ROXBURY, MA, October 19 — The leaders of the Pizza and Politics student club at Roxbury Community College went down to Occupy Boston and were excited to see that people in the U.S. are waking up to the reality of class oppression. One sign at the encampment said so much: “They call it the american dream because you have to be asleep to believe it”.
Too many of us have been asleep for too long. The students decided to make the next topic for the club discussion “Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Boston, Occupy the World.” They invited some activists from Occupy Boston to come and speak about the goals of the movement. The activists explained the collective way the encampment is being organized and how it sees itself as building a better world. PL’ers raised the idea that in order for that humane community to flourish and spread all over the world the working class needs to seize state power and make the decisions for the society.
Otherwise OWS will either be smashed by the police or co-opted, like the rebel movement was in Egypt. The discussion moved from communism to consumerism to the role of education. It reflected the refreshing openness of the Occupy Wall Street movement, where big questions are being discussed and communist ideas are welcomed by many. However, everything changes, and the Occupy movement will either be won to the left or to the right. It will either become a tool of the Democratic Party or it will move the masses into class struggle — supporting strikes, confronting the police, and fighting foreclosures and evictions. By distributing our literature and raising our ideas, PL’ers and friends of PL are trying to take full advantage of this opportunity to move OWS to the left.