Students, Parents, Teachers Unite: Slam Racist School Bosses

Updated on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 10:11PM by Challenge_Desafío

Join us at the public hearing. Show the racist Department of Education that we won’t take this lying down!
Date: January 11th, 2011
Time: 6pm
Location: John Jay Campus, 237 7th Ave,    
                Brooklyn, NY 11217

BROOKLYN, NY, December 16 — “Segregation means we have to fight back! Scanning means we have to fight back!” were just two of the many chants that rang out on cold, windy Seventh Avenue as over 100 students and staff rallied in front of the John Jay HS campus. This biggest and most energetic rally yet caused many passers-by to stop and congratulate the students for standing up to the racist Department of Education (DoE).
As CHALLENGE has reported in recent issues, the DoE is advancing its proposal to install a new, well-equipped selective school within our building, catering to the mostly-white, middle-class Park Slope neighborhood. All this while the DoE continues to slash the budgets of the “non-selective” overwhelmingly black and Latino schools that already exist.
This anti-racist struggle is uniting students, parents and staff from the schools within the building, directly countering the DoE’s divide-and-conquer policies implemented throughout the city. We’re counteracting its creation of segregated and unequal schools as well as its lies that “lazy teachers” and “neglectful parents” are the main causes of school failures.
The truth is that the racist, capitalist system has no need to provide a decent education for all. Current schooling is geared to supply future soldiers ready to kill or die for Big Oil’s imperialist wars and the next generation of low-wage workers and unemployed youth. These are just some of the lessons learned from our struggle to stop the opening of this new school.

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U.S. Rulers’ Profit Aims for 2011: Worldwide Wars Against Working Class

The New Year opens with the U.S. ruling class contemplating expanded wars for profit on many fronts, especially the Afghanistan-Pakistan and Iraq campaigns — all inherently crimes against the international working class. By drones and other means, U.S. rulers are committing racist atrocities in order to secure Central Asian oil and gas supplies and energy transit routes, as well as positioning themselves strategically against future clashes with China and Russia.
Obama Steps Up Nazi-Style Drone Terror in Pakistan, Targets Civilians
U.S. imperialists “celebrated” New Year’s Day by slaughtering 18 “suspected militants” with CIA-guided drone missiles in Pakistan. Assassin-in-chief Obama okayed the hits from his Hawaiian vacation resort. The killings follow a “record number of 124 attacks in the tribal areas of Pakistan in 2010, more than double the number of Predator strikes conducted in 2009, killing 1,184 people, compared with 2009’s death toll of 760 in 53 such attacks.” (The News, Pakistan, 1/1/2011)
Terrorism from the air, recalling the World War II Nazi’s V-2 rocket blitz on London, has joined massacre and torture as part of U.S. rulers’ standard operating procedure. Many of the dead are civilians. According to Britain’s Channel 4 News (12/22/10), “Women and children...have also perished while the sheer number of drone flights has caused panic and terror among ordinary tribespeople. It is clear that a changing strategy has often put villages rather than remote hideouts in the firing line.”

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Racist Panelists Duck Anti-Racists’ Challenge

BOSTON, MA, December 15 —  Two students at Roxbury Community College (RCC) took immediate action by organizing a protest against the brutal attack on a black youth by Boston police on Oct 22 (see, CHALLENGE 12/15/10). Some members of the RCC faculty took a different approach to the racist attack. They responded to the militancy of the students by organizing a symposium on urban violence.
A local judge, police lieutenant, and a youth advocate from “Street Safe” (all black) were guest speakers on the panel that tried to convince predominantly black and Latino students to trust in the racist justice system. The symposium shifted into a therapy session instead of a political discussion on the systemic racism of urban violence. The panelists purposely ignored political questions raised by students. One student asked “When will the boy who was brutalized by the police get justice.” The question went unanswered.
The lack of consciousness from the crowd gave the panelists some advantage over the symposium. They focused on pushing people to rely on the police as a solution. “You guys know who the killers and drug dealers are, so pick up the phone and call the police.” However, some people did not fall for this statement because they distrust the police who routinely harass and attack workers in the community. 

