CHICAGO, March 9 – A multiracial crowd of dozens of students and workers rallied and marched across the campus of the University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC) to protest the administration’s decision to allow fascist scum Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk space to spread their brand of gutter racism and sexism. Members of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and our friends joined the action to support the fight and spread communist revolution as the only alternative to fascism, capitalism’s response to a crisis in their system.
Owens and Kirk are right wing organizers and talk show hosts. They travel across the U.S. promoting open sexism, mainly against trans workers. They serve the domestic U.S. capitalists who are mainly represented by the Republican Party. But these are the Small Fascists (see Glossary, page 6).
Although the threat presented by these open fascists is very real for our class, PLP holds that they do not represent the primary danger for workers – the finance capital, liberal bosses within President Joe Biden’s camp do. These are the Big Fascists, the finance capitalists who want to maintain their worldwide empire. They want a united working class brainwashed by patriotism and willing to fight and die in a world war to defend these capitalist’s profits.
So while we directly confront these gutter racists head on, we need to fight even harder against the multicultural, liberal Big Fascist bosses that seek to disarm our class through shallow identity politics as they build the path to all-class unity and imperialist war.
Fascism is at its core not just about “wicked people” but rather the desperate strategies employed by all capitalist bosses to save their profit system in crisis. We need to build our international Party to overthrow the capitalist system that ultimately gives rise to fascism and war–no matter the appearance or the promises of the bosses at the top
Fight gutter fascists head on
The anti-fascist, antisexist students and workers first gathered at the quad area to assemble before marching a short distance across campus to the forum site. Those of us in PLP and our friends came equipped with signs, a flyer about growing fascism, and copies of CHALLENGE in order to sharpen the militancy of the protest.
At first, the leaders of the march and their marshals directed the protestors to an open site on the other side of the street from the forum. But after a short while enough participants pushed to be closer to where the gutter fascists were entering. Once there, we were able to confront the open fascists more directly.
Organizers from different student groups led chants and gave speeches that shared their “disappointment” that the university had permitted the forum. All in all, a naïve tone dominated the politics of the event, as if we could ever trust the university bosses (or any boss) to really be on the side of the students or workers.
Thankfully, a more militant Black student took the megaphone and called for more open confrontation with the fascist goons. He recalled recent experiences that he had getting arrested while protesting against the racist Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) in more remote areas of the state. Other speakers followed, highlighting the connections to March 2016 when a multiracial crowd of hundreds of protestors were able to shut down a Donald Trump rally (see CHALLENGE, 3/25/16).
Self-critically, our contingent of PLP members and friends could have been bolder in giving leadership to this event. Even though the protestors moved across the street to be closer, there was still a good fifty yards separating us from the entrance where the pro-fascists were entering. The working class can’t be satisfied with taking the “moral high ground” against the fascist foot soldiers of the capitalist class – we need to organize to attack them head on! As such, we need to be much less timid in sharpening the struggle in these settings.
Capitalist bosses, big and small, attack workers
The recent rise of fascist hate speech is nothing new under capitalism. As the profit system barrels through crisis after crisis en route to world war, we can expect to see more scum like Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk getting platforms to scapegoat sections of the working class for the failures of capitalism.
At present, LGBTQ+ workers are a principal target for the domestically-oriented Small Fascist wing of the U.S. ruling class that Kirk and Owens belong to. These Small Fascists pin practically everything wrong with capitalist society on LGBTQ+ workers, maliciously smearing them. In doing so, they are directly responsible for obscene rates of violence committed against LGBTQ+ workers and youth, particularly Black and Latin workers who are transgender. We need to fight side by side as a united class against the attempts by the bosses to divide and attack us.
However, to side with the “lesser evil” liberal bosses in this battle is the kiss of death. The still-dominant Big Fascist bosses like those in charge of Chicago and UIC pay lip service to “diversity” and other high-minded concepts while still opening the door for gutter racists in their own backyard. They lie to our face and stab us in the back, all the while promoting a “friendlier” multiracial capitalism.
By avoiding more overt fascist ideology, they can package a more insidious version of pro-capitalist nationalism that is necessary to win our class – including many LGBTQ+ workers -- to future bloodbaths against imperialist rivals like China and Russia. There is no “lesser-evil” – the whole system has got to go!
Communist revolution is the only solution
To accomplish a communist revolution to get rid of capitalism, we need the mass international PLP and our own Red Army. The fascists -- Big and Small -- already have a wide head start on organizing and arming themselves. But they are no match for a united working class armed with communist politics and leadership! Join PLP and fight back today!
