‘Movie Night’ Links School Cuts to Capitalist Crisis

LOS ANGELES, CA, November 6 — Our PLP college club hosted a movie night to watch the film “A Grain of Sand.” This film documents the struggle that began in the late 1970s of high school teachers in Mexico around public education. Over twenty students from various campuses in Southern California attended the event and discussed the significance of local and international fights against budget cuts to public education. Through this discussion we reached a better understanding of how these cuts reflect the crisis of U.S. capitalism, and how neo-liberal policies aiming to privatize education in Latin America are really just a form of imperialism.

The movie night resulted from our participation in the student coalitions that have been protesting fee hikes and cuts to state universities and community colleges in Southern California. This year many students have begun to question more deeply the nature of the cuts and whether it is enough to attack the university administration or state politicians for mismanaging the budget. We’ve struggled to connect the cuts to the global crisis of capitalism, pointing to the student and worker fight in Europe around austerity measures.

Adding to this international perspective, we’ve also pointed out the expanded spending on imperialist war in Afghanistan. Providing this international perspective has enabled us to explain the systemic nature of the budget cuts and to argue for the need to build working-class consciousness and unity. By looking at historical struggles such as the one portrayed in “A Grain of Sand,” we’ve also been better able to point out the limits of reform struggle and the need to fight for a revolutionary communist movement.

There was much disagreement on what lessons to draw from historical examples such as the Mexican teachers’ struggle against budget cuts, but many agreed it’s necessary to continue these discussions to better understand how capitalism works and to build a movement to destroy it. Most importantly, through these types of events we’ve slowly but steadily built a stronger communist presence within the student movement against the budget cuts to public education in Southern California.

At the end of the night, students from UCLA asked to borrow the film so that they can show it on their campus. We are now working with those students to organize a film showing. In this manner, we’re struggling to popularize the Party’s revolutionary communist politics within the struggle against cuts to schools and universities in the region.