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United Arab-Jewish Anti-Apartheid Rally Stuns Israeli Cops

ISSAWIYE,  ISRAEL, December 3 — About 500 demonstrators, including many local residents and youth as well as hundreds of Israeli workers and activists, marched in multi-national solidarity against the crimes of the Israeli apartheid regime against the Issawiye neighborhood. Stunned cops were too scared to enter the neighborhood while the rally lasted! The cowardly riot cops and “border guards” (paramilitary cops) dared to show their ugly faces in Issawiye and brutally assault the locals with clubs and tear gas only after most of the Jewish demonstrators had left the area.
The Israeli regime does anything in its power to grab lands and encircle — and, indeed, strangle — the local Arab-Palestinian residents. Soon after the Israeli conquest of Issawiye in 1967, the Haddasah Hospital and the Hebrew University expanded their buildings at the expense of the neighborhood, blocking most of its entrances with gates, fences and structures.
Many lands to the east of the neighborhood, which were once owned by local residents, were seized and given to settlements, such as Maale Edomim, as well as to a large police base observing the neighborhood.
This goes to show that workers have no stake in the bosses’ laws regarding private property or security. Such laws exist to serve the most powerful capitalists and they are happy to rewrite or break them whenever they like. This is life in the Issawiye ghetto: ever-tightening encirclement, less and less space and ever-increasing police brutality.

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NYC Rally Backs Rebellion in Haiti against U.S./UN Oppressors

NEW YORK CITY, December 17 — “Haitian rebels are under attack: what do we do?  Stand up, fight back!” “Clinton, Préval, you can’t hide: we charge you with genocide!” Chants from fifty angry demonstrators bounced off the walls of the Haitian consulate building in Manhattan, as crowds of workers passed by on their way home in the frigid night. Speakers and flyers explained why workers in Haiti were right to rebel in the streets in the face of UN armored troop carriers, as living conditions there grow absolutely intolerable.
Haiti has 1.3 million homeless, 70% unemployment, more than a million school-age children excluded from schooling, a raging cholera epidemic in which 650,000 people (6% of the population) are expected to fall ill in 2011. The promised earthquake aid money has failed to reach the people and reconstruction plans rebuild for profit, not for people. Compared to all this, a rigged election is the least of their worries.
We praised the rebels in Haiti for showing the way ahead for workers everywhere, as similar rebellions break out in Europe. As a black building worker we spoke to recently about racism against Latino immigrants told us: “The whole world is waiting for a revolutionary change!” The rally was coordinated with activist union and student friends in Haiti. They included a photo and a statement from our rally in their press conference at a demonstration against the military occupation by MINUSTAH (UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti) and for free public schools for all.

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Organize the Jobless to Fight Racist Unemployment

NEW YORK CITY, December 6 — “I think it’s not fair to U.S. workers how they send jobs out of the country,” said Lisa as a group of workers were talking about unemployment. “But that’s what they always do,” responded Jenny. “It’s the way the system works. That’s how the capitalists make profits all over the world.”
“Some people are lazy, they expect free help,” said Jaime. “But there’s no assistance. It’s welfare to work,” explained Nelson. “Everyone is looking for work and there are no jobs.” “I work 12 hours a day, six days a week in a restaurant. When I demanded overtime the boss said OK, work 40 hours here and look for a second job,” said Juan. “Or stay here, work your 60 hours and get the money you need for your family.”
“There are no legal protections, only class struggle,” responded Jenny.
The capitalists and their politician servants are debating the economic crisis in terms of government spending, tax cuts, rising healthcare costs and “costly entitlements” like Social Security and Medicare. Their debate results in a massive attack on the working class while covering up the cause of the economic crisis.
The working class needs to listen to Jenny. The crisis comes from the anarchy and competition of the capitalist system. Only revolution to establish communism — a system that produces based on need, not profit — offers the world’s working class a future.