Claude was set to graduate and enlist in the army at a time when the U.S., Russia, and China are in a collusion course towards world war. The U.S. war budget in 2021 reached $801 billion (Watson Institute at Brown University) but there are currently over 70,000 young people without jobs in New York City.
WHY are there so few options for working-class students? To kill or be killed in imperialist war. To be killed in the streets. Yes, the shooter pulled the trigger but capitalism planted the gun.
Individual violence in the streets is the byproduct of the toxicity that capitalism creates. Capitalism’s very DNA is the violent exploitation and oppression of the working class by the big gangsters: the rich and their government. The conditions in which working-class students are forced to grow up in are violent—failing schools, dirty waters, slumlord housing, food deserts, sickening hospitals, killer cops, rising homelessness, unsafe transit, inflated prices. All these attacks create a culture of hopelessness and alienation—which the pandemic only made worse—and makes our class more vulnerable to individualism and violence.
For a child who liked learning, he was not treated like one. Claude was pushed out because he wasn’t the type of kid who put his head down. No, he had a beautiful mind of his own:
• When asked to describe himself in a personal narrative unit, he wrote, “I’m funny, fast, and smart. I like to laugh and joke around a lot. I am passionate about living, and who I am today.”
• When taught to use figurative language, he wrote his best friend was “as brave as a shark.” He also loved music and word play.
• In a free-write, he wrote, “The moment I’m most ashamed of is doing online work…I think the school owes me an apology because I get bad attendance for having my camera off.”
• For his persuasive speech, he had chosen to write about how testing negatively affects students and why it should be eliminated.Instead of nurturing a child who knew how to think for himself, the public school system discarded Claude.
One purpose of capitalist education is to recreate all the inequalities of a profit system and teach obedience. It sells the fake idea that if you only work hard enough, you’ll make it so just shut up and do your job. This logic ends up blaming students for a rigged system where some have to fail in order for a very few to win (and even the winners are losers at the end). That is what we call a scam, one that disproportionately cheats Black, Brown, and immigrant students out of an education.
Claude deserves a world where we care about kids, not grades; music programs, not imperialist wars; and relationships, not suspensions. That world is not possible under capitalism.
- Information
CAPITALISM KILLS STUDENT: FIGHT BACK AGAINST PUSH-OUTS
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- 31 March 2023 691 hits
BROOKLYN, NY, March 29—When a neighborhood shooting took the life of a former student, a small school had two very different responses. The administration killed 17-year-old Claude* twice—once by pushing him out, and again by blaming him for his own death—while the students and education workers memorialized him again and again.
In doing so, the Department of Education exposed themselves as a racist child-hating system while the working class in this school of mainly untenured teachers is learning how to be pro-student. As his teacher and communist, I am learning how to win people to fight back and connect Claude to the violent nature of capitalism. A system that kills kids has got to go.
His life mattered
What can I say about Claude except that people loved him as much as he loved life and learning (see box). Three schools are mourning him—his primary/middle school, our school, and his transfer school. The union grief counselor remarked that he “never saw anything like it.” Claude was a neighborhood kid and everyone knew him or of him. He has left a senior and junior class in despair and anger, while the administration has left all the students and workers in the dark.
Instead of acknowledging the death and providing support to grieving students, the principal refused crisis support from the bigger DoE bosses. Instead of reaching out to the family, she smeared Claude’s reputation and character. Instead of holding a school-wide memorial, she reluctantly surrendered to a memorial wall, albeit deep inside the school.
This is the kind of leadership capitalist schools give—all done under a Democratic mayor in a liberal city.
Students organize vigil
We added photos and messages on the memorial wall. To counter the racist narrative, the academic and character awards Claude had received while at this school were posted as well. The poem “Kids Who Die” by Langston Hughes (see page 8) was also added and shared with participants.
Later in the week, two education workers and I called out of work to attend Claude’s funeral, which further angered administration. I delivered a portfolio of all the writings of Claude from his freshman year to the family. So many students showed up.
When we asked students what they wanted to do, some said, “at least a balloon release and photos.” So, that’s what we did. Two days after the funeral, students organized a vigil after school. A leaflet explaining that capitalism killed Claude was circulated.
Little did we know that while 24 students and 8 teachers were paying tribute to a clearly beloved student outside the building, a disgusting plan was underway on the inside the school. In true mafia fashion, when barely anyone was around, the memorial wall was disappeared.
Who tore down the memorial?
The next morning, students demanded to know who tore down the memorial wall. One thought it was a kid: “Did they catch him? Did they check the cameras?”
