NYC Workers, Students March, Unite to Blast Bosses’ School Budget Cuts -- ‘Cuts Are For War!’

NEW YORK, NY, March 4 — “No Cuts, No War, The Cuts are for the War” was shouted with all the rage that Asian, Latin, black, and white workers, students, and teachers could channel into their voices against the bosses’ racist attacks. The ruling class is waging war on the working class in order to pay for their imperialist wars.

They are further segregating schools by cutting the budgets and shutting down schools, opening charter schools in their place. This will make it difficult for working-class youth to go to a school in their own neighborhood. New York City bosses are threatening to cut free student Metrocards (bus and train fare cards), which would prohibit the vast majority of working-class students from going to schools outside their home neighborhood. However, they are in fact unlikely to cut the Metrocards. By “giving in” on that issue, the bosses can argue that we must accept a different cut instead. They will try to win our class to not just accept other cuts, but even to support and be grateful for them.

We must build working-class unity to fight the bosses. Understanding that any attack from the ruling class hurts our whole class means never accepting a single budget cut on the backs of a different group of workers. Even though it is small, today’s fight-back is just the beginning as communists know that a quantity of actions transforms into a qualitative change.

Even if the protests now are largely liberal-led, that too will change as PL continues to grow in the schools, community centers, unions, churches, transportation, and industry. Today we were able to bring and lead many to carry our banners, accept our leadership, and join in our chants, but tomorrow it will be hundreds of thousands.

PL professors, teachers and students brought their co-workers, students, and fellow students to the protest outside of Governor Paterson’s office. This ruing class puppet, just like Obama, is carrying out the open assault on our class that the ruling class demands. In order for a ruling class to attack the rulers of another country, they must attack and control their own working class even more viciously. These assaults on our class are directly related to the needs of capitalism to create profit. The same banks that got almost a trillion dollars in bailouts, are now making even more money off of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) assault on the students, while workers suffer.

Several of PLP’s chants called for communist revolution, but the one that
championed class war was carried on for several blocks as we marched from Patterson’s office to the MTA public hearing.

These hearings enable the ruling class to maintain their illusion of “democracy” so crucial to their holding state power in the U.S. The myth of democracy is grounded in the belief that we are all given a voice in the power structure’s decision-making. Of course, when the march arrived at the hearing, they tried to keep us all out!

When the protest of several thousand students and teachers arrived at the hearing, they met another protest of several thousand transit workers already rallying there. Some of the workers had leafleted a PL’ers’ high school with flyers that expressed solidarity with students. These workers have shut NYC down before and are a crucial force for revolution. The kkkops put the mainly student-teacher protest in one pen, and did everything that they could to keep them divided. Instead of joining the Transit Workers Union protest, many of the liberals went home when they found out that they couldn’t get into the MTA hearing! Instead of organizing to join the workers themselves, their narrow politics of using the hearing to voice dissent was primary.

The bosses’ crisis will deepen, as they continue to try to make more and more profits off of the working class’s misery. More hospitals, schools, and jobs will be lost in the oncoming months as the depression deepens. The oil wars will continue. The recent conquest of Haiti and the seizing of Marja in Afghanistan are just hints of what’s to come next. PL’ers must take advantage of each opportunity to rebuild the international communist movement. The protests in NYC, though largely ignored by the bosses’ media, are a good sign, but only communist revolution will provide the education and transportation that the working class needs. 

Queens College: ‘Where the hell did our funding go?!’

QUEENS, NY, March 4 — Chanting “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Where the Hell Did Our Funding Go!?” and “Fight, Fight, Fight, Education is a Right!,” 75 students at this City University of New York college rallied and marched across campus to protest the proposed $104 million in budget cuts. At the rally, students spoke eloquently about how difficult it was for those from working-class families to afford the current tuition, especially during a recession, when parents have lost jobs or seen the value of their homes diminish. Increasing tuition would only make it harder and force some students to drop out. The percentage of black and Latino students at Queens College has dramatically decreased due to the budget cuts.

The national leadership of the March 4 protests — not wanting to upset the leadership of the Democratic Party — refused to link the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with cuts in education. However, students at our rally were outspoken in denouncing the spending of a trillion dollars a year on wars of occupation.

Three days before the rally, we had a teach-in (see next page) in which student and faculty panelists tied budget cuts and tuition hikes to three phenomena: (1) the very rich control both major parties and are thus able to keep their taxes at historically low levels; (2) in order to maintain its global dominance, U.S. capitalists are committed to controlling the oil-rich Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions and will spend trillions on wars of occupation there; and (3) capitalism is in crisis and is lowering the already low standard of living of working people.

These are their plans. The plan of Progressive Labor Party is to build a revolutionary organization that not only actively participates in today’s defensive battles against cutbacks but at the same time builds an offensive force capable of smashing capitalism and establishing a communist society. We work in mass organizations with the understanding that many of their dedicated members of today will one day be the committed revolutionaries of tomorrow.J

PLP’s Politics Center of Teach-in

QUEENS, NY, March 1 — Today, students, faculty and staff at Queens College CUNY hosted a teach-in entitled “War and Public Education.” While slated to build support for the March 4 “Day of Action,” its strong point was linking the budget cuts and tuition hikes to the capitalist crisis and imperialist war, issues ignored by the reformist coalitions that organized the NYC protest. PLP’ers who’ve been active in antiwar activities here organized this focus and put PLP politics at the center of the discussion.

