BROOKLYN, NY, November 18 — “No matter how much you want to pretty this up, you can’t fool us; it’s racist!” shouted an angry parent towards one of several cronies the Department of Education (DoE) sent to pacify angry students, parents and teachers at a meeting of parents from two of the building’s schools.
As reported in CHALLENGE (10/28), our school campus, which now houses four schools, is slated to house a 5th one next September. This new school is in response to a mostly wealthy, predominantly white neighborhood’s desire for a school within the immediate area. The students currently attending all the schools are black, Latino and Asian working-class youth from surrounding neighborhoods.
The new school will only accept students who received the highest marks, 3s and 4s, on their eighth grade exams; require a writing sample; will not have special education students or English Language Learners; and will receive millions of dollars in start-up costs.
At a school leadership team meeting, a DoE representative said the new school will replicate a pre-existing screened high school, a highly sought-after school with a mostly white population. If this new school is as popular as the first one, it’s expected our school’s current population will be forced out to accommodate such growth and the wealthy white people will get what they’ve always wanted — black and brown students out of their neighborhood.
A Record of Racism
Racial tension between the school campus and the immediate neighborhood is nothing new. Up until this school year, a pizza shop across the street refused to serve our students, while simultaneously serving white students from the surrounding neighborhoods and schools. Their phony excuse was that students from our campus would crowd the shop, while only one student would purchase something.
Daily at 3:00 PM, the neighborhood turns into a police state. Students are unceremoniously “ushered” to the train station by school safety cops and NYPD and told to go home.
Blogs written by neighborhood residents have labeled students “criminals,” “dangerous” and even “animals.” The schools have even been asked to stagger dismissal so as “not rattle the nerves” of the pearl-clutching residents.
A History of Struggle
These attacks have not gone unanswered. Students in our campus have walked out over the cell-phone ban, the Sean Bell murder, for immigration rights (on May 1), led budget-cut conferences and rallies and picketed outside the school yelling, “We’re students, not criminals! Metal detectors have got to go!” Over 50 students attended PLP’s May Day dinner last year.
Teachers, many of whom are CHALLENGE readers, have boycotted the racist pizzeria. They also confronted school safety cops about their treatment of students and rallied against budget cuts. These teachers correctly called them racist, given the fact that the city’s 80% black and Latino school population will be taking the brunt of these cuts.
Fight Back Now!
Disgusted by this blatantly racist attack, teachers from most of the building’s schools have been meeting together almost weekly to plan fight-backs. Thus far this has included a debate organized by a PL member and her students (where CHALLENGE was sold), two rallies outside the school’s building and a meeting organized to unite with parents.
It was at this meeting where parents directed their anger towards the DoE flunkies present over the treatment of students, charging that, “The bathrooms are disgusting, and there are roaches and mice crawling all over the place. Why is it that the building is ‘good enough’ for our children, but not for these new kids? It’s because our children are black!”
During the meeting a PL member correctly pointed out that teachers, students and parents need to unite together and fight this racist attack, not fall for the DoE’s every-school-for-themselves, divide-and-conquer strategy. Turning her back on the DoE’s mouthpieces, the PL’er called on parents to kick them out of the meeting and begin making our own fight-back plans. Applause and agreement greeted this call. The group then passed around a fight-back sign-up sheet and has been in touch ever since. A second parent meeting has been scheduled.
Student Unity is Crucial
In discussing this issue with students the following Monday, a PL teacher asked them to read and respond to the article in last issue’s CHALLENGE. Students were outraged to discover the blatant racist plans to fund a new school while neglecting the already-existing ones.
Some students’ first reaction was to threaten to beat up the new entering students. But the teacher warned students not to let the DoE’s racism segregate us even further. She reasoned that the new students were not the real enemy, that it was the DoE and all it encompasses, saying they should unite with the new students (if they come) and petition and rally for equal funding.
Even if we win this struggle, we know that ultimately only the bosses win under capitalism. Like everything else, this struggle is a contradiction: while trying to win teachers, students and parents to join this struggle, we also know that the bosses’ schools can never serve our students. Their main goal is to sift out a few students to become the next Oprahs or Obamas, while steering the remaining students to end up stuck in poverty-wage jobs, or as prison labor or to die in imperialist wars.
Our goal is to introduce parents, students and teachers to the Party around this struggle, and then to consolidate and recruit them. We will lead with CHALLENGE and fight alongside our class brothers and sisters. We have much work to do and many lessons to learn.