The criminal was none other than the DoE-darling, our Black Caribbean teacher-turned-principal who spends her days fudging data and terrorizing Black, Latin, and immigrant students. Reason for her crime?
“The funeral is over,” said the racist.
Learning to stand up
The utter disregard for a child’s life angered the students and workers. I asked the students, “What should we do?”
“Put it back up” they said, and so that’s what we did. After school, students from the Newspaper Club donated their bulletin board space and posted up a new memorial wall—near the main entrance this time. The administration do their dirty business in secret, but we workers and students must make our fight known. We spoke to every person who passed the halls: athletes in search of the finally-fixed water fountains, guidance counselors and students from other schools in the building, custodians sweeping piles of pencils. Every one of them expressed support for Claude.
The school day hadn’t even officially started the next morning, and the second memorial wall was already removed. People overheard the principal yelling, “Take this down now!”
The ruling class—as manifested in this administration—has put students and education workers in a position to take a stance. An angry meeting ensued with the educator workers’ union representative. I was also pulled out of class for 30 minutes to be disciplined. But, we walked out of the principal’s office with a tiny victory: she was forced to agree to put the memorial wall back up, but in the original less prominent location.
During lunch, a crowd of students and some teachers gathered to put up the memorial for the third time. “Every time she removes it, we’ll just put it back up. And make it even bigger.”
And that’s what we are doing. Working-class students are proving again and again that they can give leadership, and they don’t need the bosses and the overseers to run things.
Making Black boys disappear
Today, three junior boys said they were suspended and are now at risk of failing. When one parent asked to see the suspension letter, the school said they’d get back to them. The students were told to stay home, and weren’t allowed in the building without a parent. Not only did this DoE administration—more like a criminal gang—steal learning time away from the students, they also stole work hours and pay from working-class families who were forced into parent meetings after parent meetings.
Push-out of “difficult” (read: Black, Latin, and immigrant) students from schools is a racist policy. This is exactly what they had done to Claude.
Much like Success Academy—the charter school notorious for having a “got to go” list with names of kids who didn’t fit into their prison environment (New York Times, 10/29/15)—this public school disappears student to keep their graduation numbers and other scholastic data high. The principal loves to laud around her stacks of accolades in an unscreened Title 1 school with nearly 1 in 4 students with a special need. The secret recipe is racism.
At the union meeting today, we reported on the administration’s racist response to Claude and how it’s affecting students. I said, “what happened to [Claude] in the streets was violent, but what this administration is doing to [Claude’s] memorial is also violent…and whether or not you knew him, when one of us is attacked, we are all attacked…When students have an event, show up. When your student disappears, speak up.”
The workers responded with bravery. One new teacher suggested, “We can send a message by everyone wearing a pin.”
Another asked, “Do you have more photos of him that we can post in our rooms?”
Another added, “We need to find a way to incorporate this into our lessons.”
If Claude weren’t pushed out, would he have been alive to walk on graduation day in three
months? An administration that cares more about their 95 percent graduation rate than a
Black child has got to go. Claude’s killing has exposed a criminal policy that we need to
fight.
Claude was not a number. He was a member of the working class, and he deserved better. A
system that treats certain students as expendable DOES NOT deserve to exist. For our
students, shut this racist system down. The fight has only begun.
*The pseudonym Claude is inspired by the communist fighter and writer, Claude Mckay.
The following poem was written by the communist fighter, Langston Hughes (1938). Hughes refers to communist Angelo Herndon who was arrested and convicted of insurrection after organizing Black and white industrial workers in 1932 in Atlanta, Georgia. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were members of the German Communist Party. They were murdered for fighting against German imperialism and war.
This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.
Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi
Organizing sharecroppers
Kids will die in the streets of Chicago
Organizing workers
Kids will die in the orange groves of California
Telling others to get together
Whites and Filipinos,
Negroes and Mexicans,
All kinds of kids will die
Who don't believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment
And a lousy peace.
Of course, the wise and the learned
Who pen editorials in the papers,
And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names
White and black,
Who make surveys and write books
Will live on weaving words to smother the kids
who die,
And the sleazy courts,
And the bribe-reaching police,
And the blood-loving generals,
And the money-loving preachers
Will all raise their hands against the kids who die,
Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets
and bullets
To frighten the people—
For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of
the people—
And the old and rich don't want the people
To taste the iron of the kids who die,
Don't want the people to get wise to their own
power,
To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get together
Listen, kids who die—
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies'll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter's field,
Or the rivers where you're drowned like Liebknecht
But the day will come—
You are sure yourselves that it is coming—
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky—
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.
