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Apartheid Grows in Brooklyn — Students, Parents & Teachers Fight Back
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- 30 October 2014 252 hits
Brooklyn, NY, October 10 — Over 200 high school students, parents, teachers and community members filled the cafeteria at John Jay Campus in Park Slope tonight for a town hall against racism. Student after student spoke of the daily attacks they faced, mainly from the New York Police Department and school safety officers. The event was sparked by the latest “crime” of Hanging-Out-While-Black-or-Latin on a street corner in this gentrified, mostly white neighborhood.
Several weeks ago, a neighborhood resident witnessed the kkkops following and eventually driving out a group of black and Latin students who were socializing on a public sidewalk. She went to a community board meeting and blasted the cops’ commander. The officer responded that the teenagers shouldn’t be there if they weren’t playing basketball or soccer or “doing something productive in the neighborhood.”
Apartheid in Brooklyn
This blatant support of apartheid policies angered John Jay students, parents and teachers, who had recently rallied against the racist murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. They are building a movement against racism in Park Slope and in and around John Jay, and were ready to respond to this latest attack. The student government and PTA at one of the four schools on the campus immediately took action by organizing the town hall.
Students spoke of their daily run-ins with cops and local businesspeople, who make it clear that the teenagers aren’t wanted in the neighborhood. When John Jay students go to neighborhood parks, cops park nearby to watch their every move. Under orders from the NYPD, school safety agents follow suit, yelling and shoving the kids to leave the neighborhood and go home immediately after school.
At the town hall meeting, as a man in charge of John Jay’s school safety agents approached the mic, the kids started to jeer and boo. He tried to get support by saying that his staff of safety agents was mainly black and Latin, but this appeal to nationalism didn’t work. The students shouted, “So what? They still harass us!”
This bosses’ lackey claimed he had no idea what was happening at John Jay and that our campus might need new agents. He was booed again, because
several students from other New York public schools came with the same complaints about the NYPD and school safety. The town hall made one thing clear: While black and Latin students in New York face the brunt of attacks by the NYPD, school safety agents and the city’s Department of Education, all youth are being attacked across the city. We are all hurt by racism.
How to Smash Racism
The town hall raised big questions. Why are black and Latin youth targeted for this abuse? What can we do to end racism for good? Members of Progressive Labor Party struggled for those involved to understand that racism is inherent to capitalism, and therefore can only be destroyed through communist revolution. We have a long way to go in winning that big struggle. But the small class struggle we are waging brings us one step closer each day.
Several family members of people murdered by the NYPD attended the town hall, and one of them spoke about the oppressive role of police in this society, and how students’ and workers’ rights are non-existent in the current period of war and fascism. A call was made to follow up the meeting with a march to the local police precinct. Most who attended left with a copy of CHALLENGE.
The ruling-class need for racism will continue to provide opportunities to unite workers in sharp struggles around these issues. The growing network of families and friends of victims of police murders, combined with the leadership shown by young black and Latin students at this event, is a force to be reckoned with. The fight for a world without racism will advance by building PLP and the fight for a communist world.
NEW YORK CITY, October 16 — Fighting back against the fascist jailing of 39 young people arrested in a violent police raid on the Grant and Manhattanville public housing projects last June, over a 100 protesters, including 60 Columbia students and about 40 others, showed up at the court hearing today. There were so many, the hearing was shifted to a smaller courtroom at the last minute, just to keep them out!
The arrested youths haven’t been charged with actual crimes, only with conspiracy. Their arrests were a full-scale racist assault, as the cops swarmed the projects on 125th St, complete with helicopters, bashing down doors, trashing apartments, intimidating grandmothers and toddlers, seeking to arrest 103 indicted young people. Bail was set so high that no one was able to post it, which has meant four months in jail with no trial.
These projects house poor, black residents and provide shoddy services and almost no recreational facilities. Young people go to failing schools without after-school programs and have few job opportunities or organized activities.
Rather than providing any kind of services, or even repairing and maintaining apartments, the rulers and their NYPD spent three years planning this raid, searching cell phone data and social media to find connections between kids to present as evidence of conspiracies! At the hearing for the first 37, all were sent back to jail for another two months—and the prosecution is offering them “deals” involving twelve to fourteen year prison sentences.
A positive development is the growing unity among parents in the projects, a local church and students at nearby Columbia University. The students joined community and church members in a demonstration and press conference outside the courthouse and and inside as well. With not even enough room for all the families to sit, the students took up a vigil in the hall outside the courtroom for three hours. Both lawyers and parents came out to say thanks — the support is very important. Hearings for another group of arrestees is next week, and we will return to support them too.
Parents and some students will also continue to gather in the local church in which we have been active for many years to build this struggle and to demand that Columbia University live up to its promise to donate $17 million for projects the community wants, in compensation for Columbia’s massive expansion into Harlem.
As we have seen in Ferguson and on Staten Island, the ruling class and their police servants are out for blood, and the degree of force and intimidation is escalating rapidly. As conditions for workers worsen and wars increase, rebellion that unifies workers, the unemployed and students is needed — and it’s beginning to grow. With communist leadership, that rebellion will lead to revolution, and to a future where the working class rules on its own behalf.
