Seizing Opportunities 2: Mobilizing Hundreds to Link War to Budget Cuts

NEW YORK CITY, February 6 — After the successful, but small, rally in front of our school (as reported in a February 3rd CHALLENGE article) planning for another rally took place on two levels: the union leadership and the rank and file. The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) was fully in support of having the rally, yet they wanted to make sure that the rally was within the narrow confines of their own political demands.

The union is not fighting the budget cuts, but instead pushing the misleadership of “fair budget cuts.” The union’s narrow politics might have dominated the rally, led to a small number of teachers that would have weakened everyone’s confidence, and discouraged a lot of angry students who increasingly are seeing that the school system isn’t working for them. None of this would bother a UFT that does not want to unite parents, teachers, and students in any case.

The Chapter Leader took the lead in organizing the rally and wanted it to be large in order for the media to show up and capture it.  Our view is that relying upon the media is never a good tactic as the bosses own and manipulate the media in order to maintain their class rule.  Our city is especially susceptible to media blackouts since the mayor basically owns the media, and widespread coverage of broad discontent would threaten his tight grip on the city.

Understanding the limits of the rally, PL saw that a state school challenging the state’s needs has revolutionary potential. As communists we wanted to mobilize a mass action against the state and organize students and teachers to move to the left away from the narrow union politics of just opposing school closings. Our goal was to show the connection between the war and budget cuts, and to build a large mass protest that would give students, teachers and parents the unity and confidence to carry the struggle even further. 

Our PL club came up with two plans: plan A being to try to move the rally across the street to protest in front of a Citibank branch, and plan B to have the student PL’ers at the school break off from the main protest and move students to the Citibank in order to link the banks to the budget cuts.  The interest and payments that are given to the banks are paid before the schools get their money, and are a major reason for the budget cuts.

Well, the bosses gave even more fuel for our fire as the transit authority announced that they would be cutting free Metrocards for students.  This racist attack (which would basically reintroduce segregation by making it too expensive for black and Latino students to travel to schools outside their own segregated neighborhoods) made the students in our school livid. They saw it would increase the number of dropouts. 

The day of the rally, several students organized to put out a flyer that was distributed to students telling them to join the rally.  The administration told the Chapter Leader that this was against the contract, and she promptly confronted a PL’er about the flyer.  The PL’er replied that he didn’t print it nor distribute it.  The flyer said, “rob from the banks not the schools,” making a class analysis of why the rulers’ oil wars lead to the budget cuts. This was not what the union wanted to say as the UFT refuses to lay the blame where it belongs — on the bosses and their banks. The students themselves organizing to write, print, and distribute a flyer that linked the war, the budget cuts, and the need to fight back against them.  Party influence was illustrated in many areas, including students taking charge of making signs in an art class.

When a PL teacher came to the lobby to get the signs and plan the rally, a possible Plan C developed: march to the local park that has a Christmas shopping center and shops there.  Unsure of the forces we could organize, the PL teacher thought that maybe the rally across the street would be enough, and that they could march around the block, hoping to get the school nearby to join the rally.   Much to the chagrin of the Chapter Leader, the PL teacher grabbed a sign made in one of the art classes that said, “Rob the banks not the schools” and joined another teacher outside the school. They started chanting and students joined in droves!

Though nobody from the media showed up, close to two hundred students, two parents, and nearly 20 teachers did and made the rally happen. We were loud as we marched six blocks to the park, had people join the march, join the rally at the park, and then marched back loudly shouting “fight back,” and opposing the war. Instead of relying upon the media to spread the message, we relied upon the working class.   

This rally is a sign of things to come as the Party can now mobilize hundreds against the needs of the ruling class.  We moved the rally to the left with patient and careful organizing and many discussions, both in the classroom and individually. The students are excited and looking forward to the next rally. 

Though the administration may help us to organize more rallies for their own reasons, PL views the struggle as long-term and these rallies as providing opportunities to build the Party. As Bob Dylan once sang, “The times they are a-changing”!  The future for Party growth is great, and we must seize every opportunity that the bosses give us to organize, grow and spread communist ideas through increased struggle.