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#blackinbrooklyntech means… SHUT RACIST SCHOOLS DOWN
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- 29 January 2016 573 hits
BROOKLYN, January 21—A small anti-racist student movement has shaken Brooklyn Technical High School. Progressive Labor Party must turn this struggle into a school for communism.
Tech is the tenth-largest high school in the United States. Over the last month, two speak-outs by students and one by angry Black alumni have put the education bosses in New York City on notice that the growing racism in our school system is intolerable. These bosses have held up Tech as a model of excellence as the school’s combined Black and Latin student populations have dropped to 15 percent—as compared to 68 percent in city schools overall.
The disgustingly racist message is clear: If more Black and Latin students are admitted, this “elite” school’s quality will diminish.
Safe Space for Racists
Racist messages emanate from New York’s educational system, top to bottom. On Tech’s website, an administration’s report defends the high-stakes exam that systematically excludes Black and Latin students from the specialized high schools. Inside the school, academic tracking has a decidedly racist character (see letter, page 4).
No wonder Tech has become a “safe space” for individuals to express racism. White students have gone so far as to tell a Black teacher rushing down an overcrowded hallway, “Watch it, n-----!” Sources say the dean’s office gave those students a mild talking to and no more.
Such shocking encounters pale beside the vicious racism faced by thousands of Black and Latin high school students in New York, as they are greeted each morning like criminals by police and metal detectors.
After the hallway incident, the teachers’ union chapter committee raised the problem of hate speech with the principal. At a December student speak-out, with teachers and administration in the room, two dozen Black students made their voices heard. A fightback began.
As #blackinbrooklyntech began trending on Facebook, racist assaults were hurled at Black students by their peers: “You are going to end up like Sandra Bland” (the young Black woman found dead in a Texas jail cell last July), and worse. Misguided students urged a return to silence because Black students are “ruining the name of the school.”
On a January weeknight, hundreds of Black alumni descended on Tech to hear the administration’s response—the strongest show of interest by Black alumni here, ever. Recalling a time when many more Black students attended Tech, they demanded that the Department of Education (DOE) confront the systemic racism responsible for the current crisis.
Even if current trends are reversed and Black and Latin enrollments rise in New York’s specialized high schools, they will still be part of a brutally racist terracing of education. The central myth will remain: If you fail under capitalism, it’s your fault.
Whose Schools? Bosses’ Schools!
Historically, the U.S. bosses have used public schools to create a myth of nationalist, all-class unity for imperialist war—and to recruit the cannon fodder they need to protect their profits.
The specialized high schools can’t perpetuate that myth if gutter racism runs rampant in their halls and classrooms. It’s no accident that NBC—owned and operated by U.S. finance capital—seized onto #blackinbrooklyntech and made it national news. The major media outlets are controlled by the capitalist ruling class, the same interests that applauded Barack Obama’s plea to Congress to authorize military force against ISIS in his recent State of the Union address.
Unity and Pitfalls
Members of PLP working inside the bosses’ schools want to organize a different kind of unity. We need multiracial unity to fight racism. We need to prepare the working class to turn the next big imperialist war into a class war for communist revolution.
While the movement we are building has much promise, it contains pitfalls as well. The prevalence of “white privilege theory” has hampered white and Asian students from expressing their anti-racist sentiments. Anti-racist energy that should be directed at the DOE has been sidetracked into arguments over who can use the N-word. In a communist future, nobody will use that awful word.
But we are making progress. At a second speak-out in January, the Muslim Students Association and the Gay-Straight Alliance joined members of the Black Student Union to broaden the scope of the struggle. Female students demanded action against sexism, from how the racist “dress code” is enforced to the way they are received by male classmates in math and science classes.
All students agreed that the endless stress of competitive, high-stakes testing and excessive homework leaves little room for building unity and compassion among students. They are beginning to hit at the heart of what is wrong with education under capitalism.
Fight Against Racism!
The anti-racist fight at Tech can spread across the entire city school system—but only if student leaders refuse to fall for the elitism fostered at exclusive, specialized high schools. This struggle is about racism in all the schools. Tech students come from every neighborhood in this city. A broad and vigorous organizing effort could demand an end to segregation and to racist policing of our schools. Imagine a day where high school students converge on Times Square instead of reporting to their first class. PLP and friends can have much to do to make this a reality.
The bosses fear the power of working-class, multiracial unity. High officials at the DOE are directing Tech bosses to select a few Black student leaders and make them partners in quieting the struggle. So far, however, this effort has failed.
A strong commitment to push the fight forward persists. The time is now. Students, teachers and alumni, Black, women, Latin, gay, Asian, straight, white, men—turn up the fight against racism!
