NEW YORK CITY, January 2—When a public school teacher was removed for taking a stance against genocide, students led the way in organizing against this fascist attack. Incidents like this illustrate the capitalist crisis: amid growing volatility and war tensions, the bosses are losing ideological control of the classrooms. An attack on teachers is an attack on student learning conditions, signaling to young people that they are disposable if they do not parrot racist ruling-class ideas. This is an opportunity to expose the bosses’ system and build a movement for an antiracist world.
The attack and response
After weeks of unspeakable carnage visited on the working class of the Gaza strip by the forces of the racist, Zionist Israeli state, a strong letter signed by dozens of student clubs representing hundreds of angry youth was delivered to the principal of one of New York City’s largest high schools. This letter blasted the administration for homicidally deleting Palestinian life from its public registration of grief and memorialization, a cornerstone of the ideological architecture that has been facilitating Palestinian genocide for the better part of a century.
To repress dissent, the Department of Education (DoE) bosses ejected an antiracist teacher from their NYC public high school building and placed them under investigation all because this educator vocally supported this courageous mass student movement against genocide. They were escorted out without charge, supposedly to protect youth, but political dissidents are more quickly than teachers accused of physical violence or racism.
The response from students, alumni and co-workers was immediate in defense of the dedicated antiracist educator. An email campaign began a flood of statements of support that continues to grow in strength.
This educator joins an expanding number of workers and youth on the job and on campuses across the world who have faced repression for taking a stand against U.S.-backed genocide in the Gaza strip. In NYC, a pre-K teacher was targeted for using children’s books to explain Palestinian history in her class. Another teacher has faced calls for his removal for pro-Palestine social media posts. Bay Area teachers have also faced reprisals for holding teach-ins against genocide. Meanwhile in Maryland, four teachers have been placed on indefinite administrative leave for so much as emailing their support of the working class of Palestine.
Education, a battleground
The bosses need schools to produce workers that will produce and have the necessary nationalism for future wars. Fascist responses are a sign of the bosses’ weakness, not strength. In this context, all teachers have a role to play in equipping students to develop a clear understanding of the world. We must teach and model the practice of interrogating what we hear. That the ruling class has succeeded in building a school culture where some educators agree that it is “inappropriate” to struggle alongside students for politically and ethically principled positions that critically interrogate the role their institutions play in extermination is a clear indicator of growing fascism.
Nazi leaders worked to influence young people in youth groups, in their families, and on the streets. Schools also had a key role to play. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, they quickly passed new laws to make public education reflect and teach their nationalist and racial ideologies. Jewish teachers were fired from their posts, and other teachers were encouraged to join the National Socialist Teachers League; by 1936, over 97 percent of teachers were members. Nazi leaders also created new curricula and textbooks to be used throughout the country. (“Schooling for the National Community” Facing History, 8/2016)
Taking a page from the Nazi playbook, DOE Chancellor David Banks has repeatedly issued a policy that supposedly prohibits all political speech in schools. This is despite Banks hypocritically sending mass emails to all DOE staff full-throated defending the actions of Israel. The DOE’s bloodthirsty rallying around the flag has greenlit the targeted murder of a hundred United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) teachers, mass displacement of students, and the bombing of every single university in the Gaza Strip. Indeed, since October 7th the indiscriminate slaughter of the workers and youth of the Gaza strip (see box) has not elicited one peep of condemnation from NYC education bosses.
The ideological veil wrapping its gag order around the throats of student outcry is as predictable as it is shameless. While the NYPD counter-terrorism squad has been sicced on Hillcrest High School students who mobilized in late November against their teacher’s public participation in a series of pro-Israel rallies calling for–among other things–“No Cease Fire!”, that teacher has not been investigated despite openly causing a disruption at school. In fact, the principal of that school, on December 22, received a promotion to work in the central offices of the NYC public schools. Meanwhile antiracist educators are swiftly disciplined.
It is no accident that the bosses have recently unveiled that they will soon roll out a uniform, top-down curriculum throughout all of the NY school system to further repress dissent and to create a further hedge against working class antiracist and anti-imperialist action.
What’s to be done?
Bosses who proclaim the need for ‘trauma-informed’ and ‘culturally sustaining’ education have traumatized students organizing against genocide. The removal of teachers aims for a fascist chilling effect, but the righteous anger of youth and workers will defeat these attempts to silence anti-war voices.
Student anger is not going to simply melt away. Every day without a committed antiracist teacher is a slap in the face to their aspirations to live in a world free from the scourges of racism and genocide. A follow up-email blasting the principal for ignoring the student letter against genocide and racism was sent recently indicating strong resolution to pick up the struggle against imperialist war in the new year.
Stitching together disparate instances of repression into a strong, internationalist, antiracist movement will be at the forefront of anti-fascist organizing in 2024. Some jobs and positions will be won, others will be lost. Ruling classes of incomparable bloodthirst hold sway. Lives lost to the bombs of US imperialism are forever gone. If you are angered by this, you are an internationalist. The ruling class illusions of “free speech” are eroding as capitalists continue to repress workers who step out of line. Workers sense that a better world is possible, rooted in science and justice. They are organizing against this outright mutilation of reality to create a world in which youth are not repressed but are leaders of the revolution.
If you want to fight…
If you want to take action against genocide and fascist repression of those who take a stand against it you have a choice—to join the Progressive Labor Party. Our class will feel its strength as masses move beyond the borders of nationalism to defend targeted friends and comrades. In the crucible of class struggle the growth of a revolutionary communist party from hundreds to thousands and eventually to millions means that communism itself is transformed from an idea into a material force with the power to defeat all bosses, erase all borders, and inaugurate a classless society that is the only true basis for peace and justice for the working people of the world.