CHICAGO, March 13 – A multiracial group of nearly a dozen workers met in a community garden today to create plans to fight the risks posed by both the pandemic and the racist bosses.
The garden is located across the street from a public school that serves mainly Latin working-class families. Members from the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have worked for years to build relationships with parents and students from this neighborhood.
Collectively, we have helped build the fight for better learning conditions and more resources for the Black and Latin working-class youth who are attacked hardest under capitalism. Most recently, we were active in the fight to force Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to push back school reopenings until more worker and student safety concerns could be met (See CHALLENGE, 2/17 and  3/3).
More students and education workers have started to filter back into the schools.  But that hasn’t prevented us from fighting for our collective interests and safety. On the heels of the liberal bosses passing out the crumbs for economic “relief” (see editorial on page 2), it’s essential that we fight now for that money to be spent to benefit workers and students and not to line the pockets of the parasitic capitalists.
Ultimately, it is only a worker-run, communist society that can guarantee that essentials like education, housing, and medicine can be freely and equitably available to everyone in our class. PLP is committed to build this fight as we continue building our international Party for communist revolution and the destruction of capitalism.
Organize! Expand the struggle
Our group assembled in the garden by late morning. Over donated food and water, each worker shared out some of their experiences navigating the recent challenges of pandemic capitalism.
Many shared their frustrations with the bosses’ racist and bungled vaccine rollout, which turns an essential public health need into a lottery that excludes many Black, elderly, and undocumented workers. Others highlighted their anger about spotty internet access and inferior rental laptops during remote learning sessions. Still others pointed out the school lacks both clean drinking water and a library.
PLP members consistently put forward communist politics and multiracial working-class unity as the way to fight back against the bosses’ disregard for working-class life that we experience. Everyone present agreed that the struggle would only be able to move forward with increased commitment from parents to pressure CPS.
To this end, we made a plan to meet more consistently among ourselves to build our struggle. We made a list of ten demands to bring to the next local school council meeting, including opening the schools up as vaccination spaces for education workers and community members, economic aid for working-class families, and improving ventilation and pipes in the building.
Liberal bosses are the main danger
As part of U.S. President Joe Biden’s new economic stimulus, CPS is set to receive $1.8 billion, which breaks down to about $5,200 additional spending per student in Chicago (Chalkbeat, 3/10). Without workers organizing around demands such as ours, many correctly recognize that the bosses could just as easily hand most of that money over to cover the district’s debt with the bloodsucking bankers. Already, CPS’s credit rating got a small boost as a result of the bill passing (Crain’s, 3/11).
Many of the city’s liberal politicians like to point the finger at the banks for the debt crisis, conveniently forgetting that many of them have clear connections to finance capitalism. The slick liberal bosses in major U.S. cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, who like to cry crocodile tears over the racial educational gaps present under the profit system, are the very ones that have closed down schools in Black and Latin neighborhoods and made students walk through metal detectors for decades. That’s why in PLP we call these Big Fascist bosses the larger threat to the working class.
These Big Fascists are desperate to get students back into classrooms as part of their push to indoctrinate young minds with capitalist ideas to try and prepare them for more discipline and eventually imperialist war. Any plans from the bosses to “educate” working-class youth are a disaster for workers. Nothing short of international communist revolution led by a mass PLP will transform education from an ideologically toxic commodity into a liberating force in the service of the working class.
The Party is the weapon
Working-class organizing from the ground up—like our work here—is an inspiring development. We are committed to continue struggling alongside our fellow workers to insist that our collective demands are met.
Creating a culture of solidarity and struggle can arm our class with the skills and confidence that workers can and will run society, without racism, sexism, or profits. PLP is the weapon to win the egalitarian communist world we need. Join us!