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Maryland: PL Builds Movement vs. Racist Police Terror
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- 29 January 2016 456 hits
ANNAPOLIS, JANUARY 18—“Racism means we got to fight back!” Protesters chanted in front of the Maryland state capitol, where Tawanda Jones spoke at a rally of 200 workers and youth for her brother Tyrone West, a Black worker murdered by the racist police. Progressive Labor Party members participated in this multiracial rally on this night of below-freezing temperatures to add communist heat to the workers’ demands to end the state’s protection of the police from their racist crimes.
At heart-wrenching part of the rally, victims of Maryland racist police terror were called out by name, city or county, and racial background. Most of the dead were Black, but they also included Latin, Asian and white victims. For each, a paper with his or her name was held up, and anyone at the rally, who wished to volunteer, came up to take the paper, thereby representing and honoring that person by lying in the dark on the freezing concrete, and joining the growing die-in (see photo). Lawyers Mall, the open space outside the legislative buildings, ran out of space, with so many bodies—a chilling spectacle.
LEOBOR = Racist Terror Against Workers
The Maryland Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights (LEOBOR) is a law containing the strongest legal protections for police of any state in the US. The law was passed, years ago, as part of the notorious “War on Drugs.” This phony “war” was a decades-long excuse by U.S. bosses to intensify racist police terror in the U.S., and imperialist terror for workers across Latin America.
In another part of Maryland—Prince George’s County—PL’ers have done neighborhood canvassing against LEOBOR with the Prince George’s Peoples’ Coalition and the Maryland Coalition for Justice and Police Accountability. Tonight, we invited our friends to an upcoming Baltimore PLP forum, to discuss and organize for communist revolution as the way to finally end police brutality.
The protest was one of many high points in the struggle during the past year, a year in which PLP has played a significant role. We distributed leaflets and CHALLENGE newspapers to Black, Latin and white workers and youth. We have consistently participated in the inspiring West Wednesday rallies, held in memory of Tyrone West, every week in Baltimore. These modest-sized but powerful street protests combine profound anger alongside deep, sisterly and brotherly compassion for one another. This combination is the foundation for our growing international communist movement in Maryland.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE, January 27 —What’s the reward for a politician who takes $155,000 in bribes and spends two years in prison? A promotion! Aryeh Deri has been appointed as the interior ministry for the Negev and Galilee regions. He is the leader of the Shas party, known for its fundamentalist nationalism. Deri’s main task will be to prevent undocumented immigrants from crossing the border, increasing deportations, and redefining city boundaries for property taxes. The Shas party is important to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition.
Similar to the U.S., racist violence and deportation of undocumented immigrants and refugees will increase. Whereas in the U.S., they are mainly from Latin America, these refugees are mainly from war-ravaged regions like Eritrea, Sudan, and Egypt. Deri’s predecessor, Eliyahu Yishai, was also virulently racist and led brutal attacks on asylum seekers from eastern Africa and deported many of them to the Holot concentration camp in the Negev (southern desert). In 2014, Holot was an international focal point for racist Israel’s treatment of the 50,000 African refugees.
Deri, who tries to paint himself as a “social” candidate, remained in the government when it sold off Israel’s massive natural gas deposits to local and foreign tycoons. Combining religion, racism, and graft, he is a loyal servant for the billionaires.
Israel does not have a separation of religion from the state. To the contrary, the government cynically uses religion as an excuse for its racist policies of segregating Black migrants, Palestinians, and white Jewish workers. Candidates like Deri leverage religion and racism to get re-elected as the faithful servants of big financial capital. Capitalist rule cannot exist without racism and fraud.
There is no such thing as a “clean,” “fair,” or “tolerant” capitalist government. Deri and the whole capitalist system has got to go. The international working class must build a society without politicians and capitalists. We need the leadership of those locked in Holot, brutalized in the West Bank, and exploited in Israel to fight back!
HAITI, January 26—Thousands of angry workers have taken to the streets throughout the country, burning tires, breaking windows, fighting with the police. PLP has participated in the demonstrations, calling for workers to build revolution, not electoral reforms.
The demonstrations have been in response to the widespread election fraud and incompetence in the presidential elections held in October with 54 candidates and the run-off scheduled between Jovenel Moïse, hand-picked front-man of the current president, Martelly, and Jude Celestin, protégé of previous president Préval. The government and its senior partners in the U.S. Embassy were forced to cancel the run-off because their complicity was exposed.
The United States has spent $33 million on these elections (The Nation, 1/27).
The first wave of protests was peaceful; no one paid attention. U.S. ambassador Peter Mulrean advised they be ignored.
