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Students Stand Up, Fight Back!

Across the country, students are standing up to “hoodie bans” and other oppressive rules.

By Enigma E

This past November students at Helen Cox High School in Harvey, LA walked out of class to protest the injustice done to a female Muslim student, who was harassed and violated by the school administration for wearing a hooded jacket. She was asked to take off her hoodie, which she was using to protect against the cold weather and as a covering for her body as she respectfully practices her faith of Islam. When the administrator tried to forcibly remove the hoodie from the young woman, students came to her defense, which led to the walk-out. As the students protested the oppressive hoodie rule and the mistreatment of one of their peers, the administration called the cops which only escalated the situation. Six cop cars and two firetrucks showed up to the school. The cops arrested a sixteen-year-old student and charged him with battery of a police officer in addition to other charges.

The students were reacting to the over policing of their bodies and culture. Jefferson Parish School District started enforcing the “hoodie rule” after the murder of Trayvon Martin, while the racist, capitalist-owned media was busy blaming Trayvon for his own murder. This campaign went hard criminalizing young Black people for their choice of clothing.

The way the police handled the youth at their school is indicative of how the police handle poor people on the streets. The police don’t handle rich white people the way they handle poor people of color. It’s been like that for the entire history of AmeriKKKa. Across the globe, capitalist white supremacist rule holds back the masses of the global working class.

The ruling class news sold the students’ righteous protest as “Muslim student’s refusal to remove hoodie leads to chaos at Helen Cox High School.” This oppressive headline implies to the reader that some crazy non-white, non-Christian students were acting violently. The Workers Voice says the students have the right to stand up against oppression!

More actions like this are needed in schools and cities across the country. The world is waiting for the U.S. working class to rise up and revolt against their oppressors. If we don’t, the rich ruling class will continue to make things worse for us. We have to fight back. The youth are some of the most fearless fighters the working class has got.

Young people are justified in their frustration with the capitalist system. They just have to direct that rage towards revolution! Let the youth be free! All power to the people!

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High Schoolers’ Freedom of Expression Under Attack

By Adam Pedesclaux

Far from doing anything to address the root causes of mass shootings, Congress is using these tragedies to sneak an attack on students’ right to privacy and free speech. Texas Senator John Cornyn recently introduced a bill called the Restoring, Enhancing, Securing, and Promoting Our Nation’s Safety Efforts (RESPONSE) Act which would broaden the discretion police have to surveil and repress students based on their online activity. The act would also require federally funded schools to contract for-profit surveillance companies to monitor students’ social media posts for “inappropriate content.”

People are understandably desperate to put an end to mass shootings, but that’s not what this act is really about. If Senator Cornyn were really concerned about curbing mass shootings, he would denounce the white supremacist National Rifle Association and other lobbies for the arms profiteers. Cornyn won’t because he’d lose a source of campaign funds, having taken over $210,000 from these lobbies.

The real reason that this bill has been proposed is that students are beginning to rise up against the oppressive conditions they face in and out of school. The capitalists and their politicians view this as a threat, so they’re moving to suppress the youth’s power.

This act falls in line with other national tragedies that have been used to increase police surveillance on U.S. residents. They want to use school shootings as cover for the diversion of more of our tax dollars to private surveillance companies. They want to empower police to judge whether or not students’ posts are “suspect” or not. The record on police fusion center databases is clear: a person’s speech is most likely to be judged “suspect” when they disagree with the policies of the U.S. government. Progressive minded—not to mention revolutionary—people will be hounded by these “Big Brother” type programs while openly violent white supremacists occupy Congress and the White House. The FBI names earth protectors as one of the largest threats to the country. Funny that they pose such a threat to capitalism!

As workers, we must stop putting up with these bullshit programs. We cannot keep sacrificing our rights to millionaire liars. If we want violence to stop, it is CRITICAL that we ORGANIZE our own communities. The Feds are not going to protect us. We workers hold the collective power to protect our loved ones.

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After Border Patrol Arrests Classmate, 200 High School Students Walk Out in Arizona

Around 200 students at Tuscon Arizona’s Desert View High School staged a walkout after fellow student Thomas Torres-Maytorena was detained by Border Patrol. Torres-Maytorena is facing possible deportation just weeks ahead of his graduation date. The students marched four miles from their school to the local sheriff’s office to demand that sheriffs immediately end their collaboration with immigration authorities. The students demand Torres-Maytorena’s immediate release back to his family and friends.

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Students Protest ICE, Police, Border Patrol

Students Stage 36-day Sit-in at Johns Hopkins University

Until they were arrested on May 8, students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD had staged a 36 day sit-in to protest the school’s contracts with Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the formation of JHU’s own private police force. Over this time, hundreds of fellow students and faculty and community members came to the occupied building for screenings, panels, and community meetings.

