New York, April 1—It’s been almost two years since we’ve had a cafeteria on our campus and students and workers are angry! We are half-way through our spring semester and despite the promises from the administration, Bronx Community College’s (BCC) majority Black and Brown students still can’t buy food without walking ten minutes to the overpriced deli nearby. In response, our student-led club, Common Ground, along with a PL’er and campus workers, are preparing to intensify the fight against this racist capitalist austerity.
It’s clear that under capitalism, our health and wellbeing is of little to no concern to the bosses. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fights to build grassroots struggle to demand our immediate needs with fellow workers and students, and to grow the understanding that only a worker-run communist society can guarantee healthy nutrition to all of our class.
People’s pantry reflects communism in action
As reported in a previous issue of CHALLENGE [1/15], our club has been organizing students to fight back against the racist campus bosses who have offered us nothing but excuses as to why students and workers on our campus are unable to buy anything that doesn’t come out of a vending machine. Instead of affordable, nutritious, healthy options, the students, 98 percent of whom are Black or Latin, are forced to buy overpriced garbage from vending machines that poison our bodies.
In response to this racist neglect, we organized a People’s Pantry at the end of last semester to give away healthy snacks to students. Relying completely on donations from students and workers, we fed hundreds of students as they prepared for final exams. In contrast to the bosses’ lies about how communism can’t work because workers are “disorganized” or “individualistic,” our pantry shows successful communist organizing in action!
We’ve continued this important work this semester, setting up in the library on Wednesdays. The support for the Pantry has been astounding. As the weeks progressed the movement gained traction as regular Pantry patrons would frustratingly ask for updates on the cafeteria's progress, or lack thereof, and were met with the same answer. Probably no time soon.
Expand the struggle – take aim at capitalism
This week we are planning a further escalation of our struggle with a rally and march. We’ll begin outside of campus, where we can draw in members of the community, which is a food desert itself and where many residents suffer from racist food and housing insecurity. After the rally we will march to the administration building to directly call out the college president and their stooges for their failure to ensure the availability of food on our campus. Finally, we wil set up our pantry to continue to serve students and workers.
CHALLENGE newspaper has been present at the pantry and has helped to spark many interesting discussions with students and workers. We’ve discussed the imortance of building confidence in students to build power so we can win this demand. We’ve discussed how the administration is essentially the enemy of students and workers, serving only to make excuses and to get us to accept racist austerity as the norm. We’ve also discussed the connections between the situation at our small campus and wider geopolitical events.
Making these connections is crucial because it ties together the racism we’re experiencing on our campus and U.S. imperialism. We’ve raised the fact that the U.S. has sent more than $20 billion to Israel and yet we don’t have a cafeteria and students have responded enthusiastically to this point. One of the chants for our upcoming rally is “From the Bronx to Palestine, malnutrition is a crime!” The racist brutality of capitalism comes in many forms and linking them together builds the solidarity and class consciousness that we need to build our movement and our Party.
Excitement is building as we prepare to increase our righteous anger and pin it on our small-time administration and the big-time racist, capitalist system. We will send a report for the next issue of CHALLENGE and keep the working class informed on the small steps we are taking in the Bronx to bring down capitalism and replace it with workers’ power!
