BROOKLYN, MAY 23 — At Clara Barton High School, the Special Commissioner of Investigation (SCI) for the New York City School District has just completed an investigation that began in October. Assistant Principal Mims initially interrogated some students as they entered the school on a Monday after they had attended an October 2 rally in Washington, D.C. against budget cuts and for jobs.The SCI report finds that “Salak and Beckerman … recruited students to attend an unauthorized trip to a rally held in Washington, D. C.”

In fact, this rally was on a Saturday. All the students went with parental permission. Several parents joined them. Everyone was on a bus organized and paid for by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). There were thousands of students at this rally, many from NYC schools. Many unions and community organizations, including the UFT, sponsored this trip.

Yet Principal Forman maintains that “no private trips are allowed.” We disagree. As Senator Eric Adams stated at a PTA meeting, outside of school and especially on weekends, parents are in charge of their children, not the DOE or Principal Forman.

Meanwhile, education at Barton is neglected by the administration:

Haitian students get many of their history classes from teachers outside the Social Studies Dept.

Monday afternoon teacher meetings are mostly a disorganized mess; hundreds of teacher hours are wasted.

Class sizes are huge.

Technology is totally outdated or missing; the TV/DVD/video setups are a mess.

The SCI investigation is a racist attack on our students in many ways. At many so-called ‘elite’ schools or suburban schools, which are mainly white, outside activities are encouraged. Students are allowed to expand their horizons and teachers are encouraged to help them. At Barton, the latest innovation by the administration is detention. Many students and staff feel that Barton is becoming more and more like a jail.

This is also an anti-communist attack. The SCI letter, for some reason, mentions “Challenge: the Revolutionary Communist Newspaper of the Progressive Labor Party.” The Paper was “retrieved” from a student. From Paul Robeson to Langston Hughes to W. E. B. DuBois, communists have always been in the forefront in fighting racism and that is still the case. The SCI and its servants, like Principal Forman, want to silence us. They won’t.

Why does Forman want to get rid of some of the best, most dedicated teachers in the school? Their Regents results are above the Brooklyn average. They sponsor after school clubs and spend countless other hours after school helping students. The DOE and principals like Forman want to frighten and silence anyone who fights back. Principal Forman is not an educator, he is an investigator. He is in line with the increased racist repression and control coming from the DOE. As the DOE prepares more budget cuts, including teacher layoffs, they want students and staff to be more compliant and timid. This is called fascism. They do virtually nothing to promote education at Barton. Now, with more cutbacks coming, they want to stop any kind of student-teacher-parent unity that could resist these cuts. More than ever we need to fight back, students, staff, and parents united!J

Every time workers turn around, it seems we face a new attack from school bosses who claim to promote students’ interests.  Closing schools, firing teachers, imposing more high-stakes exams, making graduation more difficult--all these are fed to us as part of a recipe to “improve” education.  Even budget cuts that savagely reduce resources are put forward as opportunities to help our young people! 

Republicans and Democrats across the country, from Obama down to local boards of education, are united in a coordinated effort to cut budgets. NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s attitude typifies the billionaire mindset that guides policy in the US: “ In fact, it’s healthy to go and say let’s cut a little bit and force the principals and the teachers and the administrators to say, ‘Is this program worth it?’ “

Bloomberg’s dismissive tone is disgusting enough on its own. Coupled with the fact that he’s speaking of a city where over 85% of the students are black or Latino, the racism he exhibits is criminal and at the same time infuriatingly typical.  And this was the bosses’ attitude before the recent economic crisis hit.  Since then, expanding imperialist war and evaporating paper wealth has driven the U.S. ruling class into a frenzy of budget cuts.  Forty-four states out of fifty anticipate budget shortfalls for 2012, totaling $112 billion (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2011).  Meanwhile, roughly a trillion dollars has been spent on Mid-East wars since 9/11. 

These cuts are about more than money.  They are about fear and control.  When teachers see their job security eroding, they are more easily whipped into line to peddle and defend the bosses’ lies.  This fear can intimidate students, parents, and teachers from fighting back against the school system’s racist neglect and miseducation.  

Working class unity is vital to our defense.  One key to bosses’ “education reform” strategy is the shutting down of “failing schools” so that they can open new or reorganized ones: old wine in new bottles. This amounts to a cover for firing teachers and shuffling kids around so nobody takes responsibility for them.  Workers and youth must shut down these failing school systems with mass walkouts and strikes. With the leadership of PLP, these struggles could become schools for communism by turning defensive fight-backs against capitalism into an offensive class war for the future that our children deserve — communism.

Let’s look at why the bosses’ schools can never provide what the working class needs.

Public education, like all institutions under capitalism, is set up for most students to fail.  Those who can afford private schooling get small classes, one-to-one tutoring, and excellent facilities. The public schools provide such amenities only for the few students that they are funneling to help perpetuate the ruling class.

The system will not devote resources to students who will graduate into an economy that has no jobs for them. Capitalism’s inability to provide jobs for all workers means that most working-class students sit in over-crowded classrooms with out-of-date textbooks and few if any science labs. These schools have two purposes: to develop workers for the massive low-wage sector of the 21st-century economy, and to produce the foot soldiers for the bosses’ 21st-century wars.

