BROOKLYN, NY, January 3—After weeks of discussing the politics and history of sit-ins and occupations, more than 20 students marched to the administrative building today to occupy the office of the “Director of Student Engagement and Community Standards.” The attempted occupation was in protest of the ongoing racist charges made by the campus and signed by this director against four Kingsborough Community College (KCC) students. When we surrounded the office we discovered it had closed as KCC’s administrators were working remotely, but this disappointment was only temporary. As the semester ended, antiracists and members of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) celebrated a semester of fightback, and recruited more students into our growing club!
Throughout our past two study groups, continuing attacks from the campus administration have sharpened the discussions into capitalist dictatorship and state power (see CHALLENGE, 12/14/22). Students, staff, faculty, and PLP members are fighting against the KCC administration, campus police, and NYPD because a student was tackled by campus police after being harassed by a racist student using the n-word (see CHALLENGE, 11/30/22). Since our last article, the NYPD has failed to appear at the trial of a student charged with disorderly conduct. At the same time, KCC has brought academic charges against four students, including the student who was tackled and the Black student who was called the n-word.
With our core of Black, Latin, Asian, and white student emerging communist leadership one of our key readings has been Vladimir Lenin’s speech, “The State.” A new young comrade condensed and edited it for readability. The political leadership of our study group has had a direct impact on the sharpening struggle as the KCC administration attempts to drown the struggle in lies, liberalism, and one of the liberal racist’s favorite weapons, “civil discourse.”
Questions our study group have grappled with are over reform and revolution, and where change comes from: Does change come from young, reform-minded politicians? Or does it come from the masses? Or a mix of both? Why do we need a Party?
“Civil discourse”= liberal fascism
Within the student government (SGA), procedures, paperwork, and “rules of order” exist and are enforced strictly. Any deviation from these rules can discredit any students petitioning for change or the SGA’s position itself. KCC President Claudia V. Schrader and the administration doubled down on emphasizing “public order” and “civility,” holding campus-wide virtual town hall meetings to discuss the antiracist students’ perceived disrespect for civil discourse. Of course they only allowed supporters of the racist administration to speak. Meanwhile, the campus police make up new rules to harass antiracist students in the Common Ground club daily.
“Civility” and “public order” are forms of discipline that the capitalist class’ liberal lap dogs are attempting to impose on our students — what communists identify as early stages of fascism. SGA, the University Student Senate (USS), University Faculty Senate, and College Council enforce decisions made by the ruling class-controlled CUNY Board of Trustees and executed by servants like Schrader. SGA and USS condition students into adopting bourgeois manners of struggle — like having patience in the face of racist injustice, not speaking out during meetings, accepting and resigning to bureaucracy, and using “proper” language. For example, SGA members were instructed by the administration not to use the word “tackle” when filling out paperwork on the student tackled by racist campus police, as it was “too provocative.”
Liberals have been and are the main danger
Our study group reflected on these political disagreements, which led to sharp tactical disagreements in the struggle. One student summarized the disagreement as between “Malcolm X vs. Martin Luther King, Jr,” characterizing the disagreement as one group of students favoring breaking the college’s rules and others wanting to follow the rules. The reality is that the bosses want the students to be divided and pointedly attack militant antiracists.
At our next Party study group, along with Lenin, we read a selection of MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. PLP criticizes elements of MLK’s religious-based pacifism, especially his reliance on support from liberal Democrats and the capitalist controlled media. Often MLK’s insisted on a less violent way of fighting back; he was much more insistent on working within the system, focusing on reform struggles. This reformist leadership weakens the fight to destroy racism once and for all. Our Pary’s analysis is that only a mass working-class communist revolution can end capitalism, racism, and imperialism.
In the Letters from Birmingham Jail MLK clearly states that we live in an inherently racist society and racist rules and laws must be broken. He warns that those who claim to agree with the goals of protest but are more interested in “public order” than justice —liberals— are potentially a greater obstacle to progress than open racists like the KKK.
Elections: heads they win, tails we lose!
KCC’s administration soon resolved these debates for us by holding a sham election. SGA officers typically serve a full-year term once elected. One SGA officer resisted campus police requests for student life to turn over our antiracist club’s membership lists (after the campus police claimed they felt harassed!). The officer also resisted the administration’s pressure on the student government to dissolve our club. After the administration tried unsuccessfully to convince the other SGA officers to impeach this militant antiracist officer, a surprise second election was announced three days before the last weeks of the semester, with most students not knowing.
The antiracist SGA officer only learned about the election the moment it happened. Out of 7,259 eligible students, thirteen students came and voted for the administration’s favored candidate— and the antiracist SGA member was voted out of office.
In many ways, KCC mirrors capitalist society at large: the bosses use democracy to maintain the illusion of a neutral state apparatus and deny the reality of their violent racist capitalist dictatorship. The bosses picked this fight, and it’s a fight they’re gonna get! We welcome our new comrades, and fight on to May Day.
