NEWARK, NJ, April 17 — Around 250 teachers and students protested the new wave of capitalist attacks on the working class today. This time the attacks are taking the form of extreme cuts in education. The New Jersey governor has announced that he will cut $1.09 billion from schools across the state. As usual, these cuts are inherently racist because the schools which suffer the largest cuts serve primarily black, Latino and immigrant students. The results of these cuts will be larger class sizes due to teacher lay-offs, a diminishing of after-school programs and extra-curricular activities, wage freezes and healthcare give-backs, to name a few.
When we arrived at the protest, most chants and signs pointed to Governor Christie as the problem. The chant “Hey hey, ho ho, Governor Christie’s got to go” could be heard for blocks along with the honks of support from every car that passed. While Christie is an easy person to hate, this is not enough. We must struggle with workers and students to understand that capitalism and its inevitable economic crises and ever-expanding imperialist wars are the source of these cuts, not individual politicians. In attempts to bring this message to the workers, we led chants linking the cuts to the war, gave a speech connecting the cuts in education to all the other capitalist attacks on the working class and distributed CHALLENGE.
While we were able to play a role in leading the demonstration, our consistent work in mass organizations is what made the difference. For over a year now, we have been active in, or connected with, a couple of mass organizations in the area. That commitment is what has put us in a position for our communist politics to lead some of this struggle.
The day after the protest, we brought students and teachers from the demonstration to a May Day fundraiser. We discussed communism as the only solution to the cuts in education that are used to fund bank and corporation bailouts and oil wars. Within that discussion, we made plans for how to bring communist politics to the May Day march in New York City. We will continue to work within the movement against the budget cuts, to fight to win more workers and students to understand that capitalism will never fulfill the needs of the working class. J
April 27 — As we go to press thousands of students across the state walkout against the budget cuts. Full story, next issue of CHALLENGE.