STATEN ISLAND, NY, October 17 — “You haven’t answered any of my questions!” an angry nurse shouted at Mary Bassett, the New York City’s health commissioner. The subject was Ebola — and the surge of racism that is scapegoating immigrants for the failures of capitalism in containing this disease.
At an overflow town hall meeting in “Little Liberia,” home to thousands of residents from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, many spoke of how teachers were sending their children home merely for being West African, or refusing to ride in the same elevator. Some local healthcare professionals have called for an indefinite ban on flights from the three affected countries, or a quarantine of the entire neighborhood!
The first question to Bassett, an appointee of liberal Mayor Bill DeBlasio, came from a nurse born and raised in Sierra Leone: Why had the city failed to follow Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines to protect those assigned to treat Ebola patients with proper gear? When the commissioner hedged on her answer, and the nurse kept pressing her, security tried to take the microphone away.
The event was packed with television cameras, reporters and police. It started late, with city, state, and federal politicians wasting the first hour by repeating that New York is a city of immigrants, and that immigrants have nothing to fear. The commissioner had nothing useful to say beyond stating that anyone with “Ebola-like symptoms” should somehow get to the designated “Ebola Center” at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.
The hundreds of West African immigrants loudly asked why a center wasn’t on Staten Island. As a matter of fact, why haven’t Ebola Centers been created in every borough to care for residents who may be exposed? One man received thunderous applause when he asked why the government couldn’t send vans or buses to reach residents who may be too afraid to step foot outside their homes, especially those with documentation issues who do not trust the government. The city representatives’ only response was to tell people to keep checking the CDC’s website for updates.
New York is about as prepared for Ebola as it was for Hurricane Sandy, another “natural” event turned into a disaster by capitalism. To the bosses, working-class lives are worth little, whether we are threatened by imperialist war, racist police terror or a viral epidemic.
Profits Over Cures
The Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), also known as Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever (EHF), is an infectious, aggressive virus with a high mortality rate. It was first identified in 1976, and experts remain unclear on its origins. Until this year, Ebola vaccine development was considered a high-cost, low-profit investment.
Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explains that even small, poorly funded labs have made tremendous progress in developing Ebola antibody therapies, including five candidate vaccines that successfully protected non-human primates from Ebola. But the large pharmaceutical companies, Fauci noted, showed no interest: “To develop a vaccine that treats little outbreaks every thirty or forty years — well, that’s not much incentive” (Scientific American, 7/30/14).
Contrast this murderous indifference of capitalist medicine to the communist society envisioned by Progressive Labor Party, where money will be abolished and scientists will work to save all workers’ lives.
Imperialism Bred Ebola Crisis
The Ebola outbreak is in a region where the capitalist health infrastructure has been decimated, partly due to two civil wars in Liberia. These conflicts were the product of U.S. imperialism, which divided the majority indigenous Krahn people and the descendants of 19th-century U.S. slaves. With the backing of U.S. President James Monroe, the newcomers colonized Monrovia and helped secure business relations with the U.S. ruling class. More recently, dogfighting capitalist factions have used child soldiers to help them murder hundreds of thousands of workers. Millions more were displaced into refugee camps, perfect breeding grounds for Ebola. As for the long-term impact, the capitalist mouthpiece Financial Times suggested that the economic impact could ultimately kill more than the virus itelf, as workers flee farmlands and mining, timber and rubber companies suspend operations (FT, 10/09/14).
None of this history was lost on the audience packing the hall in Staten Island. The event got even hotter when a paramedic denounced the rise in racism against people from West Africa and the row of complicit politicians seated in the front row. He exposed the myth that the city is “one happy family” by pointing out that the last ten years have seen twelve city hospitals serving black and Latin workers shut down.
He also said, “We’re standing two miles from where Eric Garner was strangled to death by racist killer cops. That’s the city we live in, and we as working people need to unite!” The audience cheered and responded, “That’s right!” Some rose to their feet.
After volunteering to help spread public awareness about Ebola, the paramedic finished by saying, “As members of the international working class, whether you’re from Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, or Staten Island, we need an international, multiracial, anti-racist movement to fight back like Ferguson did against racism and Ebola!”
The audience cheered, the politicians were furious, and the cops looked uncomfortable and angry. Outside, after the meeting, a lively discussion connected the Ebola outbreak to the imperialist-backed civil wars that have shattered Liberia and Sierra Leone. More than a dozen men and women from the neighborhood shared their experiences, from their lives in their home countries to the racism they’ve experienced in New York. When someone mentioned the need to build a movement to fight back, one woman said, “Now we’re talking about revolution!”
As soon as I got off the plane from Los Angeles in St. Louis for the Ferguson October weekend, I was picked up and taken straight to the demonstration against racism. Over one hundred were marching and we in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were there with a large bullhorn, a vivid banner and militant chants.
Chants like “Who do we want? Darren Wilson. How do we want him? Dead. They left Mike Brown dead” were yelled.