Good teachers find these working conditions revolting.  Some quit in frustration; others are driven out by administrators who defend the status quo.  And many who remain come to accept and reinforce the message that a certain percentage of their students just won’t “make it.”

It’s no wonder, then, that cynical politicians exploit this crisis and mobilize mass anger against “overpaid” teachers. Even so, there are effective, pro-student teachers in every school. These teachers must choose between allying with the anti-student ideology of the teachers unions and their Democratic Party bosses or uniting with students and parents to struggle against the system that sets them up to fail.

Within the world of education reform, even bourgeois theorists admit that measures like “data-driven planning” or “differentiated instruction” will fail if students’ individual needs are not consistently addressed.  It’s common sense that racism and poverty, the by-products of capitalism,  increase children’s needs at school.  But as capitalist institutions, schools will never be able to fully address these needs for all students, despite the best efforts of dedicated teachers. Any child can learn, but capitalism is not designed to teach every child.  Under these conditions,an angry child is showing signs of consciousness, not a “behavioral problem.” 

When students don’t succeed in their schools, they need communist leadership to learn to blame the system. They need to reject the ideology of capitalist culture: that if you don’t succeed, it is because you weren’t smart enough or didn’t work hard enough.

Schools form the foundation for the structure of capital’s domination over our lives. Teachers can choose to side with students and parents and resist this domination.  As war and economic crises intensify, the bosses’ attacks on the schools will also intensify, making learning and teaching harder.  PLP has a long history of organizing struggles small and large against racism in the school system and building a base for communist revolution.  Join us.J

Other Big Lies That The Bosses’ Schools Help Defend and Promote:

The 20-year, intensifying U.S. war in the Mid-East is about stopping terrorism or spreading democracy--about anything except control of oil.

“Shared sacrifice” will fix the economy.

Women are slowly but surely moving toward equality with men.

Past communist revolutions have led to the greatest catastrophes in human history.

Racism has been defeated and is a thing of the past.

My introduction to PLP was through a professor at my college.  She is the faculty advisor of a student club called “Pizza and Politics”.  One time, during a heated discussion, I adamantly proclaimed, “Capitalism doesn’t exist anymore, capitalism was over when slavery was abolished.” I was enlightened when they cleared up my misconception.  Later, the same professor introduced me to PLP’s ideas. I considered capitalism to be slavery. When I learned about the inner workings of capitalism I realized that it is very similar to slavery — wage slavery.  More importantly, like slavery, I knew that capitalism is a system that has to go. Becoming a member of PLP enables me to join the fight against capitalism.  We must end this cruel system and replace it with a better alternative: communism.

Secondly, when I began reading PLP’s literature, my outlook on politics changed.  I saw that the two-party electoral system and everything it entailed was a sham.  When I became well versed in PLP’s ideas, I began to discern vague rhetoric from substantial dialogue. “Globalization” translated into imperialism. “Education reform” meant “budget cuts,” and “law enforcement” meant “the fascist state”.  It was like learning a second language, which guides my thought process now.

Finally, communism is a system I can wholly defend.  The only other system I tried to defend in the past was Christianity, because I was indoctrinated to the bone!  I grew up in a Caribbean home where religion was fed to me for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  As I grew older and started to read about “Christianity and Colonization,” I realized that my ancestors were enslaved in the name of Christianity. It was not important for me to defend Christianity anymore.  Communism is something I see as imperfect but logical and progressive. PLP’s political line is indeed what the workers of the world need to smash a system that cannot provide real solutions for unemployment, urban violence, poverty, and lack of healthcare, etc.

The more I have become involved with PLP by planning events, leafleting, organizing class struggle, and simply raising awareness about communist ideas, the more I feel empowered to know that I am involved in a very important struggle. Having PLP responsibilities helped my practical work to fight for a workers’ society instead of simply looking at communism in an abstract, philosophical way.

I urge you to join us in the fight for communism, for all of the above reasons. Be assured that you would be making one of the best decisions of your life!

New Comrade

Construction and landscaping bosses have sunk to a new low in hiring day laborers in New Jersey. Four or five times a year immigrant workers will put in weeks or even months on a job without receiving any money whatsoever! If they call their boss, they’re told: “If you complain, you will get deported.”

Near one muster zone, a non-profit organization provides families with information, referrals, parenting classes and general advocacy. Many concerned people have met there — including two organizations, a church and several attorneys — to be ready to do whatever it takes to get the workers their pay.

We had a phone conference, divided up the names of various bosses, and called them individually. In reaching out, we found that some folks were willing to go beyond phone calls and pay these bosses a visit— even to go in front of their houses and churches with picket signs.

This capitalist system allows freedom, but only for the bosses. They hire and fire at will, and pay below minimum wages (or at all), and contract under unsafe conditions for both “documented” and “undocumented” workers. They threatened to take one boss who owed over $2700 to court! 

Because of our phone calls, the three workers received over half the money due to them. One worker came to our meeting the next week. He was promptly invited to May Day and given CHALLENGE so that he and his friends could know there is an alternative to the international wage slavery system. Meantime, we don’t intend to give up our fight!J

Jersey Red