The students also took up the cause of Tawanda Jones, who for 300 straight weeks, has held a weekly “West Wednesday” march to protest the Baltimore Police’s murder of her brother, Tyrone West. “Tawanda has been working for 300 weeks, she has been struggling to demand accountability—we also will not stop and these are the kinds of actions we are willing to take to be listened to,” Jilene Chua said. “We’ve tried so many ways to be listened to and nothing has really been working. This is the extent to which right now we are willing to go to be heard.”

“We demand the cancellation of the private police force. We demand the end of the contracts with ICE. We demand justice for Tyrone West.”

After chaining themselves to the building, they issued a statement: ”we hope we have shifted the path of this campus. We hope to have changed the history of Johns Hopkins and its relationship with Baltimore and the broader world. We will remain here until President Ronald Daniels negotiates,” a statement from the sit-in read. “We demand the cancellation of the private police force. We demand the end of the contracts with ICE. We demand justice for Tyrone West.”

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1.4 Million Students Hold Global Strike to Demand Climate Change Action Now!

Thousands of middle and high school students walked out of class in Sydney, Australia, kicking off a day of global youth-led protests demanding action on climate change.

By Nathalie Clarke

While capitalist politicians and billionaires twiddle their thumbs and hoard more wealth stolen off the backs of the working-class, students across the world are organizing and protesting elites’ inaction in the face of global climate change. On March 15th, an estimated 1.4 million students from across the world—from Nigeria to New Orleans—walked out of their schools. These internationally coordinated protests—the largest in 16 years—were organized entirely by the students themselves, and took place in 120 countries, 2,000 cities, and on every single continent including Antarctica.

Because our society prioritizes profit over the health and well-being of humans and our planet, species are going extinct at an unparalleled rate, and an estimated 210 million people have been displaced by rising sea levels and climate change-related disasters. Many of the students carried signs and banners directly connected the current ecological crisis with capitalism with slogans such as “Capitalism is killing the planet; kill capitalism;” or “Profit or future.”

Proposals such as the “Green New Deal,” are of great interest to many youth, but we cannot count on Congress to enact anything useful without a mass struggle—and certainly not without a militant struggle against US military spending and imperialist war. While we fight to push back to ultimately to save the planet, the humans and all species, we must rid ourselves of the capitalist system we live under. The super-rich extract every last resource from every human, animal, and plant on Earth in order to fill their pockets and maximize their profits. There’s no compromising with their greed.

March 15: Students from Lusher Middle and High School walked out of school to protest politicians’ inaction on climate change.

These student walkouts illustrate how powerful mass mobilizations of people can be. What if every single lab technician in a refinery or half the workers on the oil rigs across the Gulf South walked out of their jobs and demanded jobs in clean renewable energy? Our planet does not belong to the elites who poison our water, soil, and air. The planet belongs to us, those who have nothing to sell except our labor, those of us who toil in fields, and offices, and kitchens, and restaurants. When we are truly united—one band, one sound, despite our many differences—we win. We just need to wake up and see our power.

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The State Can’t Tax the Rich, But It Can Suffocate Our Colleges?

By Nathalie Clarke and Dylan Borne

In spite of his 2015 campaign promises to reallocate savings to health services and education, Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who supposedly has our best interests at heart, showed himself willing to slash education before anything else. To compensate for a $1 billion deficit, he declared on January 22nd that he would cut the Louisiana state budget by $994 million.
On January 31st his office announced that he had cut the budget by $672 million since being elected, cutting $11.9 million from higher education—a success in “fiscal responsibility.” Since Bobby Jindal was elected in 2008, funding for public colleges has been cut and tuition has persistently increased, going from 39% of universities’ revenue to 71% in 2015.

This cut is just the continuation of capitalist politics: it targets working families that cannot afford out-of-state or private universities. In 2016, when Edwards threatened the Louisiana Legislature with a $131 million budget cut, SUNO declared that 50% of adjunct faculty would be released, eliminating certain courses. In 2010 UNO faced $13 million in cutbacks. As a result, multiple programs were eliminated.

The cuts will destroy TOPS, a scholarship that covers tuition for hundreds of thousands of students. Although TOPS has its own problems (it’s based on ACT scores, and because of how expensive ACT training is, privileged kids almost always do better), it’s better than nothing, and the new budget cuts will probably cut it by 80%. The last shred of hope for many working families to send their children to college is gone. Costs of attendance have continuously been increasing; LSU now costs $30,000.

