BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, January 19 — “Integration, Yes! Segregation, No!” The chant rang out across the auditorium, as students, teachers and parents stood to challenge NYC schools chancellor Cathy Black. The event was the Panel on Educational Policy (PEP) meeting to vote on putting a new selective school in the John Jay campus building. While the building currently houses four schools serving mainly black and Latino students, the new school is being added to meet the needs of middle-class, mainly white families in the Park Slope neighborhood.
The PEP meeting was the final, formal Department of Education (DOE) step in approving the new school. It was also the first public meeting of new schools chancellor Black. The crowd of about 200 people was angry about attacks on working-class students across the city.
The whole meeting was filled with chanting, singing and speakers interrupting the DOE and demanding the system serve all students. Angry teachers, parents and students represented many schools threatened with closing or with the co-location of other schools in their buildings. About 40 people from the John Jay campus came to continue the fight against the racist conditions students there are facing.
Challenge Racist Chancellor
The Chancellor — who recently made a racist, genocidal “joke” about “solving” overcrowding by birth control — was continually interrupted during the opening remarks by chants and catcalls denouncing the DOE and Mayor Bloomberg’s racism. Students and speakers went to the microphones during the public comments portion of the meeting to expose the racism of inserting the Millennium school in the building and to demand that the DOE provide a decent education for all students. Several students spoke about how the entire system is racist, with one young man telling the crowd that the liberal racism of the DOE is worse than the KKK because it tries to be slicker.
While the principal of one of the schools in the building was speaking about the racism of a system where 56 years after Brown vs. Board of Education the schools are more segregated and unequal than ever, the DOE shut off her microphone before her allotted time was up. She raised her voice to be heard across the massive auditorium and finished her speech as the crowd rose with her and chanted “Integration, Yes! Racism, No! Integration, Yes! Racism, No!”
The PEP is a sham group appointed by the mayor and the borough presidents to rubber stamp Bloomberg’s and the city ruling class’s plans for the schools. While everyone knew the vote was a foregone conclusion, attending the meeting was another important step in the fight against the bosses’ attacks on working-class students. It will also help more people see the need for communist revolution as the only way to create a society that looks out for the needs of all young people.
One speaker from PLP spoke to the whole audience about how the racism the DOE builds is used to divide the working class and justify the inequality of capitalism. She said that she and her students were not facing closing or co-location, but that they understood that an attack on one group of students and teachers was an attack on all. They shut off her microphone also, but she continued anyway and held up CHALLENGE newspaper and offered it to the crowd as a tool to help defeat the ruling class.
The fight at the John Jay campus has started to spread beyond the school building. At the PEP meeting our chant from last week’s public hearing — “How do we spell racist? D-O-E!” — was started by several speakers. On the blogs and online newspapers, comments have started to more frequently take on the gutter racists and blame the DOE for the horrendous conditions of the school building and the lack of funding for the students in the four schools. Some are saying that the schools already there should be supported, and the Park Slope students should join the working-class students in them.
This struggle has been an opportunity for many people to see both the true nature of the ruling class and the potential of students and teachers to be a force to change society. Each meeting and confrontation with the DOE has seen working-class students stand up to the bosses and skillfully give leadership to the class struggle. Many teachers have come forward and united with their students against the DOE’s racism. This has been particularly inspirational.
The communist study groups that have developed out of the struggle in the schools have grown over the last several weeks. Many CHALLENGES are being distributed. This fight has a long way to go.
The PEP decision only moves things on to the next level. PLP is in it for the long haul, as it seems are many of the students, teachers and parents already involved. Whatever else happens through the rest of this year and into next when the new school arrives, there are two things we will guarantee: the battle against DOE racism will continue, and we will keep building PLP and the fight for communism.
