BROOKLYN, NY, March 1— While the long winter break for our CUNY campus usually means less political activity since we’re not on campus, this year we made a resolution to push our limits and build a year-round mass presence. Our Progressive Labor Party club has been busier than ever attending pro-migrant worker rallies, building our base and inviting our friends and coworkers to our biweekly study group. And we are holding regular CHALLENGE sales with bullhorn speeches at a busy transit hub. This is a collectively written article reporting our winter preparations to hit the ground running once the spring semester starts.
Student-worker alliance = internationalism & multiracial unity
Our struggle to build a student-worker alliance continues. This winter, student and faculty PL’ers attended a City University Of New York (CUNY) faculty meeting of an opposition caucus. The caucus organizes against the fake leftist, sellout leadership of the CUNY faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress, who recently negotiated a bogus labor contract (see BOX). The following is a student’s account of the meeting:
“As a student guest at this union meeting, I was welcomed by professors who are committed and willing to fight for the most vulnerable, like the adjunct professors and graduate students, that the union leadership isn’t representing. They seemed antiracist and pro-fighting, and the meeting successfully organized the pro-strike opposition union caucus. I didn’t notice any other students there though, and also, I was the only Black woman in the room. As communists, we want to win them to fight for the whole international working class, and we must struggle with faculty to tune in and organize with students.
As a student, CUNY isn’t just about the teachers. It’s the students and staff and students are under attack and facing deportation threats. So, how can you go on strike without organizing the majority at CUNY? On the bright side, loud applause came for a proposed CUNY-wide student-worker alliance connecting strike demands with ICE watches, and students are invited to attend future meetings. There’s potential here.”
Red ideas spur excitement over CHALLENGE
Another student reports: our weekly CHALLENGE sales are at a busy transit hub, an area home to a diverse population largely made up of Black workers, immigrants and transit workers. Recently, our experience there was eye-opening. In windy, below freezing temperatures, we used a bullhorn to give speeches and we distributed and got donations for almost 250 copies of CHALLENGE in one hour! Then we delivered 200 more on our paper route of the corner delis, laundromats and public housing where CHALLENGE is welcomed and read. But today wasn't just about distributing papers. It was about the conversations, the reactions, and the shared sense of hope that we encountered.
This is a bustling area. Everyone is rushing home, to work, or shopping and running errands. But the moment we started bullhorn speeches and connecting President Donald Trump, racism and local gentrification to capitalism and calling for communist revolution, people stopped. The diversity of those who took the paper was striking. Black, Latin, Asian, Russian, everyone. We all seem so different, but we are all connected looking for solutions to our struggles!
One moment stands out: One lady began reading the paper right there while waiting for the bus while another woman, juggling children and several heavy bags, initially declined the paper politely. But she heard our speech, stopped, and sent her daughter to grab a copy. Then a group of college students asked for extra copies to share with their friends. Meanwhile, on the other side of the street, a crowd of women who heard our speeches crossed over excitedly. Some even began to chant along with us! A transit worker took a paper shouting "Fight Back! Fight Back!" raising his fist. Solidarity was in the air.
The energy from the crowd was palpable. And this was just one neighborhood. Imagine this outreach around the world!
Forward to spring and May Day
Our preparations for the spring semester are in full swing. Connections are being made on our club’s campuses to form Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) watches and student-faculty committees to defend immigrant students. We’re also fundraising for students at risk of deportation. As life gets more expensive, fundraising even more urgently builds solidarity and class consciousness. These are opportunities to enlist our base and expand our solidarity networks – and practice to eventually demonstrate solidarity in even bigger material ways. With International Women’s Day and May Day around the corner, we’re digging in for the fights ahead. JOIN US!
Historical context:
For decades, the bosses have launched unrelenting attacks on student-worker alliances, ever since the mass, communist-led student-faculty antiracist strike that shut down City College of New York (CCNY)) in 1949. In the 1960s, the bosses rigged the anticommunist-led United Federation of Teachers and Professional Staff Congress over the communist-led unions. The Communist Party by then fully retreated from fightback and revolution – and Progressive Labor Party (PLP) formed to carry the red flag forward.
At CUNY today, one way segregation continues is the separate unions divided by job title and race, by mental and manual labor. The PSC for mostly white faculty, and District Council 37 for the laborers and custodial staff. DC 37 is the largest union in New York City, and the most racially diverse.
Separate unions based on labor only benefit the bosses, who use the division to screw us and prevent a repeat of the communist-led 1930s and 40s: for example, the city negotiated a wage-cut contract with DC 37’s sellout, pro-Mayor Eric Adams misleadership first. This established “pattern bargaining,” which the city then used with each separate city union. The PSC misleadership used this excuse, saying they “broke the pattern” — only marginally, and only through major concessions hurting adjuncts.
There is no “fair” contract under capitalism. Communists fight for maximum contract demands while exposing that until workers seize state power, no contract with the bosses’ state can protect us from fascism and imperialist war. Only organizing a mass PLP can students and workers strike against and smash the capitalists who slash our pay, let our campuses collapse and allow rabid ICE and NYPD kkkops to run wild.
