KINGSBOROUGH COMMUNITY COLLEGE: STUDENTS EXPLODE AGAINST RACIST POLICE TERROR

BROOKLYN, NY, November 10—“Racism means?” “WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK!” More than 30 students and staff chanted as they marched through the campus of Kingsborough Community College (KCC). Students and staff are in motion following racist attacks against a student last week, and this fightback is led by multiracial Black, Latin, Asian and white, women and men students. These antiracist fighters bravely marched despite a week of campus and New York Police Department threats of arrest, campus cops assaulting students, daily harassment, and constant surveillance. The cops even locked down our campus the day of the march!

The week before, students made detailed plans to resist this racist police terror, even organizing a “flash protest” in the main administration building one day to practice for the planned rally. They were long gone before campus police arrived! Meanwhile, our YouTube video “KCC Students vs Racism and the Police” spread like wildfire through the campus and beyond. These working class students are showing their ability to organize. Workers and students like them can and should run the world. That’s communism. That’s the fight of the international revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP)!

This ongoing struggle is exposing KCC’s and the wider CUNY (City University of New York) administration as the lapdogs of the liberal Big Fascist wing of the capitalist class (see Glossary, page 6). The struggle is also exposing the bankruptcy of the capitalist class’ identity politics, liberalism, and fake capitalist democracy.

The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party’s politics of building militant student leadership and smashing racism with multiracial unity are spreading among the student body. Through this sharpening struggle, we’re winning new comrades to our fight to build a mass, international PLP and smash this racist, sexist and imperialist profit system once and for all with communist revolution!

Racism means?
WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK!
On November 3, a racist student in Kingsborough’s cafeteria was having an argument with a multiracial group of students who are part of a large antiracist student club. The racist became confrontational using the n-word, and KCC’s campus cops arrived. Instead of detaining the racist, they tackled a student trying to defuse the situation, put their knees in his back, and detained him in handcuffs. Their chief later lied saying Adrian “shoved an officer.”

Since the antiracist club had just met, over twenty students were still together. They immediately marched on the cops’ “Public Safety” office, where Adrian was held. We chanted and demanded Adrian’s release and the name of the officer who tackled Adrian. In response, the NYPD was called “to calm the situation” — with tactical gear, tasers, guns, and batons! The NYPD arrested Adrian and secretly took him to the 61 police precinct. We followed him there.

We were told Adrian would be released “in 30 minutes” — another lie. Finally, after four hours of detention, Adrian was freed with a bogus charge of “disorderly conduct” and a threat to charge him with weapons possession.

Students dare to struggle and organize!
The next day, the Dean of Student Affairs emailed all students saying “an incident” happened, warned students to “not threaten anyone,” and advised everyone to “move on.” Students, staff and PL’ers met that weekend and used our Party study group to write a collective leaflet explaining the situation. Our demands are: drop the charges; terminate and charge the officers and the racist; and abolish law enforcement from CUNY campuses.

Students and staff began distributing thousands of leaflets. “Public Safety” declared all leafleting illegal and began assaulting students, including a member of the student government. Campus police approached students reading leaflets and ripped them up, while following and harassing prominent student organizers. So much for U.S. capitalism’s “free speech!”

Scratch liberalism, find fascism
Adrian was tackled by a Black campus police officer, held and charged under the orders of a Black campus police chief. All under the misleadership of Kingsborough’s Black woman president, Claudia V. Schrader, and CUNY’s Latin chancellor, Felix Matos Rodriguez, in a city ruled by a Democratic city council and a Black Democratic mayor, Eric Adams.

The Big Fascists rely on servants like Schrader, Rodriguez and Adams to give capitalist, racist and sexist oppression an inclusive appearance and mask the role of institutions like universities in supporting and reinforcing capitalist dictatorship. Capitalism depends on the political-economic division of the working class to enable exploitation and racist super-exploitation for profits. Universities have a dual role: producing workers suited for various types of manual and knowledge labor, while promoting the ideologies of anticommunism, racism, sexism and countless professional schisms.

In recent years, Big Fascists have been pushing the liberal flavors of racism and sexism by promoting identity politics and “white privilege” politics as fake alternatives to the Small Fascist gutter racists and sexists (see Glossary, page 6) like Trump, DeSantis and company. Scratch beneath the surface however, and they’re ALL fascists: smash them all with communist revolution.

The only solution is communist revolution
While PL’ers continue to struggle over these ideas through Party study groups and there is much political struggle ahead, comrades have confronted these political disagreements head-on. In the meantime, our Party’s confidence in these working class students is reflected with growing confidence in our organization. Following our successful march, a group of students took their commitment to smashing racism, sexism and imperialism to the highest level and joined our Party. This struggle and these students show the working class can run the world, and now we welcome their leadership to take us all the way!

The imperialists ruling the U.S., Russia and China are firing what could be the opening shots of World War III, and preparing our working class youth to be missile food. But PLP is growing and developing the next generation of leadership. Our international working class needs to build the Red Army that will destroy this entire capitalist hellscape once and for all! JOIN US!