Student Conference: Need Multi-Racial Unity to Stop Racist Mass Incarceration

WASHINGTON, DC, April 20 — More than two hundred people gathered at Howard University to build the fight against the racist U.S. injustice system, which jails black and Latino people far out of proportion to their numbers in the population.
Organized by the Howard University chapter of Students Against Mass Incarceration (SAMI), the two-day national conference gathered people from five other campus chapters. Students and friends from the community joined to learn, debate, and plan actions against the abusive, racist prison system.  Progressive Labor Party members distributed more than 200 CHALLENGEs and called on people to join the May Day march in New York.
Conference organizers sponsored a Friday night movie on the refugee camps in Palestine, which are essentially open-air prisons for tens of thousands of Palestinians expelled from Israel over the last 65 years. This event underlined the importance of international solidarity in the struggle against global oppression. Other sessions focused on political prisoners who continue to resist injustice behind prison walls. 
Participants raised several ideas for action. First, confront college administrations that refuse to hire former prisoners or to admit them as students. Second, demand that universities break their ties to corporations that make millions in profits by exploiting prisoners. Third, build solidarity by supporting incarcerated individuals. As SAMI launches these struggles, the ruling class’s racist plans will be sharply challenged.
Prisons are racist institutions that neither improve society nor keep workers safe. They’re part of the bosses’ strategy to divide, terrorize, and exploit the working class. As super-exploited workers, prisoners are a key source of profits for the ruling class. Smashing capitalism and abolishing anti-working-class prisons go hand in hand. 
SAMI’s main weakness is its nationalist outlook. The group defines itself as a black radical student organization and requires each chapter’s leadership to be black. But nationalism limits the effectiveness of the struggle against mass incarceration and capitalism. Smashing the profit system will require multi-racial unity in intense struggle against the capitalist rulers. When organizations focus exclusively on a single “race” or group within the working class, it weakens our solidarity.
PLP is building a revolutionary communist party that fights for black, Latino, and Asian workers and students to be leading forces in a multiracial fight to destroy capitalism and its prisons. As the struggle grows, students are learning that strength comes from unity. In one of the SAMI workshops, a woman looked at some PL’ers and friends, a group of Latino and South Asian students from New York, and asked, “What are you here for?”
One comrade replied, “Most of us come from Brooklyn where two black youth, Kiki Gray and Shantel Davis, were murdered by the cops. The night of Kiki’s vigil, high school students began a powerful rebellion. They took the streets and fought the cops. We are part of that and want to build unity. That’s one of the reasons we’re here.”
People nodded in agreement and were receptive to CHALLENGE and its front-page headline, “NYPD: Wanted for Racist Murder.”
The rest of the day was devoted to performances and panels commemorating the struggles against racism and honoring a legacy of black fighters like Nelson Mandela — more evidence of the problems posed by nationalism. Once his forces seized state power, Mandela ushered modern capitalism into South Africa under a new set of black bosses. He betrayed the working class.
As communists, we need to ask where racism comes from. While it is disseminated in all aspects of society, the ruling class created racism and the phony concept of race to justify the super-exploitation of black workers and to prevent our class from uniting. We must work with people based on their politics and commitment, not their color. To do otherwise is to let the bosses win.
Students at the conference called for justice, liberation and revolution. What do these words mean? How do we organize for revolution, and what happens after the working class seizes state power? These questions were not addressed by SAMI. What black students — and all students — need is a communist party. PLP has a long-term strategy and solution for the international working class.