NEW YORK, March 27th— Today, dozens of students and workers protested the 547 days (and counting) that have passed since we’ve had a cafeteria on campus. All semester, comrades in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have been providing snacks at our People’s Pantry, but today we turned up the heat! The protest allowed us to draw some important lessons about our campus situation: Racist austerity is overseen by Black and Latin administrators. Our lack of cafeteria on campus is directly tied to U.S. imperialism and the billions of dollars being used to exterminate Palestinians. But students and workers are ready and willing to escalate our fight. We can only guarantee a decent education and access to nutritious food for all students and workers if we destroy capitalism and replace it with a communist society!
Racist profit$ over food
Even when we had a cafeteria, our campus suffered from racist treatment: The previous cafeteria vendor offered truly awful, unhealthy food options. But in a capitalist system, food is a commodity, which means its main social purpose is to make profit for capitalists. In a communist society these things would not be commodities, but would only be produced to benefit workers. When the vendor couldn’t make enough profit, they closed up shop and left students without access to any kind of nutrition.
While small, our pantry is a microcosm of communism in action. We, the workers, are producing and distributing better food options to one another based on need, without any profit involved. All we have is each other to rely on in the end.
In response to the closing, more than 40 students and workers rallied in front of our campus. Students spoke about the difficulty of going to a school without access to food. We connected our struggle to the fight against the genocide in Gaza. It’s no mistake this is happening in The Bronx–which has a majority Latin population–and the highest rate of food insecurity of the five boroughs (Mayor’ Office of Food Policy, 2022), clear cut racism! Would a school like Harvard, with majority white students, have to endure no cafeteria or healthy food options?
A student leader encouraged all of us to “turn our sad stomach grumbles into vicious growls,” and reminded the crowd that “every right gained throughout history: trans and gay rights, civil rights and women’s liberation were not just handed over but fought for in the streets just like this.”
Latin bosses won’t help Latin students either
The protest ended with a visit to a meeting of the college senate. One of the points of struggle on campus, and around the world, is over identity politics - the bosses’ ideology that people should categorize themselves according to their “race,” gender, sexuality, nationality, etc., rather than as a worker. Our college president, who is Puerto Rican and oversees an administration that is almost entirely Black and Latin, shows what a deadly ideology this is for workers and students. But our students did not care! They called him out for his callousness, his disrespect and his lies, to his face, in front of 40 or 50 faculty and administrators. We left the meeting energized and finished by setting up our People’s Pantry to serve our campus community again.
Students are ready to continue the struggle. Even after we get a cafeteria (if we ever do!) we’ll continue to demand better services on campus. We are also setting up a rapid response team to confront racist ICE stormtroopers if they show up on campus. We’re planning a film screening to highlight the racist immigration system that has spanned Democratic and Republican administrations. In short, students and workers are ready to continue to fight. And PLP members and friends are ready to continue to sharpen the fight, to push for more confrontation with our racist administration, and to build our confidence as we grow the revolutionary communist movement!