CHICAGO, April 21 — Using fascist police-state tactics, president Wayne Watson is attempting to stifle the growing outrage of students and faculty at Chicago State University (CSU). As a multiracial worker-student alliance, we are learning to fight back. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) strives to turn this struggle into a school for communism. Several students expressed interest in boarding the May Day bus to Brooklyn, NY.
Racist Administration
The struggle against Watson and interim provost Angela Henderson took a qualitative leap forward with the arrest of Willie Preston on March 7. After being expelled for speaking against the racist administration, he returned to campus to speak at the public Board of Trustees (BOT) meeting. He now faces charges of trespassing and violating an order of protection. Racist Henderson acquired an order of protection by referring to Willie as a domestic terrorist and invoking the racist stereotype of the violent black man.
Willie became Watson’s enemy because he, along with his fellow students and faculty, is exposing the misuse of student activity fees, the corruption of the Student Government Association (SGA) elections, the racist treatment of students at the bookstore, and the need to restore childcare on campus. These attacks are happening on campuses across the U.S. and are symptomatic of the bosses’ plan for our class in time of global crisis: more cutbacks, war, and use of the state to suppress working-class rebellions.
It’s Not Just the BOT; It’s Capitalism
So spring break started with students and faculty raising bail money and phoning the campus police station in support of Willie. (Illinois State Police are the CSU campus security.) We went to Willie’s first court appearance. At a nearby restaurant, a committee was organized to continue the fight against Watson’s attacks. Faculty members added their grievances, which include Watson’s attempts to squelch the dissident CSU Faculty Voice blog, hiring of cronies and paying them exorbitant salaries. PLP pointed out the racist nature of Watson’s attacks. Although black himself, he and the mostly black BOT willingly carry out the racist policies of Governor Quinn and the state legislature. Mass imprisonment of black men is the New Jim Crow and Watson, Henderson, and the BOT are breeding that same racism in CSU.
PLP exposed the bosses as exploiters of all workers, making super-profits from black, Latino, and immigrant workers. The bosses divide the working class with racism to stop us from uniting, and at CSU, it’s not any different. Capitalism rewards Watson and Henderson for trying to control and terrorize working-class students. This is a sign of a system fearful of the potential power of multiracial unity. We must wage a struggle to turn this fightback at CSU into a revolutionary movement to destroy capitalism and to replace it with communism, a society without racism, sexism, and other forms of inequality.
Biggest Threat to Bosses:Multiracial Unity
The anticommunist administration revoked PLP’s reservation for a “Repression at CSU” forum on April 9, locking the auditorium, and posting a police guard. More than 80 people attended the forum, which somehow ended up sharing space in a nearby lecture hall with a history class, which then joined us.  Challenge was distributed widely. Students described how the SGA kept those who fought back off the ballot. Willie shared his struggle via Skype. An anonymous statement was read from a student who had been physically threatened for speaking out.
The SGA president, a Watson clone, appealed to racism saying: “the organizers of this forum don’t look like you.” This mimics Watson’s attempts to characterize the current fightback as being fomented by “white communist professors.” These lies expose Watson’s and the BOT’s fear of the multiracial unity of the organizing committee, the worker-student alliance, and the unity of the communist organization PLP with students and faculty. Two students sought out PLP after the forum to sign up for May Day.
Sexist Shutdown of Daycare
On April 15, our committee joined a campus rally to demand “Daycare Now” at CSU. In 2009, the campus daycare program was closed. Five years later and there is still no childcare! It’s worth noting the demographics of CSU. Of its nearly 4,400 students, 72 percent are women, 99 percent apply for need-based financial aid, 86 percent are black, 6 percent are Latino, and 69 percent are single parents. The average age of students is 31. So when the University shuts down daycare, it is attacking mostly black women workers.
The morning of the rally, the administration announced a new daycare center is being “planned” for June of 2016. Despite being prevented by the cops from using a bullhorn, students testified loudly how the bloated administration budgets and salaries could pay for daycare now. Obviously childcare for these working-class students’ children is not in the interest of the administration!
Our struggle at CSU demonstrates the use of the bosses’ police and legal system to suppress any antiracist and antisexist fightback. The university is a locus of ruling-class ideologies and attacks. But it is also a site of fightback and potential for a communist base. Several students signed up to learn about PLP and the May Day bus to Brooklyn. We have been meeting with and recruiting these students to May Day, with some success. One student is trying to recruit classmates. We are now hoping to march as a CSU contingent in Brooklyn!