PL’ers Help Build Campus Anti-Racism

BOSTON, September 25 — The Progressive Labor Party here hosted three student comrades from New York City who brought their youthful energy and insights about campus organizing to Roxbury Community College (RCC) and University of Massachusetts (UMass), where we are building a base for communism.
Pizza and Politics, a student club exposing members to a class analysis and communist ideas, hosted a panel about fighting back against U.S. imperialism on campus. The NYC students shared their experience organizing at the City University of New York (CUNY) in the Fall semester of 2013 against General Petraeus, a leading U.S. general from the Iraq war. The CUNY administration, behaving as true lackeys for the U.S. ruling class, had hired Petraeus to recruit the mostly black, Latin, and immigrant students to support U.S. imperialism, along with reinstating Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and stepping up military recruitment. Fascism is creeping into campus, with the imposition of laws that aim to suppress organizing and enable college administrations to crack down on protests, like the CUNY administration did to the anti-Petraeus campaign. They spoke about how the struggle had transformed them into communist organizers.
Sharing fightback stories can strengthen and motivate others to organize. RCC students were inspired by the courage, clarity, and determination of the young comrades. One RCC student asked how they built the kind of organization that could sustain such a struggle and whether being PLP members helped that to happen. The young comrades responded that their membership in PLP established the trust and shared values that became the foundation of their unity. Another RCC student, who has recently begun reading CHALLENGE and meeting with PLP, spoke eloquently about how the media’s job is to confuse us and win us to a capitalist outlook. He explained that he is educating himself about the murderous history of the U.S. from the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan during World War II to the U.S.’s intentional spreading of syphilis in Guatemala in the 1940s. He and other students are interested in attending PLP’s annual College Conference on November 8 in New York City. Several signed up to meet with a CHALLENGE Reader’s Group at RCC.
Long History in Fighting Fascism
The CUNY students met at UMass, which while a small group, was inspiring to all involved. One local black student was interested in fighting back and organizing his friends to come to the Conference. He expressed deep hatred against racism and sexism.
Boston has a long history of organizing students against war and fascism. In 1969, Harvard PL’ers in Students for a Democratic Society led an occupation of the campus against Harvard University which is a critical nerve center for U.S. imperialism and was a key supporter of the Vietnam War. In the late 1970s, Boston PL students and workers built a worker-student alliance against racist terror. In the 1980s, PLP members on campuses throughout the area led demonstrations against U.S. imperialism in Central America. In the 1990s, PLP led demonstrations and actions against military research at Boston University. Today, PLP is rebuilding an antiracist, worker-student alliance in Boston to sharpen the fight against capitalism, war and fascism in the colleges. Last semester, students and workers at RCC fought off the implementation of armed cops on campus.
‘Microcosm of Communist Society’
Boston PL’ers held a dinner discussion about Ferguson, Missouri, where rebellion erupted in August in response to the racist murder of black teen Michael Brown by cop Darren Wilson. One NYC student reported on her experience meeting with the youth group, Lost Voices, that formed out of the rebellion. Youth and workers in Ferguson refused to be co-opted by black politicians like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and other celebrities brought in as a pacification tactic. Instead, the working class in Ferguson is open to PLP’s communist solution. She described how Ferguson confirmed her confidence in the working class’s ability to fight for communism, and that black workers are indeed a key revolutionary force. They were building the kind of caring collective that is a microcosm of a communist society. Those of us in the room felt confident in our Party’s ability to organize in places like Ferguson, where unemployed and oppressed youth are wide open to our ideas.
PLP in Boston has many opportunities to take advantage of students’ growing desire to fight back. The older comrades here were heartened by the visit, confident that the Party is in good hands. The local students were exposed to a positive view of communists and committed revolutionary youth for the first time in their lives. Some can now envision for themselves a life of revolutionary organizing and service to the working class.