The following day we attended a showing of a documentary of the work which the group Lost Voices has been involved in since the Ferguson kkkop Darren Wilson murdered Mike Brown. Near the end of the documentary a member of Lost Voices came in, interrupted the movie and said “We gotta go downstairs. The cops got the homie in the parking lot.” Everyone got up and went downstairs. Multiple cops had one car trapped in a parking stall. People yelled “What did they do?” The protesters, now a crowd of about 50, started chanting “Hey hey! Ho ho! These killer cops have got to go!” As the chanting become louder the cops backed down and the protesters moved up. Finally the cops got in their cars and drove off.
Afterwards, we finished watching the documentary and started a conversation with a young man who is one of the leaders of Lost Voices about capitalists who own the means of production and how they are the real enemies. We talked about CEOs, the cops and the federal government that make up their murder squads, and their whole state apparatus. They all have the blood of millions of working-class people on their hands.
Comrades also went door to door in two different apartment complexes. One was the complex where Mike Brown was murdered. The response was great. Many people took Challenge, and contacts were made.
Striking while the iron was hot, we spoke with a woman, a cashier, and security guard inside a convenience store. The woman was stunned by the fact that I flew to Ferguson from LA to join the fightback and stand in solidarity with my working-class brothers and sisters. I asked a comrade to run outside and grab a few Challenges for the woman, the cashier, and the security guard. He came back and handed the workers and the woman Challenge. We told them who we were and why we were there and asked them see to read Our Fight on page 2 of CHALLENGE.
The last night we were there, hundreds of students occupied St. Louis University. The students sent out mass texts, and tweets, asking for food, blankets, and water because they were ready to hold the college for days.
All of this fightback by the workers and students in Missouri has inspired me. These are the class struggles we in PLP have to be involved in and I’m glad I was there. When I return home, I’m going to give talks at various colleges in the area about the fightbacks against the racist pigs and the system for which they murder us to protect.
Young Red
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Profs Fight for Contract, Chancellor Lives It Up, Students Pay
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- 30 October 2014 228 hits
NEW YORK CITY, October 21 — “They say cut back, we say fight back!” “What do we want? A raise! When do we want it? Now!”
Workers of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) of City University of New York (CUNY) packed the Board of Trustees meeting on September 29. To enter, they first had to be stopped-and-frisked by campus police, a policy too familiar for black and Latin students. Chairman Benno Schmidt, known nationally for his defense of “freedom of expression,” threatened the protesters with being removed by campus cops if they continue to speak out. The meeting proceeded. Fifteen minutes later, PSC president Barbara Bowen signaled for the 100 protesters to chant and walk out. They rejoined 800 protesters outside the building.
The PSC continues to mislead its rank and file by relying on electoral politics. Bowen addressed the crowd, stating they must continue to pressure the new CUNY Chancellor James B. Milliken to put a financial offer on the table. (Milliken makes $670,000 a year, which doesn’t include his new car, driver, and his $3.7 million house paid by tuition hikes and budget cuts.) PSC members have been working for four years without a new contract.
Today, 500 protesters again assembled to demand a raise. At the union meeting, three officers spoke for a total of nearly one hour. No time was allocated for questions and answers from the workers. One worker said, “I didn’t learn anything. They don’t seem to have much of a strategy.” Because the PSC endorsed then liberal Mayoral Candidate Bill de Blasio, we are told we have gained “political capital” with his election.
It is unlikely de Blasio will give PSC a better deal than the contracts that the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the city workers District Council 37 recently received. Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo controls the larger portion of CUNY’s funding. He had forced a contract on State University of New York professors that required them to pay more for healthcare. On the way to CUNY’s central office, protesters passed by Cuomo’s office but didn’t rally there. Go figure!
Unionist or Communist Leadership?
Some rank and filers argue that at least the PSC leaders are taking to the streets whereas most city and state worker unions have rolled over and accepted contracts without a semblance of fighting back. Whether or not PSC gains a new contract, its workers will continue to be exploited. Unions today are a tool to discipline and control the working class (read: coming fascism). Unions serve the dominant liberal wing of the bosses, whose imperialist ambitions lie in combating rivals China and Russia. Workers’ living conditions will continue to deteriorate, and it is up to the politicians and unions to sell us this new fascist normal.
PLP has long said that workers cannot fight the bosses if we play by their rules. The Taylor Law forbids government workers in New York from striking or even taking work actions. In 1966, transit workers defied the Condon-Wadlin Act with a strike! The Act would penalize workers who went on strike with firings and a three-year pay freeze. Those workers defied the law without immediate repercussions. CUNY workers can learn from history and challenge the Taylor law today. To do this, workers need the support of CUNY’s 250,000 students and other city workers.
Despite internal struggle, the PSC leadership has never had a real program to ally with students. Only with communist leadership can we build a real worker-student alliance to fight the union misleaders, CUNY bosses, and politicians. Many CUNY workers are open to communist ideas. Nearly 200 CHALLENGEs were distributed in total. It is up to PLP workers inside the union and PLP students in CUNY to steer this bartering struggle into one exposing the inevitable decay of capitalism. Only viable option is to fight for a communist revolution.