HS Students rebel, leaders against racism

CHICAGO, February 18—Class struggle is in session at one racist high school. Black and Latin working-class youth are teaching a lesson in fightback.
Students refused to stand during the national anthem, causing some teachers to react with gutter racism. In protest, students organized a sit-in, got a racist teacher removed, and exposed the liberal misleaders. In short, they provided the kind of working-class leadership needed to change the world.
The international communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) extends a giant salute to these bold multiracial students for the antiracist example they are setting. It is working-class youth all over the world that are providing leadership and energy to the struggles against racism, sexism, environmental destruction, mass shootings, and deportations. Their revolutionary potential can hardly be understated.
Communist need to support, learn from, and offer leadership to these working-class youth. Connecting the struggles they are leading to an international movement and mass Party fighting to destroy racism and capitalism brings us all the closer to communist revolution and our collective liberation.
Stand for a racist anthem? Hell no!
On January 30 at Senn High School, students refused to stand for the national anthem during the  school’s Hispanic Heritage Assembly. At least three multiracial students, including the daughter of two PLP comrades, remained seated in order to protest the flag of the imperialist U.S. bosses and its racist symbolism. Specifically, they were protesting racist police terror, ICE raids and deportations, and the 500 years of racist oppression of Black workers.
This protest caused a physical education teacher, Robert Spurlin, to spew racist ideas at the students. He told a Black student that if she gets free lunch, then she “should be standing.”
He told a Latin student that she “should go back to her country.” This enraged the surrounding students. Other teachers, apologists for racism, intervened and threw the students out of the assembly.
Students organize a sit-in
The students exposed the racist nature of schools under capitalism, where racism against Black and Latin students is the norm, not the exception. For two weeks, the principal stalled and sat on the numerous complaints she received from students and parents.
The students were fed up and took matters into their own hands. They organized a mass multiracial sit-in on February 12, which received local and national coverage. Over 150 students chanted, “this is our school.”
The principal and the district were forced to remove the racist gym teacher from the building on paid leave as they “carry on their investigation.” The principal also reached a written agreement to several demands put forward by the students:

• More town halls to hear student voices
• Better information on how to report offending teachers and staff
• More signs and posters communicating “our” values
• Cultural training for all staff

To make the fight a mass issue, students also plan to circulate a petition online to other schools and workplaces. Fighting for these demands can build a culture of fightback for future attacks at the school, as well as expose the limits of antiracism under capitalism.
Liberal bosses try to smother fightback
The liberal capitalist misleaders will only ultimately steer their struggle into deadends, if not smother it entirely. The liberal principal is already trying to stifle and control the antiracist anger of these working-class rebels.
A clear example of liberal racism at the school is the demographics of the elite International Baccalaureate (IB) program teaching staff, which is mainly white. The majority of the student rebels come from the other programs at the school.
The rebels are told that they are not as smart as the IB students and consequently they are treated worse. Every day all students go through metal detectors and some have their possessions searched. In reality, the rebels demonstrate a greater understanding of capitalism. Their leadership at the school can attest to that. Meanwhile, the IB students are more likely to be brainwashed and bought into the racist divisions of the system.
Worthless words from union misleaders
Be it metal detectors, racist teachers, or union leaders and politicians who enforce deplorable learning conditions, Black and Latin students get attacked by racism on the daily.
In response to the attack on the antiracist students, the supposedly militant leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) could only meekly offer through their spokesperson that the union expects “tolerance and inclusivity” from its members and all CPS staff (Block Club Chicago, 2/13).
Mayor Lightfoot stomps on past fightback
New racist liberal mayor Lori Lightfoot is carrying on the ruthless tradition of her Democratic predecessors as she attacks the working class of the City. Whatever her self-proclaimed “progressive” credentials, she fought tooth and nail during last year’s education worker strike against increasing funding and staffing in the mostly Black and Latin public school system. Meanwhile, she was more than happy to hand out over a billion dollars in workers taxes to finance private real estate developments in the City.
By attacking the strikers, Lightfoot attacked the ones who will get hurt the most—students.
We can never count on liberal politicians and union leaders to give the kind of anti-capitalist leadership and communist education that the international working-class needs and deserves.
All the more important to win working-class youth such as these Senn students to fight to abolish racism, something impossible under capitalism.
Carrying on the fight
These students are correctly protesting the racist nature of capitalist society and the Party must win them to continue their struggle. These liberal rulers run a devastatingly racist society and system. The students at Senn are carrying on and helping build a spirited movement led by working-class students from major U.S. cities such as Brooklyn and Los Angeles, to the schools of Paris and New Delhi and all over the world that are fighting back.
One more red salute to the Senn students! Stay tuned to this struggle!