Students, not suspects! Fight racist policing in schools

Prince George’s County, MD. August 12—There’s a new Black “sheriff” in Prince George’s County—Superintendent of PGC Schools, Millard House, who quickly outed himself as serving ruling-class interests. His first racist policy is putting metal detectors in county high schools and some middle schools and requiring clear backpacks for students. As if having cops in the schools wasn’t enough, he wants to perfect the racist school-to-prison pipeline! We reject our working-class students being treated like suspects and criminals!

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) calls on all readers to join the fight to defeat the entire capitalist system which generates systemic racism like these policies, which are aimed at weakening our unity and terrorizing our class, the working class. Our class needs to take power through communist revolution, where we will determine educational policies that ensure the full development of each of us to better serve our class globally.

Quick to respond
A news article in the local Hyattsville Life and Times (HLT) newspaper alerted that House would appear at an open house at Hyattsville Middle School (HMS), so PLP members moved into action. We made protest signs and copies of the HLT article critical of the new policy. We reached out to the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) at HMS and talked to the parents at the open house, sharing the HLT article widely.
Several parents gave us their names and contact information, angry at this new racist policy. One woman who had been a student in Brooklyn when metal detectors were put in the schools was furious to learn that this is still happening. She knew firsthand how it felt to be a student treated like a criminal! PLP has been fighting this same fight in Brooklyn for years (CHALLENGE, 10/9/2020).

PLP members have helped lead anti-police terror groups in Prince George’s County for 50 years. Racist police brutality and the criminal (in)justice system are major weapons of the ruling class to kill, terrorize and intimidate our working class brothers and sisters. We have been part of the struggle to keep cops out of the schools. Today we continue the struggle for justice for William Green, murdered by police in January 2020, as the trial of this murdering cop comes up this fall.

We are spreading the word of these fights at the upcoming Greenbelt Labor Day festival on September 2 with a booth opposing the metal detector and backpack policies, while sharing copies of CHALLENGE to stress the need to build a long-term solution to racism: communist revolution!