In response to the CHALLENGE article on the Boston Marathon bombings 4/21), about the tragedy that killed three people, it has been useful for Boston comrades in discussing and agreeing with our friends that capitalism is at the root of terrorism (explained well in the article). The bosses’ pursuit of creating a police state is currently strong evidence of an increasing fascist hold over the masses. Some of us have gathered reactions of students and workers at one urban community college here.
After the bombing some students without “legal” immigrant status feared coming to school. There was a heightened awareness at the college of the police “out there looking for the perpetrators” endangering many students who immigrated here. They were wary of appearing publically. This fear is legitimate and those comrades who were born here must become sensitive to, and respectful of, such reactions. We must find ways to work with them and enable them to trust us and feel safe to express themselves about PLP’s politics.
With the media praising the police and “first responders,” and using this tragedy to build U.S. patriotism, the general public appears very tolerant of this new police state. As anti-Muslim terrorism runs rampant in Boston, a Muslim woman from Malden was beaten and a woman from Newton, a wealthy Boston suburb was forced out of her car by the police while they searched her vehicle and questioned her. One Muslim professor who works at the college lives in an apartment complex in Newton among a small community of Muslims described their fear of leaving the house. Since the Marathon, some of her non-Muslim neighbors have snubbed her, which shocked and hurt her and her husband. There’s a police car parked outside the complex which was never there before during the day.
However, many working-class students, staff and instructors at the college have cautiously voiced ideas close to those of PL’s. In one class, the professor encouraged an open discussion about the events.
A Latino student said the lockdown in Boston the Friday after the shooting was even worse than her experience several years ago in a police crackdown in a Los Angeles working-class neighborhood. She reported that curfews were set and Latino male youth were pulled off the street into police cars at gunpoint and interrogated while cops looked for suspects described as young Latinos. Others said they’d heard similar stories from family and friends.
In addition to the state-sponsored terrorism described in the CHALLENGE article, the state’s bullying tactics seen after the 9/11 attacks and in the days following the Boston bombing become the new form of terrorism imposed on working people. All students who participated in these discussions agreed that the police had too much power. Only a few thought the complete lockdown was necessary to apprehend the two young bombing suspects.
Several scholars at the college (Honor Society students) are starting an “underground” magazine in response to these discussions, enabling students to submit ideas and poems anonymously, to get them out to the general public without feeling threatened. A student who emigrated from South America will be the editor. She explained that the work of poets like Pablo Neruda of Chile, Nicolas Guillen of Cuba and Ernesto Cardenal of Nicaragua — although advocating reform politics — described excellent tactics of how to mobilize the masses for a cause. She explained we could use them as models to promote revolutionary ideas and educate everyone in the college community about communism.
At the same time, contributors would have anonymity and therefore at least temporarily feel somewhat safe from persecution. In this way many more students could be drawn in and eventually become advanced enough to fight openly for communism.
In the weeks following the marathon tragedy, a U.S. citizen employed at the college working with PL received more inquiries about PL, May Day and CHALLENGE than in any previous years. However none were confident enough to join us openly or to march on May Day this year.
This shows the need to become sensitive to workers and students who support our ideas and to find ways to work with them until these potential comrades develop enough to fight alongside us for communism to smash this fast-developing fascist police state.
Let’s fight to keep revolutionary communist ideas expressed and circulating to the masses as widely as possible and urge workers and students to fight for these principles. Truly, the only solution is communist revolution!
Boston Comrade