New York City, November 15 — The fight against militarization and repression at City University of New York (CUNY) is drawing more students and faculty into action.  Today a strategy meeting that organizers thought might draw 50, instead brought 120 people to four hours of intense talk about every aspect of the CUNY struggle. There were many new faces: an energetic group of undergrads and grad students along with professors, both veterans and young adjuncts.
Progressive Labor Party members were among the organizers. Participants distributed CHALLENGE and got to know several new fighters.  Many are making up their minds about their basic political outlook, including Progressive Labor Party’s revolutionary communist ideas.
The majority are outraged at CUNY’s suppression of resistence on campus and its welcome to General “Drones” Petraeus and ROTC.  While jobs evaporate, CUNY continues its racist dumbing down of curriculum combined with rising tuition and student debt. It is a fluid moment when militants are looking for the best path ahead, as capitalism exposes its contradictions and failures.
Petraeus, ROTC =Militarization
The hiring of Petraeus and the return of ROTC have reminded all how the universities are tied to the military and the ruling class. The campus is not exempt from the intensifying racist police oppression, especially in the black and Latino communities from which most of our students come.
In one small breakout group, four grad student adjuncts were there because they thought it was time they got involved. One was angry at the raid by the City College Administration on the students’ Morales/Shakur Center and the arrest of two protest leaders.  One had been excited by the Occupy Wall St. movement and was looking to apply it to CUNY. Two others had been active as undergrads but not yet at CUNY until the issue of militarization brought them to this event.  These four show the potential for growth in this movement, and of the communist movement.  
The group included union fighters and chapter leaders. One told the newcomers how her campus chapter had just met and agreed on an awareness campaign of union tabling outside the cafeteria about campus worker unity and opposing militarization and repression. Another described the antiwar committee just formed on campus, combining chapter militants and students.
A PL’er stressed that militarization on the campus reflected imperialist war preparations by the ruling class, and that the international working class had to prepare for the next big war on the horizon.  He said that the struggle against war and the militarization of society had to be international, and mentioned as examples the letters of solidarity with CUNY students from comrades in Haiti and the students at UNAM in Mexico City.
How To Teach Students the Truth  
The small-group discussion then focused on how we could use the classroom to make more students aware of militarization. A math teacher said he couldn’t teach politics in a math class, but a German historian told us how under the Nazis math lessons were politicized, with examples and problems reinforcing fascist propaganda.  A biochemist also couldn’t see how to teach politics in a science class, but someone noted the recruiting of the chemical industry for war and weaponry, the recruitment of health workers for the military’s detention/torture centers, or scientific war research on campus.   
A philosophy lecturer said he couldn’t ethically teach students his own politics because it would be taking advantage of his position of authority over them.  One response to that common faculty view said students are already bombarded by capitalist ideas  from the curriculum  and all the bosses’ media.
As a comrade passed the hat for students’ legal costs, the whole group resolved to build for the court appearance of two CCNY students on Nov. 19 (see page 8), and a protest at the CUNY Board of Trustees on Nov. 25 (see front page). While we didn’t agree on all our ideas, we nevertheless agreed to intensify our actions in the face of intimidation by the cops and the Administration.
PLP did disagree with the majority on the reformist demand to abolish the Board of Trustees appointed by the Mayor and Governor and to elect our own Board to run the university in our own interests (the student-power, faculty-power idea).  Most unionists know from experience that bosses will never allow workers this kind of control. Only one class at a time can hold state power.
PL believes that the capitalists run every institution including universities (public and private) to serve their class interests for profit and social control. They will never surrender control to students and faculty in a school or college, to health workers and patients in a hospital, to workers in a factory, field, mine, or office, or to rank-and-file soldiers.  
They run a racist, sexist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie over the whole society, while maintaining the illusion of popular democracy through elections (elections like that of their latest darling Bill De Blasio, determined by their money and their media).  But you can’t elect the boss of a factory or a mine or a hospital or a college or an army.
PL sees the campus not as a place where students and faculty can wrest power from the bosses, but as a site of class struggle where students and faculty — in a worker-student alliance — can link their own fights to the struggles of the whole working class.  We can help build a revolutionary movement for the working class to take state power and construct an alternative, boss-free communist society in which education is ours to remake and wars for profit are history.  
