CHICAGO, January 30—“Same enemy, same fight — Students of Chicago unite!” It was with this chant and many others that hundreds of multiracial, multigender public high school students led a bold walkout and sit-in today at City Hall in protest of the ongoing genocide against workers and children in Gaza. Their efforts were the result of a brilliant organizing effort across more than ten schools in different neighborhoods.
The inspiring action occurred just the day before the Chicago City Council was set to vote on whether to officially endorse a ceasefire resolution. But as history and current experience show, the capitalist politicians’ timid calls for an end to the slaughter will do little to nothing to stop the current genocide or the inevitable next one that grows out like a cancer from their blood-soaked profit system.
To transform these exploding imperialist bloodbaths into class war and our collective liberation, we need an international communist revolution and nothing less. Those of us in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) salute these students for their urgency, antiracism, and internationalism, and invite them to join the revolutionary movement to crush the parasitic exploiters and their system once and for all.
Youth protest genocidal capitalism
As the clock struck midday, the students at the specific schools poured out of the buildings. At one of the schools on the city’s southwest side, the daughter of a PLP member helped to lead her peers in marching and chants around the campus. She also gave leadership to the planning efforts with other student leaders from different schools before today’s action.
In the majority working-class neighborhood where the school is located, neighbors and those driving past vocalized their support. The students proudly waved signs with messages like “End the Genocide” and “The occupation has to go!” They used bullhorns to give speeches that connected the state-sponsored racist attacks against Black and Brown youth in Chicago from forces like the KKKops to the U.S. imperialist-backed Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) currently murdering Arab workers and youth.
Later in the afternoon, the bulk of the students walking out converged in the city’s downtown at City Hall. After marching around the block and shutting down busy intersections, they forced their way into the government building despite a heavy kkkop presence and took over the entire first floor. Most of the students eagerly took copies of CHALLENGE newspaper and shared their sharp insights into the nature of the system.
The same young organizer leading the walkout at her school continued while at City Hall, pushing the chants to have a more anti-capitalist tone, including “Democrats, Republicans, all the same – Genocide is the name of the game!” and “From Palestine to Mexico, these border walls have got to go!”
She also gave one of the more militant speeches during the sit-in:
“Today we are here to stand for the Palestinian people and demand an end to the genocide and the system that causes it, and that is capitalism. Local government and especially our city council has failed to support Palestinians and instead, they are supporting this racist government to continue the mass genocide. How many more kids need to die? How many more need to fear for their lives? The answer should be zero but there are over 27,000 Palestinian people who have died over land and capitalism.
This doesn’t just affect Palestine; it affects the world. The working class is suffering because the ruling class controls the government and therefore the military is killing our people. The government is supposed to uplift our lives but they’re serving their bosses and killing our people! They’re killing our people to put money into their pockets. They’re benefitting from this mass genocide. We need to use our voice as youth to begin this revolution and breakthrough capitalism! People are suffering, people are dying – Innocent people, innocent children! We demand a ceasefire!”
Reject liberal misleaders, fight for communism
Our collective ability to end exploitation and profit wars is ultimately a question of armed class struggle and state power. The liberals and so-called “progressive” politicians like Mayor Brandon Johnson use radical-sounding language to pretend like they’re on our side while they are managers of the very same profit system responsible for so much racism, nationalism, misery, and war. They are the class enemies who will tell these working-class youth to ultimately get in line to fight and die for the imperialist war machine in the next world war. That’s why we in PLP identify liberals as the main danger to our class!
As communists in the international PLP, we want to arm our youth and the working masses with the ideas and weapons that will violently seize power away from the capitalists and build a society based on our collective needs and development. A gigantic goal, but ultimately the only future worth fighting for!
