Students & PSC community continue to fight racism

BROOKLYN, February 20—Students at Park Slope Collegiate, an integrated school with a principled stance against racist inequalities, staged two sit-ins against the racist Department of Education, the capitalist news media, and a few DoE stooges among PSC staff members. These militant actions capped nearly a year of multiracial struggle by students, parents, and teachers against anti-communist attacks over the past year.
Students reject racism of bosses
Last August, after a five-month witch-hunt, the DoE’s Office of Special Investigations retreated and suspended its inquiry without imposing any penalties. Along the way, the OSI did its worst to intimidate the school community, sow internal distrust, and undermine PSC’s anti-racist mission. It brought charges of “communist organizing” against two administrators and three staff members, and abused eight PSC students (one as young as 13) by interrogating them without their parents’ knowledge. Even after the investigation closed, the DoE and its racist, anti-student accomplices at the United Federation of Teachers continued for months to harass the school’s anti-racist leaders.
The sit-ins were a direct response to this harassment. These students, with strong support from a multiracial group of parents, are refusing to accept their racist criminalization by the DoE, the UFT, and the media—and giving notice that they are ready and willing to fight back.
A force to be reckoned with
No less important, the PSC community has actively rejected the pseudo-science of race. Confounding the racists, a mass, multiracial group of youth and their families are choosing to fight racism in solidarity with communists. Many white parents now realize that fighting racism is in the interest of the whole working class.
Reform struggles, win or lose, can be schools for revolution. When communists in Progressive Labor Party both give and accept leadership in these fights, we gain confidence in our class’s ability to defeat the bosses and smash capitalism, the source of racism, sexism, and inequality. These small struggles can lead to profound changes in the individuals who join them. By revealing the contradictions of the profit system, exposing our class enemies, and building multiracial unity in the face of the rulers’ attempts to divide us, these struggles can be instrumental in building a revolutionary communist movement.
In this instance, at least for now, a reform struggle has been won. Here are some recent developments at PSC that remind us that the bosses are not invincible, and that a united working class is a force to be reckoned with:

• At two January meetings, more than 50 students, parents, and staff confronted DoE lackeys for Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is bought and paid for by gentrifying real estate interests, and his segregationist chancellor, Carmen Farina. After more than four years in office, their administration has done nothing beyond lip service to integrate one of the most segregated big-city school systems in the country. After a New York Daily News article demonized a group of mainly Black students, giving credence to the lie that a private group chat posed a physical threat to a racist PSC teacher, angry parents forced District Superintendent Michael Prayor to come to the school to meet with them. Prayor, a Farina henchman who collaborated in the abusive student interrogation last spring, tried to mollify the group with empty reassurances that the DoE was on the school’s side. But the group wasn’t fooled, and repeatedly called Prayer out for his complicity in a racist system. People demanded an explanation for why the DoE protects racists and attacks anti-racists, and a commitment to end the DoE’s harassment. A number of white parents were particularly outspoken in defense of the Black students defamed by the Daily News—an unusual and powerful demonstration of multiracial unity.
• Fed up with disruptive investigations by the UFT after spurious complaints by a racist teacher who’d served for years as the union’s chapter chair, the school’s faculty booted the teacher out of office in a recall vote. The tally was 43 to 10 against the racist—and in favor of the school’s anti-racist mission.  
• After working with an external mediator, a representative group of multiracial PSC staff members formed a committee to rebuild ties within the staff around the school’s mission.  
• Nearly a hundred parents and staff members joined together in a multiracial celebration of the school’s victory over the DoE’s disruptive campaign. This event had been delayed because of people’s desire to wait for a more clear-cut resolution and an official end to the DoE’s attacks. Then they went ahead anyway. They have learned that reform victories may be fleeting, but the class struggle never ends—and that’s something to celebrate.

Choosing anti-racism over anti-communism
Many times it seems like this racist monster of a system is too big and difficult to take on by ourselves, but we aren’t meant to do it alone. Communist confidence in the working class is infectious; at PSC, it is carrying the day. It’s also being reciprocated. Several community members have joined weekend CHALLENGE study groups.
Through this and other struggles at PSC over many years, dozens of parents—white, Latin, Asian, and Black—have been won over to defend Black and Latin youth.  Many now see that our young people deserve true equity—not only for education resources, but also in being heard as equal partners in the fight for integration. After centuries of building segregation, an essential feature of racism and capitalist exploitation and inequality, nothing scares the U.S. ruling class more than multiracial unity. The DoE’s persistent attack on the PSC community stems from the modest progress it is making in dismantling this crucial aspect of capitalist class rule.
The multiracial unity and courage of PSC students, parents, and teachers is rare and inspiring. Students have been emboldened to take on racist staff members. After the sit-ins, some said it was their duty to fight racism and teach younger students that they need to keep the fightback going. Communists in Progressive Labor Party are proud to be part of this crucial class struggle.