International Workers’ Unity Crucial
Want to end militarization? Fight for international communism. Join PLP.  CUNY students, faculty and staff active now should join with workers’ strikes and community battles against racist police, with teachers in Mexico, with students in Haiti, miners in South Africa and textile workers in Bangladesh. Our comrades at CUNY have always stood for this view, from the 1930s until now.  
Students have often initiated important struggles at CUNY and need to again.  But workers led by communists have the numbers and the potential power to finish them — everywhere the war clouds threaten — as a single international class. As critical, radical students and faculty, we must begin to see ourselves as part of that class.

Brooklyn, NY November 21 — In the bustling center of Church Avenue, as hundreds of working-class people poured out of the subway station on their way home from work, they were greeted by a militant demonstration demanding “Justice for Kyam Livingston, killed in a Brooklyn jail cell.”
The demonstration included a broad spectrum of the working class, up to 130 people assembled in militant unity to demand justice for this kkkop murder. The group was black, Latino, Asian, white, men, women, and children to mark the fourth-month anniversary of the murder of Kyam Livingston.
Kyam was a 37-year-old black single mother and worker who was arrested and was waiting for arraignment in Brooklyn Central Booking. She was complaining of extreme stomach pain and crying out for help. The KKKops callously ignored her cries, saying, “Shut the f*** up or we’ll lose your paperwork.” Kyam died in continued agony to the horror of the other women in the holding cell.
‘You’re Not Gonna Hide This’
Kyam’s mother was the first speaker and cried for justice for her daughter. In her anguish, she proclaimed that there would be justice to the cops standing there, sending chills up the spines of the collected gathering. Her speech was a note for militancy and a promise that justice would be done for her daughter. “Your’e not gonna hide this, “ she cried.
A black working-class student spoke of the need for multiracial unity in the fight against police brutality and racism. A PLP high school teacher and a member of the Justice for Shantel Davis committee made a call to smash this racist, murderous system that will continue to kill our children. “Only we can stop it,” he said. He pointed out how the kkkops are used as a tool for the bosses to separate the working class — black from white, and men from women.  
A parent from a faith-based community spoke of his concern for his black children who clearly are not safe under this system.  He said, “As long as Kyam’s family needs me, I’ll be here.”  A union member and fighter who has lived in the neighborhood for 40 years described how the comunity should create a wall of unity so that no more murders of our children will take place. He also honored the  bravery of the Livingston family, especially of Kyam’s mother.  A young man of about 12 took the microphone and said that he knew Kyam. She was a good person. He misses her, and he called for “Justice for Kyam Livingston.”
‘We Want The Names. We Want The Tapes!’
The chanting was militant, vigorous and forceful, “Justice for Kyam Livingston, killed in a Brooklyn cell,” “We want the names. We want the tapes,”  and “Kyam Livingston means — fight back!” “Police murders mean — fight back!” ”No justice,no peace. No racist police.”
The final speaker called for a march down Church Avenue so that the neighborhood could be as one with the march and the multi-racial nature of the marchers.  
Crowds of people stopped and listened to the speeches and chants.  Many made comments such as, “You got that right!” and “We’re hearing the truth here!” Kyam’s mother  lives in  that neighborhood and is well known and well loved. Her neighbors and friends stopped and joined the demonstration. Many people came up to her, greeted and hugged her.   A young woman from a downtown Brooklyn church who participated in the demonstration said, “This is great. This is real unity.”
CHALLENGES and many leaflets were distributed.Many protesters said, “next time I’ll try to bring more of my friends.“ The next demonstraton will be on the afternoon of Saturday, December 21st. There will be no end to this struggle until we have smashed racism and capitalism.

New York City, November 16 — Workers from a community mass organization in Bushwick, Brooklyn had a joint “mini conference” with the congregation of a church in Harlem. This was a follow-up to an October rally held in the working-class neighborhood of Bushwick against the renovation-rent hikes that are driving out mainly Latino and undocumented workers who have lived there for years, near their families and workplaces.
Bushwick, fifteen minutes from Manhattan, has become one of the most desired neighborhoods in New York City. It borders Williamsburg, a neighborhood already redefined by a growing wealthy population and rapid capitalist development of overpriced housing, so it’s no surprise that the landowners are now targeting Bushwick. With the recent development of the Barclay Stadium, home to the new Brooklyn Nets, the borough has become even more of a hot spot for the real estate capitalists.
The conference called for multi-racial unity of Latin, Asian, white and black against racist gentrification, since most of the new population moving into these neighborhoods are white. Meanwhile Latino and black families are being pushed out. Most of the latter are feeling hostile against the white workers moving in and landlords, who openly tell them that they want them out so whites will pay their higher rents and buy their new luxury condos.
