The following is an interview of a friend of PLP about the protests in Baltimore on March 4.
Q. What is the school-to-prison pipeline?
A. School-to-prison pipeline is the need for our youth, especially minorities, to not be able to go to school because the system profits more if they end up in the juvenile justice system.
Q. You took part in the March 4th events in Baltimore. Can you tell us a little about what happened?
A. It was a really inspirational day. We started in downtown Baltimore at Camden Yards where we waited for students to arrive and listened to speeches about the importance of why we were marching. Next we started the march past the state school board building where we met up with more students and let the people inside know we were serious. In the following events, we marched to the juvenile justice center [and] we chanted different things such as “Jobs Not Jails.”
Q. What exactly is being demanded, and what did it feel like to be part of that major protest?
A. They are demanding that 100 out of the 300 million dollars that is being allocated for more youth jails be redirected towards education. They are demanding this from the governor because he owes the city money due to a state mandate that has yet to be paid to the youth of Baltimore. I felt like I was doing something important to help students.
Q. Why do you think the cops didn’t arrest the people who sat-in and picketed, right inside the Baby Bookings [juvenile jail] complex?
A. I think they didn’t arrest anyone who sat-in or picketed because it wouldn’t be in their best interest to arrest any of the students or adults. If they did that would cause more media coverage for our cause and it could have caused an uproar from the students.
Q. What is Progressive Labor Party’s analysis about why U.S. capitalism, year after year, incarcerates such tremendous numbers of working-class people?
A. The capitalists of America need prison labor to produce products cheap to make a huge profit. Private prison contractors make a lot more money using prisoners to labor for cheap. The capitalist state needs the school-to-prison pipeline. To end it we have to
destroy the capitalist state and establish working-class power, which means a dictatorship of the working class.
Q. There was a very good Town Hall meeting last month to help organize for March 4. Can you tell us about Progressive Labor Party’s contribution to that event?
A. During the open discussion period of the meeting a comrade took a firm position that the school-to-prison pipeline was wrong and that the only solution is a communist revolution. Then the people on the panel at the Town Hall meeting were asked what they thought of revolution. It caused the audience to begin to cheer for our comrade and showed that we aren’t the only ones here to believe in revolution.
Q. On March 4 itself, how many people helped distribute PLP’s communist newspaper, CHALLENGE, and about how many participants took copies of the paper?
A. On March 4 there were three people passing out CHALLENGE and we got out close to a hundred papers and made a couple of new friends of the Party.
Q. Last year, only 4,285 students graduated from public high schools in Baltimore City, but a larger number — about 6,000 young people — were arrested by the police. How do you think we can solve this problem?
A. As I discussed above the only solution would be a communist revolution. We should start with a class-consciousness that would help these students learn that the bosses need these numbers to keep their families and minorities as a whole oppressed.