BROOKLYN, October 1—“You are Scholars, Not Suspects!” That is the message the mainly Black and Latin students received as they entered their school building for the first day of school from a multiracial group of 40 parents and teachers. We met dozens of students as they lined up to walk through metal detectors on their first day back in a school building after more than six months. Racist metal detectors are the welcome back that thousands of mainly Black and Latin students have been given by the racist NYC Department of Education (DoE), and City bosses who refuse to make any real antiracist changes even as they spew their empty promises of “equity.” As one chant said, “How do you spell RACIST? D-O-E!”
Members of a Brooklyn high school Parent Teacher Association (PTA) organized and rallied on the first day of the school buildings’ reopening, demanding the racist metal detectors be removed citywide (see box). This multiracial group has a long history of antiracist fightback against the many racist attacks hurled at students.
These past fightbacks include:
In the wake of mass antiracist rage
When we can organize antiracist and antisexist actions we can build the confidence within our own class. Our PTA was touched by the explosion of mass anger coming out of the racist murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the start of the summer. Time and again parents responded to our calls to join demonstrations and fight for communist ideas. Our multiracial and intergenerational leadership changed the tenor of several huge marches.
In the run-up to Thursday’s picket line against racist metal detectors parents active with us over the summer, and who had seen liberal racism in action over a period of many years before that, rejected the notion that we ought to rely on misleader elected officials like Councilmember Brad Lander or NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams to help lead our event.
Thursday’s demonstration also came in the wake of a series of club meetings, crowdcasts and zoom calls where Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members moved friends, student families, and coworkers into a discussion where the need for organizing against the racist attacks on students in the lose-lose scenario of remote vs. live instruction was hammered home.
These locally and nationally organized virtual meetings, along with responsibly distanced socializing, gave us a firm foundation to call for sharp action as the first day of live instruction for students approached.
Metal detectors, tool of terror and division
It is not always clear to students, parents, or school staff why metal detectors in schools are a racist attack. Some believe that they are there to provide safety. This is the lie that is sold to workers by a system that relies on racist divisions and fear mongering to keep the working class divided.
Metal detectors in school means that students are seen and treated as potential criminals. “In 2016, 99 percent of all New York City public school students handcuffed during incidents of emotional distress were Black and Latin. New York City’s Black students had the highest rate of suspension, accounting for 27.1 percent of the population but almost half of all suspensions. Statewide, 1 in 5 Black boys and 1 in 7 Black girls are suspended from school” (Alliance for Quality Education, 6/19).
This year, during the Covid-19 pandemic, scanning will result in even more harm, clogging entrances to schools where the urgent priorities should be maximizing physical distancing and instruction time. Even if it goes against any common sense or costs the city more money amidst a budget crisis, one thing the bosses’ always give priority to is more racism!
Metal detectors in schools also build suspicion among students. They teach students to be fearful of one another. This ideology builds disunity within the working class, weakening our ability to unite as one working class against capitalism, the racist, sexist, exploitative class system. It builds the illusions that we cannot rely on each other for the solutions to the worlds’ problems. It builds the cynicism that therefore our only option is to put our hope in one politician or another’s empty promises to “fix” the very system they represent.
Building our class muscles through struggle
This small, but significant action reflects the kind of organizing that really can make a change. As we near the elections, it is hard to escape the pressure to view voting as the real way to make a change. Elections under capitalism are a lose-lose for workers because they reflect workers’ cynicism that the international working class does not have the potential to run society in our interests and builds the illusion that this system can be reformed in our interests (see editorial, page 2.) The horrible handling of this pandemic from the beginning and the disorganized reopening of schools (some NYC schools are already reclosing following a rise in infection rates) illustrate how the bosses see our working-class children as completely expendable.
Only when the international working class controls all of society in the interests of our class, and not for the profits of a few, will we be able to truly build an antiracist, antisexist world that ALL of our children can thrive in. We still have a long way to go for the masses to turn these ideas into action and to turn action into a fight for a communist world. This rally was a small but hopeful step in that direction.