We have constantly reminded our friends that white workers are not the enemy, that capitalism and its bosses are the true enemy. They use this type of racism to divide the working class and make us fight each other, but it takes a lot of work and convincing when desperation clouds workers’ minds. We reminded our friends, who were pessimistic about winning the fight against the landlords, that back in the 1930s during the Great Depression whole communities would unite and occupy foreclosed houses in order to stop cops from evicting workers out of their homes. One comrade also said, “Don’t underestimate the power of the working class.”
At the conference, one new comrade, a victim of Storm Sandy and a homeless parent, spoke eloquently about the racist oppression she and her children have suffered over the past year and how the Progressive Labor Party and friends had given her personal support and political leadership. She demonstrated how victims of the storm and victims of homelessness due to gentrification are being forced to compete in order to receive public assistance and a new home. University expansion is pushing gentrification in both of these communities.
A college student from Venezuela spoke at length about the need for both a worker-student alliance and international solidarity for our struggles to move forward. Three college students participated in the conference, won by three PLP members’ weekly participation in their student-worker solidarity group on campus. One of the students emphasized the importance of a worker-student alliance, since one day students will also be joining the workforce.
The conference proposals included building multi-racial actions against racist gentrification in Bushwick. Brooklyn forces will participate in a University/State Office Building rally and march demanding low rents, jobs and expansion of food stamps.
We tried to connect anti-imperialism to university expansion and anti-racism to racist gentrification. The college students we work with are considering this action as one of their main projects as soon as winter break ends. The college students and workers did come to understand that the problem was the capitalist landlords and the only way workers will ever have safe housing conditions is by destroying capitalism and replacing it with real workers power.

Recently I attended a PLP communist school on dialectics with a friend; she’s a student and I’m a teacher at Chicago State University. Our opening presentation described how dialectical principles apply to the process of development from a seed to a bean plant and provoked many questions and challenges about precisely how the principles are to be understood.
In our workshop we continued the discussion of dialectics as a general theory of nature, but it was hard to pin down the discussion. Moreover, it tended to exclude people, such as my friend, who were less familiar with communism. I proposed applying the principles to my friend’s work with a campus group, the Students for Justice (S4J).
This immediately raised a number of issues. S4J had developed a petition demanding child care on campus which would benefit our many single-parent students, mostly women. It also demanded that the money the bookstore pays to the university should be used to fund childcare. (The bookstore treats students like criminals and overcharges for books).
However, S4J literature did not criticize the bookstore policy of barring students from the textbook aisles of the bookstore. Instead students hand their schedule to a clerk who gets their books for them. Consequently, students must wait for hours for their books. The petition did not say the bookstore policy was racist, nor did it connect the campus treatment of students — a large majority being black — to the racism we experience in Chicago neighborhoods where store owners treat customers disrespectfully.
How could we sharpen the discussion within S4J, raising issues of racism? Why hadn’t S4J members said more about racism in its petition and literature? Did students disagree that these practices were racist? Or did they believe they were racist but that saying so would turn people off? Was the petition’s purpose to gain the most possible signatures, or was it to raise the understanding of racism on campus and in Chicago and beyond? Was S4J just trying to win a reform or was it trying to empower students to fight in their own interests and to understand the connection between the racism they experience and the capitalist system?
In the workshop we felt that raising these questions would sharpen the contradictions within S4J between communist, anti-racist politics and capitalist-style politics of trying to be popular. I thought that even if, as a result of the discussion, S4J still did not want to call the lack of child care and the bookstore policies racist and sexist, we still would have encouraged students to think more sharply about what they were doing and what they hoped to accomplish, bringing them closer to communism and the Party.
Sometimes our discussions of dialectics are too abstract because we treat it as a philosophy of everything without applying it to analyzing our political work. On the one hand, it’s essential to study the laws and categories of dialectics, but if we don’t apply them to what we have to do to build the Party and our road to communist revolution, then they do become abstract.
In the above discussion, we attempted to apply dialectics to a real-life experience, showing how various things are not isolated phenomenon but are inter-related, how discussing and sharpening the contradictions — among other principles — help us advance our thinking and therefore our actions.
In effect, both theory and practice are essential and inextricably linked. Combining the two, as we tried to do above, will lead to the most useful discussion in doing the Party’s work.
Professor Red