NEW YORK CITY, August 25—For the past 18  months students, faculty, and staff at the City University of New York (CUNY) have been fighting racist conditions on our campuses– conditions worsened by the Covid-19 crisis. Our administrators have used the pandemic as an excuse to implement even more racist austerity: firing almost 3,000 adjuncts, or part-time professors; leaving campus offices severely understaffed; and increasing class sizes. In their latest attack, the CUNY bosses are demanding that workers and students return to unsafe campuses even as the Covid-19 Delta variant rages across the world.
As we return to our campuses, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) calls all CUNY students and workers to get involved in the fight against the racist conditions on campus. Consider that the fight at CUNY must be part of a bigger battle—a revolutionary battle to rid the world of the racist capitalist system that treats the lives of workers as disposable, from the Bronx to Palestine to Haiti. We need a communist revolution.
Fight bosses, reject union hacks
During the pandemic we have encountered students and workers who are very open to the idea that only communist revolution can create a world where educating the working class is a priority. We are involved in several campus organizations that have been agitating against the campus administration and the go-slow, sell-out union misleadership. We have been influential in winning several small victories (see CUNY, page 4). At the same time, we have robust Party-led study groups where we discuss how these small reform gains will never lead to liberation for our class and that any gain we might make will be met with a racist-cutback elsewhere. For example, CUNY recently announced that they would use a portion of the more than $800 million in federal bailout funds they received to cancel a small portion of student debt. But at the same time, not only did they increase tuition and added a new $120 “Health and Wellness” fee, but they have also done nothing to reduce class size, one of the most critical factors in student success.
Fall curriculum: smash racism, CUNY bosses
This fall semester, members and friends of PLP will continue to work towards turning CUNY into a cauldron of revolutionary politics and action. We will have a teach-in on Haiti, exposing the racist abuse the workers there have suffered for centuries and the heroic efforts of workers and students there to fight back. We will have a forum on the Israeli apartheid regime and the need to reject all forms of nationalism. And we will continue to call out the racist CUNY administration for their racist attacks on our campuses.
If you’re a CUNY student or worker or you would like to be involved in advancing the struggle against CUNY’s racist administration and would like to learn about the need for communist revolution at the same time, we welcome you! Contact us at desafio.challenge@gmail.com for more information.