Apartheid Grows in Brooklyn — Students, Parents & Teachers Fight Back

Brooklyn, NY, October 10 — Over 200 high school students, parents, teachers and community members filled the cafeteria at John Jay Campus in Park Slope tonight for a town hall against racism.  Student after student spoke of the daily attacks they faced, mainly from the New York Police Department and school safety officers.  The event was sparked by the latest “crime” of Hanging-Out-While-Black-or-Latin on a street corner in this gentrified, mostly white neighborhood.
Several weeks ago, a neighborhood resident witnessed the kkkops following and eventually driving out a group of black and Latin students who were socializing on a public sidewalk. She went to a community board meeting and blasted the cops’ commander. The officer responded that the teenagers shouldn’t be there if they weren’t playing basketball or soccer or “doing something productive in the neighborhood.”
Apartheid in Brooklyn
This blatant support of apartheid policies angered John Jay students, parents and teachers, who had recently rallied against the racist murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. They are building a movement against racism in Park Slope and in and around John Jay, and were ready to respond to this latest attack.  The student government and PTA at one of the four schools on the campus immediately took action by organizing the town hall.
Students spoke of their daily run-ins with cops and local businesspeople, who make it clear that the teenagers aren’t wanted in the neighborhood. When John Jay students go to neighborhood parks, cops park nearby to watch their every move. Under orders from the NYPD, school safety agents follow suit, yelling and shoving the kids to leave the neighborhood and go home immediately after school.
At the town hall meeting, as a man in charge of John Jay’s school safety agents approached the mic, the kids started to jeer and boo. He tried to get support by saying that his staff of safety agents was mainly black and Latin, but this appeal to nationalism didn’t work. The students shouted, “So what? They still harass us!”
This bosses’ lackey claimed he had no idea what was happening at John Jay and that our campus might need new agents. He was booed again, because
several students from other New York public schools came with the same complaints about the NYPD and school safety. The town hall made one thing clear: While black and Latin students in New York face the brunt of attacks by the NYPD, school safety agents and the city’s Department of Education, all youth are being attacked across the city. We are all hurt by racism.
How to Smash Racism
The town hall raised big questions. Why are black and Latin youth targeted for this abuse? What can we do to end racism for good? Members of Progressive Labor Party struggled for those involved to understand that racism is inherent to capitalism, and therefore can only be destroyed through communist revolution. We have a long way to go in winning that big struggle. But the small class struggle we are waging brings us one step closer each day.
Several family members of people murdered by the NYPD attended the town hall, and one of them spoke about the oppressive role of police in this society, and how students’ and workers’ rights are non-existent in the current period of war and fascism. A call was made to follow up the meeting with a march to the local police precinct.  Most who attended left with a copy of CHALLENGE.  
The ruling-class need for racism will continue to provide opportunities to unite workers in sharp struggles around these issues. The growing network of families and friends of victims of police murders, combined with the leadership shown by young black and Latin students at this event, is a force to be reckoned with. The fight for a world without racism will advance by building PLP and the fight for a communist world.