WASHINGTON, DC, October 14—Hundreds of Black students converged today on Howard University’s Blackburn Center, a main university building, to support the occupiers inside who are refusing to leave. At this proud Historically Black College/University (HBCU), with a predominantly Black and woman student body, racism and sexism are alive and well. Students are fed up with lousy housing conditions at both new dormitories and old ones. Mold is growing in the dorm rooms and water has been cut off for days at a time. Electricity and Wi-Fi have failed many times, making it impossible to attend classes online or do research and homework—even the library has been shut down! These conditions reveal that racism and sexism are the mainstays of a capitalist system that is destroying the lives of workers and students all over the world, even in spaces that liberal fascists deem “free of racism.” Identity politics will not save the working class, to end racism, the whole damn capitalist system has got to go.
As this article goes to press, hundreds of students are camped out in front of the building in solidarity, vowing to stay until their demands are met. They are bringing support for each other with bedding, food, and mobile hotspots for Wi-Fi. The University’s malign negligence of the students’ situation demonstrates again that, for all its boasts of “progressivity,” Howard University acts only in capitalist interests. Students and workers come last.
The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) hails this student resistance! PLP members are sharing CHALLENGE with students and holding discussions about the need to go beyond this fightback and join the long-term struggle for communist revolution!
Black students rebel, vow long-term occupation
After the occupation began, Dr. Cynthia Evers, the Vice President for Student Affairs, threatened to expel the occupiers from the University while purposely cutting off air conditioning and Wi-Fi in the building. Dozens of students responded by intensifying the struggle, rushing past campus security to join the occupation.
When the university president finally met with the student protest leaders, his response was basically the sound of crickets: “we’re working on it and we’ll meet again”, words students have heard for over a century and a half at this HBCU, chartered in 1867. Howard University administrations have always served the interests of U.S. capitalists, despite their Black character. Howard U is famous for training Black servants of capital like Vice President Kamala Harris, whose achievements include jailing Black workers and sacrificing innocent workers around the world at the altar of U.S. imperialism. PLP has said it once, and we’ll say it again, a Black capitalist is still a capitalist. Only communist revolution will break our chains.
During this fightback , Howard students have resisted the capitalists and racists in the U.S. Today’s student leaders continue that history of rebellion and say they will stay there through Homecoming Weekend!
Howard U’s mask is off
In addition to anger over living and financial conditions, students were also furious at the Board of Trustees’ decision over the summer to dismiss student, alumni, and faculty representatives from the Board. Now the Board is openly in the hands of bankers and capitalists, without even the appearance of university representation. The Board’s chair, Laurence Morse, is a partner at Fairview Capital Partners, a private equity company; Vice-chair Mark Mason is chief financial officer of Citigroup Inc.; and Richard Goodman is a retired senior financial manager of PepsiCo.
The dismissal of student, faculty, and alumni board members was a further arrogant insult to us, but we should keep in mind that these representatives on the Board never had voting power in any decisions. They served as fig leaves covering the capitalist, exploitative nature of the Board. No capitalist institution will serve the needs of workers and students, and the mask of fake “representation” of Howard’s administration and Board of Trustees is finally off.
Revolution, not representation
Fighting for seats at the table, literally and figuratively, will not defeat the capitalist system that led to these housing and learning conditions in the first place. Imperialist rivals like the U.S. and China are building their forces for larger wars over who will be the top dog imperialist while working class youth, especially Black and immigrant workers, will be the first conscripted to fight and die. Howard students are under attack from the same capitalist system that is sharpening its racist attacks on the entire working class, especially Black workers, around the world.
We need to direct our energy long-term to the building of a revolutionary communist movement to topple this racist capitalist system altogether and replace it with a system where our working class sisters and brothers are in charge of our education, and our world! That’s communism. JOIN US!
SMASH ALL BORDERS! Build communist culture!