We call these cuts “capitalist” because they never fail to benefit the rich at the expense of workers. When the government of Louisiana decides to cut the budget, it never affects the military, the growing prison system, or the NOPD and their surveillance cameras, because those are “mandatory spending.” Schools, mental health services, Medicaid, youth programs, and daycare are all “discretionary,” or optional. While the rich contribute only 4.2% of their income in taxes to these programs, the working class pays 10%. So not only do workers see our programs cut, but because of the regressive tax code that steals wealth from the poor and redistributes it to the rich, we may not be able to afford private services to replace them. In 2012, a study by the Revenue Study Commission found that the top 2.3% of taxpayers raked in 55% of tax credits. These tax credits alone could refund TOPS—film industry tax credits totaled $231 million.

In the past, students and faculty from public universities around New Orleans have fought back against the budget cuts. In 2010 and 2015 at UNO, SUNO, McNeese, and LSU alike, students and professors have rallied to defend the right to higher education. While the government is slow to respond, the 2015 protests led to a partial renewal of TOPS funding. The state doesn’t have our interests at heart, but it gives us what we deserve when we hold its feet to the fire. Only a powerful student movement, with the support of working communities, will solve our education crisis.

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Attacks on Title IX Threaten Trans People

Last year, the Department of Education rolled back previously-won support for transgender students, but until this year, it was unclear how far they would take it. Recently, cases brought before them have been rejected and their intentions are clear: they no longer recognize the inclusion of “gender identity” under Title IX, the law that guarantees equal access to students to school activities. Not only has this allowed schools to deny trans students access to school activities, but it has also removed bathroom access from the list of protections under the law.

This exclusion will allow schools to force trans students to use facilities designated to their birth-assigned genders. For many trans students, this will make them vulnerable. It is a signal that these institutions do not recognize their genders as valid, which not only causes personal distress to the students, but also endorses harassment from students and staff.

The Education Department is playing a dangerous game, trying to split hairs over what is and what isn’t sexist discrimination in order to support the fear-mongering tactics that have demonized and endangered trans people for decades. The truth is that this is yet another ploy to divide the working class and reverse a minor victory for LGBTQ people, a part of the assault on everything we have fought for. We must build solidarity and demand equality for all!

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Gun Violence Should Not Turn a Profit: A Revolutionary Take on Guns in the US

 

By the New Orleans Workers Group

Dear fellow students and workers,

We congratulate the youth movement for taking the first steps to fight gun violence. We are all grieving and outraged by the school shootings in Parkland and throughout the United States.

But more than thoughts and prayers, what we extend is Solidarity. As much as we grieve, we work for a solution.

This work begins with the question: Why? Why do we have a culture of gun violence?

Our answer: Because arms dealers make a killing off it.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting in Newton, while families were burying their children, gun corporations were laughing their way to the bank. During that year following the shooting, the three largest gun manufacturers (Sturm Ruger, Remington Outdoor, and Smith & Wesson) saw their profits skyrocket 70%. As a whole, the gun industry adds up to $8 billion.

Where do these profits go?

Arms dealers live in luxury. Firearms tycoon Ugo Beretta lives in a mansion, walls decorated with elephant tusks and buffalo heads, Venetian chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. He drives a Maserati, has a private butler and cook, and his wife had a teddy bear made for her out of cash—and his gun company is only the 9th largest.

Everything that doesn’t fund the arms dealers’ blood mansions floods the NRA’s multi-million-dollar bank vaults.

Then the money-making cycle restarts as the NRA funds America’s profitable gun cult. Gun lobbyists have politicians at every level of government in the palm of their hand, all the way up to Donald Trump, who received $30 million from them. In some states, like Florida, lobbyists skip the politicians and just write the gun laws themselves. It’s there that the NRA pushed through the “Stand Your Ground” law, which justified the murder of Trayvon Martin and basically legalized hate crime. It’s not just political: the NRA wants to make violence a part of everyday culture. Their ads are just propaganda putting the mask of “freedom” on gun violence. Their million-dollar donors get the NRA’s “Golden Ring of Freedom”— which comes with a fancy blazer and a lifetime of lavish receptions and parties. This is nothing short of a glorification of America’s violence.

What do we think is the fix?

The New Orleans Workers Group believes gun control misses the main point. It treats the symptom, not the disease: profit, and the culture of violence it creates. Even if we have gun control, the (rich white) people who can afford guns will still find ways to get them because they’re in such a profitable market. Meanwhile the poor will be left defenseless. Everything from background checks to buyback programs will hit working class communities the hardest. Black communities will have nothing to protect themselves against hate crime and police violence.

At the end of the day, we can’t solve the gun problem as long as arms dealers can turn a profit.

