Brooklyn School Victory for Antiracist Fighters against DoE Fascism

BROOKLYN, NY, October 10—After a McCarthy-style investigation that lasted half a year, the New York City Department Of Education’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI) has declared that it cannot substantiate accusations of wrong-doing against teachers, some communists, in Park Slope Collegiate. This is a huge victory for the school and its community.
It is also continuing to investigate several minor claims against the principal and a bogus conflict of interest charge against one of the teachers.
The School that Dared to Fight
In a segregated school system of 1.1 million students, Park Slope Collegiate dared to fight racism with an organized alliance of students, parents, and staff.  It is a mainly Black and Latin school in the John Jay campus. In 2010, the DoE fought to install a segregated high school in the building: Millennium, a mainly white and Asian school. While the DoE claimed to not have money for the existing schools in the building, they had no problem starting Millennium. PSC organized against this racist divide but failed.
No matter, for nearly a decade, the students, parents, teachers, and staff continued “fighting the installation of metal detectors in their school, helped organize school assemblies to talk about police violence, and had spoken out passionately against segregation” (NYT, 5/4). For this, the DoE used a Red Scare to strangle workers’ fightback against racism.
Racist Rats in the School
While clearing the charges, the OSI released a document summarizing witness statements, which reveal that suspicions that the union leader initiated the investigation were correct. Now the staff has to face the facts that several co-workers, including the union chapter leader, tried to destroy the lives not only of their principal, but also of fellow workers.
Even more disgusting is that this was a racist attack on the students of the school, one that targeted student leaders and if successful could have destroyed a bastion of anti-racist multiracial fight back. In the case of the union representative, this lays bare where her true loyalties have always lain.
The course of the investigation has also laid bare the ugly reality that liberal politicians are the main enemy under capitalism. Even though this attack was initiated from three anti-communist staff members inside of the school, the DoE along with the liberal mayor, de Blasio and the school chancellor Farina, were silent during this attack on this integrating school while publically paying lip service to school integration. De Blasio and Farina are doing their part to uphold the state’s ranking by perpetuating racist “choice” policies for secondary schools and defending elementary school zones that deliberately segregate students in the service of home real estate values for the middle class and the affluent.
Parent-Teacher-Student Unity
Many parents that are deeply involved in this anti-racist struggle are the same constituents the politicians depend on to keep them in office. Parents who thought that their ties to these politicians would save the school from the investigation have seen their emails and phone calls mainly ignored. No amount of calls to their representatives fixed the situation, just as similar calls did not integrate the school, provide equity in the building or remove the prison-like metal detectors.
At the same time, the response in the school to the investigation has revealed the true power of the working class united. Teachers, staff, parents and students have stood up and organized like never before while this anti-racist community was attacked. Friends who have waited for communist teachers to lead the way in proposing actions before, have stepped to the foreground, spear-heading the petition to remove the chapter leader from office last year and the founding of a new leadership committee at the school. Large, visible actions outside the school, on the steps of City Hall and outside the courthouse during attempts to legally stop the investigation definitely had an impact on the decision of the uber-facist OSI to drop the investigation.
Truly integrated schools are rare in New York City, and schools that fight back against the racist policies that attempt to keep them segregated are even more rare. The John Jay Campus is a microcosm of the racist inequalities in school systems throughout the U.S.
This investigation is clear evidence that the institutions of capitalism are ready and willing to impose fascism on workers. It is also clear evidence that the most powerful way to stop their attacks is multiracial fightback. The multiracial unity this school community demonstrated led to a victory for now.
We must learn from this attack and move forward better prepared for the next one, because there will always be another.