NEW YORK CITY — Our study/action Group has been taking students to participate in Occupy Wall Street (OWS). The students looked forward to going to OWS because they’ve been inspired by the protests. We meet for lunch, read CHALLENGE and discuss the contradictions between reform and revolution.
The most valuable element of the OWS protest has been the fact that it is capturing the imagination of workers and youth as well as inspiring them to fight back. Our students were quick to point out that these protests were similar to those in Egypt. The massive uprising there led to a dictatorship without a dictator in Egypt. In Tunisia, Islamists won an election. Both were a losing proposition for the working class.
A few days later, another group of students and some teachers went down with a PL’er who works at the school. They saw the limits of reform for themselves, and each of them moved closer to the Party as a result. One of the students now takes and distributes CHALLENGE, having his own CHALLENGE network.
A week after our first trip, another teacher in our group was able to convince his students to go. Our students then met up together and distributed CHALLENGE and had conversations about our politics. These conversations strengthened their commitment to our Party’s ideas. Hopefully, they too will join the Party. The OWS movement should be seen as an opportunity for us to build the Party by discussing it, going to it, and struggling over the politics of it.J