Newark, NJ, June 5 - The Rutgers-Newark encampment was squashed by liberal university bosses in cahoots with Black nationalist misleader Mayor Ras Baraka. Although students and workers did not win their demands after 40 days of demonstrating, winning workers closer to the Party is a victory. To steel our minds and morale for inevitable fascist attacks, NJ school teachers within Progressive Labor Party (PLP) held a fiery teach-in on fascism at the encampment days before.
With many workers and students one emergency away from homelessness and one ruling class conflict away from genocide, liberal misleaders are struggling to sell the idea of keeping capitalist democracy alive. Despite well-intentioned words and reforms, liberal misleaders are marching our class into the hands of fascism and World War III. To reverse and smash this plan, workers, students, and soldiers must channel mass fightback into a single internationalist fight for communism. Only a united multiracial, multi-gendered, multigenerational working class of millions organized under the red banner of a communist Party—PLP—can smash this genocidal system for all time.
From the masses to the masses: learning to identify fascism to smash it
The PLP-led teach-in began with questions from two dozen multiracial, working class fighters. How is fascism connected to Newark? What does fascism look like in schools? Afterward, we read a May Day speech from a Brooklyn-based PLer who was reprimanded by the school administration for encouraging his students to fightback against the genocide in Gaza. PLers mobilized students and teachers against the bosses who violently forced him to stop teaching. He won his job back.
The shared working class wisdom revealed the following: What we associate with fascism, be it violent racist, sexist, or anti-working class tendencies within our families, neighborhoods, or workplaces, is always linked with the competition of ruling bosses across nations. For example, a principal firing a teacher for encouraging students to take a stance against the genocide in Gaza is acting on behalf of U.S. bosses. We discussed how the popular conception of fascism as attacks from the far-right on progressives is just the tip of the iceberg. Fascism involves a larger process of class warfare responding to the changing conditions of capitalism.
Our collective conclusions were put to the test in determining Mayor Ras Baraka’s roles. Two older workers argued Baraka was not fascist because he implemented reformist initiatives, including temporary shelters for some unhoused workers. In response, a Black community member revealed those small deeds didn’t change Newark’s economic apartheid. Baraka is allowing a division to grow between Black and Latin workers facing evictions and the more stable base of multicultural workers for capital being used to replace and isolate them. A high school student brought the teach-in home by declaring: “Ras and these people are still participants in a fascist system and cannot ultimately avoid having to play their role in developing fascism when it is needed.”
Fascist Baraka shows himself
Days later, antiracist fighters woke up to a blaring bullhorn, warning demonstrators to clear the encampment or face arrest. While most of the city was home asleep, Newark PD mobilized to close off all traffic surrounding the encampment so that the Rutgers PD could move in. PLers met campers at nearby Harriet Tubman Park, where many young people started to see the role that Baraka plays for the ruling class. Some took to social media to blast the Mayor. Baraka distanced himself and the Newark PD from the incident, but the fighting workers and students shot back with photos and videos of Newark PD on the encampment clearing them out.
As the Black community worker expressed in the teach-in, this isn’t about one person. If it isn’t Baraka, it would be someone else. These encampments are teaching the working class lessons about internationalism and multiracial unity as anecdotes against fascism, be it from a liberal or outright racist. The danger of the Trump-led racist and sexist movement is real, but the attacks from the liberal wing of the U.S. ruling class (the Big Fascists) exposed their willingness to be servants to ruling class bosses when capital is on the line.
As comrades reflect on this teach-in and the end of the Rutgers encampment, we are reminded that what we do counts. Only by fighting alongside the students and workers at the encampment and within our schools were we able to have a great turnout and enthusiasm at the teach-in. Several of our friends advanced their political understanding as a result of not only seeing the need for internationalism and multiracial unity but also a communist, internationalist party to keep up the fight. The quantity of these efforts qualitatively advances the fight for communism.