Then the protest turned violent. Many chanted, “Down with Obama”; “we are rebels. We will not obey.” The workers in Haiti are exposing the hand of U.S. imperialism and its long history of occupying the country. The United Nations occupying force, an arm of U.S. imperialism, brought cholera to Haiti and killed over 9,000 people.
But the election debacle is neither fraud nor incompetence on the part of the ruling class. It is, in fact, part of an ongoing plan to suck workers into getting behind a capitalist system of mass exploitation and oppression. Democracy and elections are nothing but a cover to build popular support for a system that offers nothing to the working class but suffering: unemployment, hunger, toxic water (like Flint, Michigan), illiteracy and illness.
It matters little to the masses here which section of the ruling class wins the election: Jovenel the banana exporter or Jude the fake-left construction boss. Nor does it matter if Martelly stays beyond his Feb. 7 term end, as demanded by Guy Phillipe, a known drug dealer and former army leader behind the ouster of Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Phillipe has threatened an armed insurrection by former army members to support Martelly.
Only by organizing the masses into a revolutionary communist party that fights to end capitalism and its imperialist masters, can workers build a society that responds to its own interests.
In the anti-imperialist Haitian song “Y’a Danger,” Jean Jean Roosevelt warns the bosses of the coming dangers. Indeed, the ruling class should be shaking; once armed with communist consciousness, the might of the working class will move mountains.
LOS ANGELES, January 16—While criminal charges are being recommended for the racist cop who killed Brendon Glenn, an unarmed, homeless Black worker last May, workers and members of the Progressive Labor Party fighting for justice are not holding their breath.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck’s recommendation was made on January 11, and can only be carried out by a District Attorney or grand jury.
As of January 15, hypocrite Beck had not done what is within his power: initiate disciplinary proceedings against cop Clifford Proctor, who has been on paid leave since he killed Glenn. 
Antiracist Workers in Churches Take Lead
During the summer, workers and PL’ers in our local church’s social justice committee took the lead in organizing three marches on Venice’s Ocean Front Walk. One of our chants at these marches was, “No justice, no peace—no racist police!” One of our demands was that Proctor be indicted. We also raised that demand November 29 at a march in Koreatown against racist police killings, organized by anti-racists from another church in that area we’ve been working with. During that march, as we wound through the streets, we called out the names of many of those mowed down by police in LA and throughout the U.S., and chanted, “The whole damn system’s got to go.”
Another demand of our marches—and of hundreds of angry Venice residents at a town hall meeting two days after the May 5 shooting—was that the video be released to the public. According to their attorney, Glenn’s family will demand release of the video.
While an indictment is welcomed for Brendon Glenn’s murderer, true justice for Glenn or anyone in the working class will never be found under capitalism. In the midst of these rallies and marches, we are building PLP to build a mass party to lead a revolution and build a communist society. Under communism there will no such thing as kkkops or racist police terror.
Capitalism: Bosses’ Dictatorship
Capitalism is based on the injustice of exploiting all workers, and was founded on the enslavement of Africans. Capitalism’s development depended, and its survival depends, on the racist super-exploitation of some workers over others. The bosses developed and refined their racist state apparatus like their prisons, cops, and political system over centuries to defend murderers like Proctor and Beck.
Even if Proctor is charged, history has shown that cops tend to be acquitted or, less often, found guilty of relatively low-level crimes with light sentences. According to the LA Times (1/12/16), “prosecutors have not charged a law enforcement officer in an on-duty shooting in 15 years.”
Top kkkop Beck served in the same elite, fascist LAPD “CRASH” unit whose goal was to arrest gang members “by any means necessary” (PBS 8/14/12). This meant carrying a supply of illegal weapons to plant on Black and Latin workers, with plaques and honors awarded for shootings that killed their victims. Much of the LAPD’s internal investigation into CRASH is still suppressed, including a 40-page report on three officers investigated for the murder of rapper “Notorious B.I.G.”
This is a taste of the bosses’ dictatorship that only a mass communist PLP can destroy, when millions of workers are organized and fighting for armed revolution. Our movement is growing —one of the marchers just agreed to be on the Party committee that is organizing our April 30, PLP May Day dinner.
May Day is the only international working class holiday. It’s a day we celebrate our class’ history of fightback all over the world, and gather our forces to look forward to smashing the bosses’ capitalist dictatorship, its imperialist wars, killer kkkops like Clifford, and the bosses they serve.
We will continue the immediate struggle with a rally at the District Attorney’s office. We join the workers demanding that Proctor be indicted for murder, and continue fighting and organizing for a communist society where our class rules the earth.
