LOS ANGELES, CA, May 2- This morning, a contingent of fascist Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and California Highway Patrol (CHP) KKKops, attacking with rubber bullets and stun grenades, evicted students and supporters from an encampment against genocide in Palestine at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). They arrested over 200 students, professors and supporters of the encampment. The night before, the liberal fascist UCLA administration, the LAPD and CHP sat back and did nothing but watch while 50 masked Zionist thugs attacked the encampment with lead pipes, fireworks, and chemical sprays, sending over 20 student encampers to the hospital. Meanwhile, a chorus of politicians, media outlets and pundits, including President Joe Biden and House Leader Mike Johnson, have demanded a nationwide crackdown on all campus, anti-genocide encampments.
But this attempt to crush what is a growing anti-genocide, anti-war movement on campuses is backfiring. While this gaggle of liberal and conservative politicians and media endlessly blab about the rights of university students to get their education unimpeded by “disruption”, and make phony and disgusting charges of “antisemitism” against the encampers, students around the country are getting an on-the-ground education about the role of the state and educational institutions under a capitalist system.
Student’s boldness exposes bosses’ lies about education
Far from the havens for free speech, academic discourse and scholarly investigation, as touted by college and university bigwigs, the nationwide attacks on student-led campus encampments expose the truth: whatever form capitalism takes, it is in essence a class dictatorship. Educational institutions under capitalism must serve the needs of the ruling class. Israel has played the role of attack dog, ensuring U.S. bosses’ control of crucial Mideast oil. Any popular threat to U.S. financial and political support for Israel will therefore not be tolerated. A widespread challenge to that foreign policy like the encampments, even though peaceful, must be shut down violently by cops or the military.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members consistently visited the encampment for the week that it remained up and running. We were impressed by the level of organization and collectivity in the encampment, as well as the dedication and commitment of the students who participated. Before we entered the camp, one of the students explained rules designed to protect the encampment from the Zionists, and informed us that the good of the collective encampment was primary. Everything needed by the students, from food to medical supplies to the materials necessary to make signs, was donated and shared. Organized security cordoned off any Zionist agitators who entered the camp and “escorted” them out.
Many UCLA faculty and staff actively supported the encampment. Two close friends of PLP were involved, one an undergrad student and the other a doctor and professor at the UCLA Med School, widely known and respected on campus, who has facilitated the involvement of PLP there. When it became clear that the cops were going to attack the encampment on the evening of May 2, health workers, professors and others supported the students in many different ways, from preparing on the scene medical teams, including med students, to opening up buildings for students who needed to get away from the KKKops.
Reject nationalism, fight for communism
The fascist attacks on these brave anti-genocide students at UCLA and nationwide became one of the key points brought out in our May Day program, which was co-emceed by the UCLA undergrad. Participants loudly applauded the fighting spirit of the encampments. PLP is growing on college campuses in both Northern and Southern California, and we are encouraging young comrades to join mass organizations and give communist leadership to the mass anti-war, anti-genocide movement.
The main weakness of the encampments is an allegiance to the idea that the problems of Palestinian workers could be solved if they had their “own” state. This nationalist outlook, which advocates substituting a different group of exploiters for the Israeli Zionist bosses who maintain apartheid in Palestine now, will only maintain an exploitative capitalist system and lead to more oppression and death for the working class. Only communist revolution, led by PLP, can bring the long suffering of workers in Palestine to an end and build a bright future for all of our class worldwide!