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Mexico: Red School Cuts Through Bosses’ Crap

MEXICO CITY, December 18 — This past weekend, about 25 members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party organized a communist school. Over the two days workers, teachers and young people studied the PLP document “Reform and Revolution” (see PLP website). A comrade teacher summarized the essence of the subject: “The importance of recognizing the limits between reform and revolution is needed to keep the ideas of the Party and of communism firm. The lack of clarity in this subject can lead to abandoning the fight for revolution, whether it’s because in our practice reform dominates or because we isolate ourselves from the workers and their struggles.”
Most of the people were impressed by a young female comrade´s welcome with a poster where she explained how capitalism chains our minds through consumerism, nationalism and electoral politics. She also showed us the importance of our task to break those chains.   
The international character of the Party was present with the participation of two comrades from another Latin American country. With their experiences and understanding they stressed the importance of dedication to the Party and to communism.
A comrade discussed the struggle the Party began in the community to the east of the Valley of Mexico to prevent its flooding (see 12/01/10). He explained the role that CHALLENGE has played in showing neighbors that the only solution is communism and that capitalism will never be capable of solving the problems it creates. Capitalists make decisions based on what will create the most profit for them. Under communism decisions would be made based on what the working class needs.

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Students, Profs Battle CUNY Bosses’ Tuition Hike

Storm College Senate Meeting

NEW YORK CITY, December 2 — Nearly 100 students and faculty members at the City University of NY (CUNY) held an indoor rally to protest next term’s threatened tuition increases and then invaded a College Senate meeting to denounce the hikes.

A student leader gave an impassioned, detailed speech explaining the racist nature of the hikes. Thirty-five years ago CUNY tuition was free. Now the majority of CUNY students are black, Latino and Asian, and because of long-standing racism in employment and wages are in an even worse position to pay this exorbitant tuition.

The speaker called on his fellow students to give more leadership in fighting the many problems that the working class faced.

A faculty member told the crowd that the PSC union (Professional Staff Congress of CUNY) was 100% behind the students’ struggle and related their struggle to students’ fight-back worldwide. He asked those present to say what they felt. At first it was quiet, but then it was like a dam bursting.

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Rulers’ Wiki-Circus Marks U.S. Clash with Iran, China, Russia, North Korea

Workers can’t count on ruler-orchestrated “exposés” like Wikileaks to somehow reform the profit system that creates wars without end. Wikileaks is trying to deceive people into believing that “independent” or “alternative” media can expose the capitalist class and somehow organize against it.

Wikileaks’ hackers and their now jailed, phony rebel chief Julian Assange have no intention of attacking U.S. imperialism. If they had:

• They would never have chosen the ultra-Establishment New York Times — and its European equivalents — to edit and publish their huge number of 250,000 “sensitive” State Department cables.

• And this gives the Times and its allies the opening to use the leaks to urge stepped-up U.S. military measures against growing — especially nuclear — threats to U.S. imperialism.

• The leaks also help Obama and the imperialists he serves to shift the spotlight from the disastrous economy onto foreign policy.

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Learning from Class Struggle United Fight vs. Jim Crow Segregation at Brooklyn High School

BROOKLYN, NY — “They [the Department of Education — DoE] are segregating kids again. Just like the Jim Crow laws. Blacks and whites were separated: different schools and different water fountains. There’s barely a difference.”

One student wrote this in response to reading the last issue of CHALLENGE, highlighting the sharp struggle in our school. The truth is that under capitalism, the school system will only serve the needs of the racist bosses. The only way that we can truly serve our students and community is by getting rid of the bosses and their schools. Then, under a communist society, we will have true education for our students.

The DoE has released an “Educational Impact Statement” which lays out its plans to put in a new selective school in our building. While they claim they want to provide “all students” with a “high quality education,” the academic requirements of the new school will leave behind most low-income black and Latino students, especially special education students and English-language learners.

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