TEXAS, September 19 — “Racist administration, shut it down!” chanted 15 students marching through the courtyard of our community college here. Led by PLP, we crossed a major street and blocked traffic. We held this protest immediately after a PL-led panel discussion with students titled “Confronting 21st Century Racism” the racist connection between the police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the attacks on immigrant workers at the U.S.-Mexico border. This was our college club’s way of bringing the fightback home, and we did just that!
Panel’s Message: Fight Back Like Ferguson Everywhere!
Building for the panel and the march wasn’t easy. Our campus has cracked down on organizing by requiring any leaflet distributed on campus to be approved first by the administration. As an unofficial campus organization, we organize as clandestinely as possible, even though the police caught and reprimanded one of our comrades for distributing unauthorized literature. Our college town has a long history of anti-immigrant racism and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attacks. Many students responded to our leafleting for the panel with eagerness and relief.
The three-person panel had a multiracial audience of 25 students. It included an English professor who connected the prison construction company GEO and its billions of dollars of contracts for building prisons and its lobbying efforts in the U.S. Congress to pass tougher laws and pass stricter immigration laws to fill these prisons. The second panelist followed up the discussion with his experience as an immigration attorney and elaborated on the recent policy known as Criminal Alien Removal Initiative which allows ICE to become more aggressive in deportations.
The third panelist talked about her experiences in the Ferguson rebellion. She changed the nature of the panel by first asking a few questions to the audience, challenging the capitalist media’s labeling of the fightback in Ferguson a “riot.” After leading the audience in a call-and-response chant she had learned from the rebels of “Ferguson! SHUT IT DOWN!” She gave a powerful and moving account of the multiracial unity and resistance there.
The questions from the audience that followed were evidence of how sharp our panel’s political conclusions had been. A black student in the audience asked, “how do we build a revolution?” We responded that everyone in this room chanting with us was an example of a first step towards building a revolution. The second step is doing something — direct action. At this moment our MC who introduced the panel and another comrade unfurled a banner that read, “students and workers unite and fight against mass incarcerations and mass deportations.”
From Panel Discussion to Antiracist Marches!
We then invited everyone to overcome their fears by joining us in an anti-cop protest. Fifteen of the 25 students at the event joined us, and the black student who had asked the question about revolution was one of the march leaders, and led chants through the campus like “no justice no peace, no racist police!” and “Killer cops you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”
An administrator ran outside and had a tantrum telling us we did not have permission to protest on campus. Without having to explain the revolutionary potential we have as students and workers that super-cedes the need for permission from a petty administrator, we continued chanting. Everyone understood that at this moment our words were our resistance. No one was going to stop us and we continued marching and chanting until some lost their voice. We made 20 contacts from interested passersby. Following the march, we invited everyone to join us the next day at another university. Three committed to the proposal!
The next day at the university, we were a smaller group, but just as loud and powerful. We unfurled our banner and passed out over 300 leaflets. As waves of students passed by and some began taking pictures. Many could not believe we were from the smaller community college nearby. We made five new contacts and were joined by at least two university students.
Overall the two days of fightback taught us a lot about our potential. We are not as weak as we often think and boldness pays! The reality is that our Party’s leadership and discipline turned kkkop and anti-immigrant racist terror into ammunition for the working class. We turned student anger into a school for communism. And building for communism means building an army of workers to challenge the bosses’ power. Black, Latin, Asian and White: to smash racism we must unite. All power to the workers!