New York City, October 10- With chants blasting the university bosses’ complicity with fascism and signs denouncing the MAGA attacks on universities, over 150 faculty, staff, students, and supporters picketed City University of New York (CUNY) headquarters. We demanded the reinstatement of four faculty organizers from Brooklyn College who had been summarily fired the previous June for supporting students protesting genocide in Gaza. Inside, the CUNY bosses were conducting a grievance hearing lodged by the faculty-staff union on behalf of the “Fired Four.”

The protest was sponsored by the union (PSC: Professional Staff Congress). Members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) played an important role— as part of the organizing committee, leading chants, and carrying union banners (“come for one, face us all”). We are organizing at several campuses to reinstate the Fired Four and improve conditions for students, but also to fight for a better world. As the capitalists attack workers and students everywhere, we must build a revolutionary movement that gets rid of capitalism once and for all. The rally culminated in everyone singing a song written by a PLP member, listing the bosses’ hypocrisies and vowing continued, united action until the firing is rescinded. The mood of the protestors was militant and anti-fascist. Dozens of CHALLENGEs were distributed.

Protests erupt at Brooklyn College

At Brooklyn College the process began in the spring of 2025. As the semester started, the campus seemed politically dead. Previously the union leadership had accepted a disappointing contract that reduced job protection. In the previous year, students and faculty had regularly protested the university’s complicity in Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. But by January 2025, that activity had diminished. With the election of President Donald Trump, assaults on immigrant students in the university seemed imminent. The mood on campus was grim.

However, within weeks, resistance began to reappear: students organized the “Brooklyn College Student Union” to resist ICE; faculty organizers demanded that the College keep ICE off-campus. On May 8, two noon-time demonstrations bloomed on Brooklyn College’s East Quad. Adjunct instructors demanded the meager bonuses they’d been promised, and roughly 60 students appeared, peacefully protesting the enforced starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. Campus cops immediately threatened the students, who had erected three small tents. In solidarity faculty unionists chanted and linked arms to support the students.

The ‘liberal’ college bosses call the cops; cops go berserk

The ‘liberal’ CUNY bosses, and their Brooklyn College lackeys immediately called out the NYPD. An overwhelming assembly of cops, patrol cars, vans, and special tactics thugs gathered outside the campus, out of sight of the demonstrators. They were ready to pounce, and pounce they did.

They poured onto campus, pushing students off the campus grounds, arresting at least one student who was merely videoing the events. Once off campus the cops went berserk, beating, tasing, and arresting students - a full-scale police riot against students who had peacefully protested the starvation of Palestinian children.

The CUNY bosses falsely claimed they were protecting educational activities. But the administration disrupted education, needlessly shutting the entire campus down. The next day, with no demonstrations, they did the same thing. Their concern with education is as phony as their pretense of being “liberal good guys.” Actually these Democratic Party ‘liberals’ are more dangerous than the MAGA fascists because of this “good guy” image.

A mini class war ensued:

*The Student Union met to discuss the May 8 events. The campus cops and Brooklyn College legal beagle Jacyln Helms broke up the meeting.

*Faculty sharply confronted President Michelle Anderson in the Faculty Council. She responded with feigned innocence and outright lies.

*The university bosses fired four faculty, all women, all highly respected and loved by their students. Top CUNY boss Felix Rodríguez actually boasted about the firings in a fascist committee in Congress.

*Over the summer there were petitions, letters, Signal discussion groups, union denunciations, and a remarkable demonstration of 200 faculty, staff, students and supporters during a thunderstorm downpour (See CHALLENGE, 8/1).

*The CUNY bosses singled out five more faculty (all women again) and one lab technician, launching formal “investigations” against them. During the first meetings of the “investigations” Brooklyn College protestors lined the corridor outside the Provost’s office wearing red; one PLP member carried a “No Fascism at Brooklyn” sign.

Join Progressive Labor Party to fight for communism

The struggle continues to reinstate the Fired Four  and drop the investigations of the Singed Six. It has now spread to other CUNY campuses. But this is just one battle as fascism spreads around the world. Both the ‘liberals’ and the Trumpers are preparing their different brands of fascism as they prepare for more wars and world war. We, the working class, must prepare and organize to get rid of the whole damn capitalist system. Revolutionary communists from the Progressive Labor Party and their allies must play an important role in these struggles, adding energy, originality, and militance. But, during these struggles we must also build the Party. Throughout these events, hundreds of copies of CHALLENGE have been distributed, and deeper connections have developed. Much more could have been done along these lines and we are going to do more. Only by building the movement for a communist revolution will we ever be able to throw the bosses and their fascist stooges out for good and replace it with a system that is run by and for the working class, a system where education really matters.