No Nutrition! No Tuition! This was the slogan that our student club adopted as we built a campaign to bring a cafeteria to our campus. It’s been more than 15 months since the previous vendor left and the racist administration has done nothing but offer excuses for why our majority Black and Latin student body and campus workers have not had anywhere to buy food. While our particular scenario plays out in the Bronx, this is what higher education under capitalism looks like more generally. Especially now, as U.S. imperialism continues to falter, the bosses will work overtime to get workers, especially Black and Latin workers, to accept racist austerity, cutbacks and attacks on our class. In our small, but meaningful way, we are fighting back!
For the entire fall semester, we distributed a petition demanding a cafeteria, eventually collecting more than 1000 signatures, almost 15 percent of the student body. Every week we stood outside where the cafeteria was supposed to be and listened to the anger and frustration of students and workers. We encouraged them to direct their anger at the administration and to join our club. As finals approached, we adopted another slogan:
“We help us.” We recognized that our administration, instead of getting the job done and getting us a cafeteria, would just continue offering excuses. So in the span of one weekend we organized a “People’s Pantry” to provide food to students. Everyone pitched in and brought food and signed up to work the table. And for the entire finals week, we gave out fruit, granola bars, yogurt, oatmeal and other healthy snacks. While doing so, we highlighted the failures of our administration and how it’s up to students and workers to make a better situation for ourselves. We knew that we were the only ones who would serve our class! Discussion around the table linked the situation at our campus to class struggle: capitalists will never provide what workers and students need and so it’s up to us, first to make a communist revolution, then to run society in our interests.
Identity politics are poisons for the working class
The president of our college is Puerto Rican and the administration is almost entirely Black and Latin. But that hasn’t stopped them from imposing racist conditions on campus. We are learning and teaching in classrooms that are falling apart, with holes in the walls and exposed wiring in some rooms. Campus offices, like financial aid and the registrar, are severely understaffed, meaning services are delayed or denied. Advisors and counselors are overworked, so students don’t receive guidance and help they need. And of course the majority of classes are taught by part-time instructors making very low wages.
The community served by our campus feels the full weight of capitalist racism: 89 percent of our students are Black and/or Latin and 15 percent come from households making less than $15,000 per year. Half of students suffer from food insecurity and yet for 15 months they’ve been forced to buy overpriced garbage from vending machines, or travel off-campus to the nearest deli!
We can see very clearly that nationalism and identity politics are dead-ends for students on campus. It doesn’t matter which racist borders our administrators were born within or what “race” they are. The most meaningful identity that our so-called leaders have is “administrator,” which identifies them as excuse-makers and managers of racist austerity. It means they will attempt to crush student fight-back as we saw last spring in the Gaza encampments.
Boldness is necessary
The boldness of our students was demonstrated when we took petitions to the president’s holiday party to confront him about his failures. In front of dozens of faculty, staff and students, we pressed him on why it was unacceptable that we still did not have a cafeteria, when the cafeteria would be restored, and the lack of respect his administration showed to students and workers. His defensive and bullying response proved that his role is to manage racist austerity and to force students and workers to accept more oppressive conditions as capitalists attempt to prepare society for more war and fascism. But the brave students in our club will refuse to go quietly into this future. They are showing that if we’re united and willing to stand up, then we can take on campus mis-leaders directly and fight for what we need.
Our fight is not over. We are certain that we will not have a cafeteria at the start of the spring semester and we are already planning on our first-day-of-class actions. We intend to increase the pressure, knowing that only class struggle can hope to improve our conditions. CHALLENGE newspapers will be there, bringing the idea that only class struggle, led by communist politics and a revolutionary outlook, can improve the conditions for all workers around the world. Linking our situation with racist treatment of migrant workers, discussions have also already started about being prepared for a Trump-led increase in racist attacks on immigrants and what we should do if ICE or other immigration kkkops attempt to come on campus. CHALLENGE newspapers will be there, bringing the idea that racism can only be defeated by destroying capitalism and replacing it with a communist society.
La lucha continua!
