Bronx: students hungry for class struggle
Our fall semester is almost over but students and workers all over the Bronx (and the rest of New York too!) have been active in the class struggle, alongside members and guided by the politics of Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Our two main issues have been the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the fact that the two community colleges in the Bronx, which serve primarily Black and Latin students, have gone more than a year without a cafeteria. One of our main messages has been to connect these two things by showing that imperialist war –an essential part of modern capitalism – means that there’s less money for education. We’ve collected signatures on a petition, organized a Palestine-solidarity film festival and participated in some great marches and demonstrations. Most importantly, some students attended the PLP College Conference where the need for a worker-student alliance and a revolutionary party to lead the working class was discussed. Throughout the semester, CHALLENGE has been ever-present, getting into the hands of hundreds of students and workers – who we see as hundreds of potential new members of the Party. As we head toward finals, our fighting spirit is high! At one campus we’re ending the semester by calling out the President in public for failing to provide a cafeteria and the students are here for it!
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For thanksgiving, we raised consciousness against genocide
For this year’s Thanksgiving holiday, a group of CUNY students and faculty in our PLP club had no plans. At the last minute, we learned about and joined a bus trip to Plymouth Rock, sponsored by a Brooklyn-based community organization of workers from Haiti. Plymouth is the site of the 1620 Mayflower landings and one of British capitalism’s first successful colonies, and today is the site of the annual “National Day of Mourning” ceremony. The ceremony and protest were multiracial, attended by hundreds of indigenous workers from the U.S., Canada and Mexico, alongside mostly Black workers and a variety of young pro-Palestine youth.
These workers and youth stood in the pouring cold rain hearing speeches from indigenous and Palestinian youth, connecting the past and present European and U.S. genocide of indigenous civilizations with the U.S.’ genocide of Black, Arab and Palestinian workers. One militant young indigenous woman leader, after movingly summarizing the list of U.S. imperialism’s crimes and connecting them with anti-Black racism and police terror in the U.S., named the ultimate cause of all oppression: capitalism, with revolution as the solution.
Despite these strengths every speaker missed a class analysis of capitalism, and could not identify international workers’ power for communism as the solution. And with communist politics absent, the call for revolution was quickly submerged and confused with capitalist ideas of nationalism, identity politics like supporting small Black/ indigenous capitalists, and religion, exemplified by the emphasis on prayer and nationalist flags of Palestine, Lebanon and various Black nationalist flags in the crowd.
The next day, we visited Harvard University, and as one of the CUNY students writes:
Harvard lives up to its reputation and my expectations, with grandiose structures and buildings that exactly flaunt its “old-money” status. Our group was small, and we were short on time, but we distributed CHALLENGE nonetheless. Reactions were mixed, with a majority being negative.
Many were simply shocked, but we did manage to distribute a decent amount of newpapers!
It’s likely that most of the students with a working class background have some understanding of class, as they’re surrounded by actual children of the bourgeoisie but there needs to be an organized and committed Party club to expose the reality of deep inequality and false meritocracy to win the students to fight for the working class and not be the future stooges or members of the capitalist class.
If I learned anything, it would be that it reinforced the idea that we need better organization and greater commitment. Had we a larger group and more time, we could have seized space and had a greater presence and really disrupt the square.
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Scratch a liberal, find a capitalist apologist
AFT (American Federation of Teachers) union president Randi Weingarten has a fascinating talk for our friends in education. First she repeats what is now common: Kamala lost because the Democratic Party (DP) ignored workers’ worsening life for 40 years.
Then Weingarten notes that 60 percent of high school grads do not go on to college. So she wants them all to get an education that develops “four skill sets [horrible technocratic phrase]: critical thinking, problem-solving, resilience and relationships.” Sounds good. But what does she really mean? Go to Microsoft and other corporations and work up courses tailored to their desire! Fits the venue of her talk, Columbia University’s graduate school of government.
We can realize those four humanistic needs ... only on the communist path.
Weingarten’s specific politics, like those of the reporter, long-time social-democrat Harold Meyerson: “That’s why unions are indispensable in the fight not just to win the working class’s political support [that is, steer them into the DP], but to preserve and strengthen American democracy.”
Organizing in the unions, yes. However, we can be bold and declare, U.S. democracy is capitalist oppression. We don’t want to strengthen it. Our way out is to overthrow it. Replace it with our own machinery of rule, by us as well as for us.
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