It’s election season at Queens College, a time when all the register-to-vote-ers and the student government hopefuls rally to show us how effective they think elections are, both on campus and on the national scale. On our campus these election campaigns (both student and presidential) are happening in an immediate context of massive tuition hikes, a heightened exploitation of our teachers, fewer and fewer options for us when we graduate, and an intensifying criminalization of black, Latino, and Muslim students. So, we fought back!
We organized a “Don’t register to vote, register to REVOLT!” campaign to expose the scam of elections. We made signs, gave out flyers and people took CHALLENGE. A lot of us were surprised at the number of students who connected with our message that elections are nothing but a racist battleground for the bosses to duke out disagreements amongst themselves.
We won many students and workers to “register to REVOLT!” They gave us their contact information and expressed interest in coming to a weekly speak-out we organized on the campus green. At these speak-outs, issues like racist police brutality in our communities, increasing tuition and the inability of working-class students, especially black and Latino, to afford higher education, are at the center of our conversations. These speak-outs have been very well attended and very politically sharp, not only in ideas but also in organizing actions.
In a political climate where fascism in the forms of brutal policing, anti-immigrant laws and anti-Muslim racism seems to be intensifying, we saw fit to organize around this on campus, since a lot of the students are affected by these issues.
It has been documented that the NYPD has sent undercover spies into — and has hacked the computers of — the Muslim Student Associations (MSA) across CUNY, especially at Queens College. So, in the weeks that followed we successfully organized a mock incident of police brutality.
We walked into a crowded cafeteria on campus and put on a show. Students dressed up as KKKops by wearing pig masks and harassed other students by pushing them up against the walls, emptying their bags, and frisking them. This skit was very well received by the students sitting around us and more students expressed interest in joining the speak-outs. We’re planning on putting on many more encore performances and leading this momentum in the direction of the only sustainable solution for us working people, a communist revolution.
In a campus desperately hungry for revolutionary change, we are planting red seeds.