We also believe that this point is for the entire culture of violence and can’t be separated from police brutality or war profiteering. No kind of arms dealer should make profits– whether they sell to shooters, racist cops, or the US military empire.

No massacre is too big or too small for them: if militarizing a racist police force or launching a war will make money, they’ll make it happen.

Racist cops and war are just as much of cash cows as school shootings. Glock, a top 10 gun corporation, sells 2/3 of all police handguns, the same handguns that the police uses to murder 1,000 people per year (hundreds of them black and indigenous). General Dynamics, Raytheon, BAE Sytems, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin (the top 5 military arms dealers) make a grand total of $133.9 billion yearly. They’re the biggest money-makers, responsible for the biggest bloodbath: the “War on Terror” that’s so far killed 4 million Muslims, mostly innocent civilians. But that’s 4 million lives they’re ready to spare if it lines their pockets.

There’s no way around it: The solution to the capitalist culture of violence involves eliminating guns for profit and wars for profit.

If the government can regulate profits made off things like medicine, it can make it a crime for arms tycoons to exploit violence to line their pockets. It’ll be up to the students and workers to build a movement to make that happen.

Love and Solidarity,

The Students and Workers of the New Orleans Workers Group

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The State Can’t Tax the Rich, But It Can Suffocate Our Colleges?

By Nathalie Clarke and Dylane Borne

In spite of his 2015 campaign promises to reallocate savings to health services and education, Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who supposedly has the workers’ best interests at heart, showed himself willing to slash education before anything else: to compensate for a $1 billion deficit, he declared on January 22nd that he would cut the Louisiana state budget by $994 million. On January 31st his office announced that he had cut the budget by $672 million since being elected, cutting $11.9 million from higher education–a success in “fiscal responsibility” according to them. Since Bobby Jindal was elected governor in 2008, funding for public colleges has been cut, and tuition has persistently increased, going from 39% of universities’ revenue to 71% in 2015.

This new cut is just the continuation of capitalist politics: these cuts will disproportionately affect working families that cannot afford out-of-state or private universities, ridiculous fees at private hospitals, or private healthcare. In 2016, when Edwards threatened the Louisiana Legislature with a $131 million budget cut, SUNO declared that 50% of adjunct faculty would be released, eliminating certain course sections. In 2010 UNO faced $13 million in cutbacks. As a result, multiple programs including Women and Gender Studies and other liberal arts majors were completely eliminated.

(Source: the advocate)

The cuts will destroy TOPS, a scholarship that covers tuition for hundreds of thousands of students. Although TOPS has its own problems (it’s based on ACT scores, and because of how expensive ACT training is, rich whites almost always do better), it’s better than nothing, and the new budget cuts will probably cut it by 80%. The last shred of hope for working families to send their children to college is pretty much gone. Costs of attendance have continuously been increasing; LSU tuition and fees now total almost $30,000.

The seven-figure-income-wealthy rake in the bulk of tax credits by far. (Source: Revenue Study Commission)

Comparison of total percent taxes paid by each income bracket. The lowest 20% of workers pay almost twice as much as the very wealthiest. (Source: Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy)

We call these cuts “capitalist” because they never fail to benefit the rich and powerful at the expense of the working class. When the government of Louisiana decides to cut the budget, it never affects the military, the prison-slavery complex, or the NOPD and their fancy new surveillance cameras, because those are “mandatory spending.” Schools, mental health services, Medicaid, youth programs, and day care are all “discretionary,” or optional, spending. And while the rich contribute only 4.2% of their income in taxes to these programs, the working class pays a full 10%. So not only do workers see their programs cut, but because of the regressive tax code that steals wealth from the poor and redistributes it to the rich, we may not be able to afford private services to replace them. In 2012, a study by the Revenue Study Commission found that the top 2.3% of taxpayers raked in 55% of tax credits. These tax credits alone could refund TOPS– film industry tax credits totaled at $231 million according to the study.

In the past, students and faculty from public universities around New Orleans have fought back against the budget cuts. In 2010 and 2015 at UNO, SUNO, McNeese, and LSU alike, students and professors have rallied, chanted, and marched to defend the right to a decent education. While the government is slow to respond, the 2015 protests led to a partial renewal of TOPS funding. And international movements give us hope: only 50 years ago, in May 1968, students around Paris created a mass movement that, combined with other protests and strikes, profoundly impacted the face of French politics. The state doesn’t have our interests at heart, but it gives us what we deserve when we hold its feet to the fire. Only a powerful student movement will solve our education crisis.

Protest against budget cuts at the University of New Orleans in 2010. Cuts and tuition hikes have only gotten worse since. (Source: gambit)