus workers taking the lead. CHALLENGE is discussed, debated and spreading within our campus antiracist club, with more fightback planned for the second half of the semester.
We also made collective plans for International Workers’ Day, May Day. When some students raised safety concerns about protesting, we collectively agreed on a meeting spot for that day and traveling to Flatbush and Clarendon together.
While the imperialist capitalist bosses from the U.S. to Russia and China plunge the international working class into another world war, our Party is growing its ranks and building especially among young Black, immigrant and women workers who will build a Red Army and smash capitalism once and for all with communist revolution. ONWARD!