Boston, November 3 — The spontaneous march on October 29th against the vicious police beating of a 16-year-old black youth at Roxbury Community College (RCC) (see
CHALLENGE 11/3/10) brought together students and faculty who were committed to advance the struggle against police brutality. Since then, a core group of activists has organized a mass response. A student petition condemning the police attack was circulated throughout the college community, and a letter condemning the college administration’s silence was distributed among faculty and staff. A mass meeting was called for November 2 to mobilize a bigger march two days later.
Although the meeting was held on Election Day at an election site (the college), voting was completely ignored. It’s no wonder that 60% of eligible voters regularly stay away from the polls. Working-class issues like police brutality, unemployment, foreclosures and cutbacks don’t get voted on. Direct action is the only meaningful way for workers to assert our power.
Several Roxbury politicians came to the meeting. (Roxbury is Boston’s oldest black neighborhood.) Their main role was confining the scope of the struggle by focusing on pressuring the police chief and the college administration to “apologize.”
Then 25 students, led by two politicians, went to confront RCC’s President Gomes. Although the meeting gave him the opportunity to repair his damaged reputation for trying to distance the college from the “bad press” the incident would bring to RCC, few if any students left with any illusions about his role as junior partner of the local ruling class.
Cops: Boses’ Tool to Control Workers’ Struggle
Two days later, despite the rain, 60 people, mostly students and a few staff, faculty and politicians, gathered at the school to rally before the march to the police station. One speaker condemned the cops who beat the teenager, but was careful not to condemn all police. Another speaker explained that killer cops are protected by the police bureaucracy and the courts because the bosses lose control when the authority of their agents in blue is weakened. “The rulers need to keep us afraid of the police because they are the first line of defense against the working class. The cops serve and protect the bosses and preserve their unequal and unjust society.”
For days afterwards, the activist students wrestled to keep the struggle going. They thought about organizing a bigger march, bringing the petitions to the Mayor’s office, confronting the Chief of Police — anything to get the brutal cops fired. They worried about how to maintain the current level of political activity without their academic work suffering.
As newly-engaged activists, they were grappling with profound questions: Does winning mean getting a few cops fired, even when others will be hired to do the same “bad job”? Does “winning” mean raising consciousness? And if so, consciousness about what?
Some of them came to a CHALLENGE Reader’s Group and watched a PL video about the 1992 LA rebellions after the four cops who beat Rodney King were exonerated. The video and the discussion that followed provided a communist perspective for them to consider. The students could see the limits of reform. When the LA bosses couldn’t
control the working class by using the medias’ lies, elections and other methods of deception, they brought in the police and armed forces, using the full power of the state to maintain control.
Police brutality will continue to sharpen as U.S. capitalism loses ground to its rivals. Increasingly workers who fight unemployment, home foreclosures and cutbacks will get the same fascist police treatment presently aimed at black and Latino youth and
undocumented immigrants.
Inevitably more young people will be thrust into struggles against the police and other injustices of capitalism. As at RCC, these struggles open the door to revolutionary thinking like nothing else can. Struggle against the bosses’ system gives us the opportunity to experience the power workers can have when we organize, as well as our lack of power relative to the bosses who control the police, the media, the politicians and the college bosses. When we fight in our own interests, we can more easily see how the bosses maintain control of society to benefit their class and why it is necessary for our class to win power.
Communist Consciousness Crucial
The instinct of the RCC activists to want to keep fighting is good,
but without communist consciousness it will either lead them to burn out or
into the arms of politicians. Communist consciousness enables them to stay
in the struggle for the long term, despite the ups and downs of the reform
movement. Now, when the level of class struggle is relatively low, whenever there’s an opportunity for a struggle, PL’ers must pull out all the stops to advance it.
At RCC, the most important development by far to come out of this anti-police brutality struggle is for the young leaders to join PLP. This is the way we can best guarantee more struggles which can become more schools for communism.