Students expose racist nature of budget cuts

THE BRONX, December 3—Fifty students protested against racist budget cuts at Bronx Community College (BCC). These students, along with education workers, gave notice that we won’t simply accept larger class size, reduced course offerings and fewer custodians, to name just a few of the cuts, that the BCC administration is planning.
Student after student gave testimonies of how the budget cuts directly affect them— delaying graduation, reducing their access to their professors, forcing them to use dirty bathrooms, and more.
A member of Progressive Labor Party brought a message of solidarity and communist analysis. The fight at BCC is part of the global fight against capitalism. Only by fighting for a communist system with workers in power can we ensure that all students get the education we deserve.
Working class under attack
The student population at BCC is 98 percent Black and Latin, largely immigrant, and suffering from rampant food insecurity and racist unemployment. The BCC administration is putting the students under even greater pressure. The racist plans include:

• Developing a “more resilient staffing model” in order to respond to future shifts in enrollment numbers. This means hiring more part-time faculty and staff that can be laid off whenever the administration needs to.

• Increasing class size.
• Reduction of approximately 225 sections. Fewer classes means it will be harder for students to enroll in classes that they need to graduate.
• Decrease in departmental budgets.
• Increase fees that students and faculty pay for services like technology and parking

When the working class is under attack, what do we do?  We must stand up and fight back. In doing so, we expose the limits of what’s possible under capitalism. By the looks of it, capitalism can’t provide the most basic necessities for working-class students.
Taxing the rich is no solution
As PLP members have been involved in this and future demonstrations, we have raised the idea that it’s not enough to just tax billionaires. It’s not enough to increase funding for BCC. Even in the best of times, education under capitalism is about reinforcing racism and individualism.
College under capitalism is about deceiving us into thinking we can escape the working class, that we can “get ahead” (by exploiting other workers) and that we can avoid the misery of this racist, sexist system.
The international working class will never be liberated through capitalist education. The bosses don’t want to educate us all, and even if they did, it wouldn’t end exploitation and racism.
More fightback and Party-building ahead
We have another demonstration planned next week, where we will confront the administration directly over these budget cuts. The boldness of the united students and education workers will be on display, as we take small steps and train ourselves to challenge the rulers on campus. Bringing CHALLENGE to these protests is crucial to building the fightback spirit and class-consciousness of the students and workers.
As we organize more students to get involved and as the ideas of communism and PLP become ideas grasped by masses of students and faculty, these small steps will be transformed into leaps toward a communist future. Onward!