CUNY Trustees, NYPD Prove: No Free Speech Under Capitalism

NEW YORK CITY, November 25 — It’s official. The City University of New York (CUNY) is a repressive organ of the racist capitalist state. Today over 100 students and faculty protested the Board of Trustees’ proposal of the “Policy on Expressive Activity,” which exposes “free speech” under capitalism for the myth that it is. Various networks have been building for this rally for weeks. Progressive Labor Party organized friends at a number of local colleges. Newer members are gaining experience in putting our politics forward at these events.
A member of PLP read the SOS letter from Haiti, where fascism translates to tear gas, grenades, and bullets. One student lost a hand after being maimed by a stun grenade from the national police (see page 8). This is what CUNY students and faculty can look forward to from the administration. We need to fight fascism with communist internationalism. “If you want to find out more,” the PLP member said, “come grab a CHALLENGE!” Many protesters thanked the PL’er who brought the international greeting. They took the paper; they are open to the Party’s red ideas.
CHALLENGE has been a crucial part of our struggle at CUNY. We distribute it in a mass way every week to students who otherwise would be unaware of the militarization on our campuses. We use it in our Party clubs to evaluate our work. Our friends read the paper and ask us intriguing questions, like: Why are these attacks happening now? While handing out CHALLENGE at this rally, we reconnected with old friends and exchanged contacts with prospective new ones. We’re also struggling with our friends to write for the paper.
Twenty kkkops were present outside to confine the protest to half the street. One higher-ranking cop threatened Taffy, a suspended student leader, to “watch out.” Many other cops were guarding entrances inside surrounding buildings. These were not campus cops but the racist New York Police Department, the biggest police force in the world’s most powerful imperialist state. It’s not by accident that the NYPD has expanded into a global terror operation. The same force that conducts “special interrogations” (read: torture) in Pakistan, Egypt, and Afghanistan is more than willing to assault protesting college students and faculty. One PL’er made the point that militarization is not limited to CUNY — it’s an international phenomenon.  As the bosses prepare for broader global conflict, we are entering a period of rising fascism. The increased use of city cops to quell on-campus dissent is one reflection of this trend.  
The trustees’ new policy calls for increased police presence and restrictions on all public activity, from leafleting to congregating in groups. In other words, the CUNY administration and police would determine the limits of a rally against the college president. The campus cops can change the date, time, or location of any demonstration — or shut it down entirely. This repression reflects the CUNY bosses’ weakness and their fear of the might of an organized working class.
While those rallying outside were mainly students, twenty-five faculty members in the Professional Staff Congress expressed their dissent inside the trustees’ meeting. The Baruch College building was guarded like a criminal court. A squad of cops escorted small groups of five to eight professors and other staff to the elevators. Metal detectors screened everyone who entered the meeting room. Racist board Chairman Benno Schmidt said that anyone who interrupted or disrupted the meeting would be ejected by police and face criminal charges. In a loud voice, a professor asked for one minute to report on how CUNY officials were suppressing student protests with suspensions and arrests. His request was denied.
Liberal and phony-left groups are calling the Policy on Expressive Activity an attack on First Amendment rights. They are leading a campaign to “defend our fight to free expression.” This represents the sharpest disagreement between PL’ers and the fake left.  PLP understands that universities are not neutral spaces where ideas can be debated democratically. We live under a capitalist dictatorship where the bosses change or break their own laws as required by their profit system.
One protester led a chant, “Our People, Our Fight, People of the World Unite! We Got One Solution — Bring on the Revolution!” PLP has a different chant: “The Only Solution Is Communist Revolution!” That’s the kind of revolution students and workers need. Others provide false hope when they say that our colleges should be “ruled by the people” or that “we need to take back CUNY.” The University does not belong to the working class. Like all institutions under capitalism, it belongs to the capitalist rulers. By planning on passing the Policy on Expressive Activity, the Board of Trustees has made this clear.
CUNY is a racist institution where black, Latino, and South Asian students are shuffled into community colleges and ROTC. The senior colleges are increasingly white. This segregation divides students and leads us to blame each other for the failures of capitalism (full analysis next issue). We need to do a better job of organizing across colleges and fighting racism, and also connecting our struggle to the brutal imperialism in places like Haiti.