In the first panel, a long-time Sociology professor defined war and crisis, stimulating much discussion. An English student and regular CHALLENGE reader followed, tying the U.S. imperialist invasion of Afghanistan to the budget cuts at CUNY with a Marxist critique of capitalism, emphasizing the need for revolutionary politics.

A Vietnam veteran concluded the analysis, exposing the parasitical tactics of recruiters who are increasingly appearing on our campuses to convince especially black and Latino students to die for U.S. imperialism. They’re forced to leave school because of rising tuition. The vet emphasized resistance to recruiters’ dubious tactics, urging soldiers to organize among their ranks and join the growing antiwar movement.

The second panel featured two PLP members who focused on the international aspects of war, crisis, and public education. The first speaker, a PL’er, gave concrete examples of the neoliberal global capitalist crisis and the growing privatization of public education and emphasized how inter-imperialist rivalry fueled the crisis of public education, stressing the need to fight the racist budget cuts and U.S. imperialist interests.

The second speaker discussed the teachers’ resistance movement to the 2009 coup in Honduras in June 2009, which overthrew Manuel Zelaya, a corporate lackey. Nevertheless, his overthrow symbolized U.S intervention in Central America, leading many teachers, intellectuals, and students to join in the struggle against the coup, favoring Zelaya’s return. While the speaker emphasized the post-coup repression of teachers and activists, and their resistance to the military dictatorship, overlooked was Zelaya’s complicity with capitalist interests in Central America and the imperialist dogfight that oppressed Honduran workers, students, and teachers (see CHALLENGE, August 2009).

The panel ended with a moving discussion by a PLP member, linking U.S. imperialism to the recent “unnatural” disaster in Haiti  and the necessity to build a revolutionary party through continuous solidarity with workers and teachers, in Haiti, here and  worldwide.

A short film followed entitled, “Why Are We in Afghanistan.” It reviewed the history of U.S. imperialism’s worldwide aggression, especially in Central Asia. Her introduction exposed Obama’s expansion of the war machine in Afghanistan, aiming to contain U.S. rival capitalists, namely China and Russia. She also revealed how the U.S. military has built bases along the constructed TAPI pipeline, exposing U.S. rulers’ interests beyond the “war-on-terror” rhetoric.

The final panel emphasized strategies for fighting back. Three speakers, a Lehman College student, a Queens College English professor and the Vietnam veteran, characterized certain aspects of how to build a movement on our campuses: by creating stronger links between faculty and students, by emphasizing racism at CUNY from the 1970’s to the present, and by encouraging student-veterans to join antiwar organizations.

Many antiwar students and faculty engaged in discussing ways to use the theory and practice of revolutionary communist politics and build a strong movement on our campuses and beyond. PLP’s politics guided the wider discussions, enabling the growing solidarity among the members and organizers to unite more than in the past, deepening the potential of a communist future. J

Hunter College: Angry Students Walk Out, Smash Office Doors

New York, NY, March 4th — Joining with the national day of actions at Hunter College we had a walkout to protest the proposed budget cuts. Then we were greeted by about 500 cops. The cops were forceful and hit a couple of students as they were setting up the metal pen to restrict our protest. The rally spread over to the financial aid office as angry students smashed the doors. After the action on our campus we went to a larger demonstration and march from the governor’s office to the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) headquarters. At the protest we met up with other schools in the university as students and professors united in protesting the racist budget cuts, which would slash financial aid and hike tuition. Capitalism attacks students on every level and the only way to get a real education is to fight for a classless world based on putting workers’ needs first and eliminating bosses and their profits. 

PolySci Club Gets Real Education

Our school’s newly-formed Political Science Club exhibited lots of excitement for the March 4th “Defend Education” rally. Rightfully angry about the racist cuts, students, mainly black and Latino, are seeing tuition hikes, financial aid cuts and free student subway cards endangered, while the banks are getting billions in bailouts and the rich just keep getting richer.

The club produced a leaflet with a cartoon showing Wall Street executives making out like thieves while education funding  is being slashed. PLP members in the club are helping to develop a fundamental understanding of how capitalism works, of how the capitalist crisis is being heaped upon workers’ backs, and what it will take to defeat it: communist revolution.

Today, March 4, we met in front of the school President’s office and then marched to the subway station to join the rally with thousands of other angry students and teachers at Governor David Paterson’s office. New York’s first black governor is leading this racist attack. No matter what color their skin, the politicians’ job is to push racism in all its forms. (Likewise, our college president, a black woman, has let our campus — where students are mainly black and Latino and more than 60% female — fall into disgusting disrepair.)

We joined the march to the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) public meeting, chanting the entire way, “The Workers, United, Will Never Be Defeated!” and “Asian, Latin, Black and White; Students and Workers must Unite!”

Afterwards we discussed the activity over dinner. Many were unhappy about how the cops kept us penned in and contained. Part of our group had been cut off from the main rally by a line of cops; this sparked a good discussion at our first club meeting later.

When a student asked whether we should’ve tried to break past the cops to the main rally, a PL’er suggested we draw some lessons learned from the Stella D’Oro struggle about when and how to go against the cops. In that fight, plans were made beforehand and support for opposing the cops was solidified. When time came, we succeeded in getting past their barricades, right up to the factory gates. In the discussion, the PL’er suggested we recognize the cops’ role as protectors of Paterson and the MTA bosses and our role as a force to battle them.

We’re planning a teach-in on the Haiti earthquake. The Party will be there with a communist analysis, bringing revolutionary ideas into the mix.