KCC students and workers fight racist Goldstein

BROOKLYN, June 7—Students, staff and faculty have been gaining plenty of experience in class struggle at Kingsborough Community College (KCC) this semester. With the leadership of a new student in the Progressive Labor Party and friends, our multiracial sanctuary committee has shifted gears from defending our working-class friends against racist attacks like those on our fellow cafeteria workers, to going on the offensive against an openly racist administrator.
‘No to racism, no to Goldstein’
Not long after May Day, it came to the attention of the students and faculty that KCC’s “Director of Communications and Public Relations,” Michael Goldstein, the public face of the college, was posting openly racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim statements on social media.
When some antiracist faculty obtained several screenshots, they turned them over to the larger group of students and faculty. Goldstein’s racism gave way to anger and determination to fight back. This was especially true for women and Muslim students, many from Yemen, which is suffering from intense U.S.-Saudi imperialist attacks. We decided that a leaflet must be written calling for Goldstein’s termination.
In less than a week, a leaflet was collectively discussed and produced involving two dozen students. Immigrant women and PL’ers have taken a lead role in distributing the leaflets and, as CHALLENGE goes to press, over 1,000 have been distributed around campus, just in time for final exams. About 20 percent of KCC’s roughly 10,000 students are Muslim, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
There has been no official response from the administration, but the antiracists and PL’ers at KCC have continued meeting, sharing CHALLENGE, and discussing plans to escalate the struggle further. KCC is the only community college in Brooklyn. Since the summer semesters are as busy as the rest of the academic year, the racists are put on notice: get ready for a long, hot summer!
A single spark
The struggle against racist Goldstein directly follows the demonstration and march (CHALLENGE, 4/18) on the KCC President’s office in defense of the cafeteria workers’ jobs. Many students approached groups like the pro-immigrant KCC Sanctuary Committee to find out how to become more involved.
Thanks to regular distributions of CHALLENGE outside of the campus gates and PLP support of local struggles, this May Day also saw recruitment and new friendships among the students to PLP. Through study groups on topics like reform and revolution, PL’s student work began sharpening at the time that some students became interested in fighting back.
PLP fights for a communist ‘paradise’ on earth
The fightbacks of this past semester have presented serious struggles in gaining confidence in the working class. Many students and cafeteria workers, like masses of workers around the world, are depressed, cynical, and hopeless. Many are won over to different forms of individualism and escapism.
Some believe in Islam’s promise of a paradise after death. There are open communist atheists (and a pro-communist Christian) side-by-side with them in struggle who also break fasts and break bread together during this month of Ramadan. Together, they provide a glimpse that a communist “paradise on earth” is worth fighting for. Unlike a religious paradise, there will be many problems and struggles under communism, all to be solved in the interest of and by the world’s working class.
It’s revealing, this idea of communism—this simple idea that workers should run the world, without any racist borders. It’s an idea and optimism that capitalism can never kill. Recently, a PL’er was discussing politics with a new Muslim friend, unsure of how she would respond to CHALLENGE. When the PL’er opened the conversation talking about how Muslims and communists have a long history of fighting side by side, she responded “Yeah! Like in the Soviet Union.”
As the discussion continued, the young Muslim woman showed a clear understanding of how racism and imperialism functioned around the world. The PL’er asked how she knew all this. “Oh, these people have been giving out CHALLENGE newspaper in front of campus for awhile, I try to read each one and sometimes it has articles about history and politics. It’s an interesting paper.”
The “Dark Night” of imperialist war and devastation will have its end, in part, because this young woman, an antiracist fighter, is one of several more who are open to struggle, and are becoming nails in capitalism’s coffin. The struggle continues.