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 No.
8, April 2011
Table of
Contents
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CUNY: No Tuition Hike
Abolish the Board of Trustees
Last fall the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York voted to raise tuition by 5 percent in the Spring semester of 2011. This raised the cost of attending one of CUNY’s four-year colleges to over $5,000 a year including fees, a prohibitive amount for most working-class families. The Board held a public hearing on 15 November 2010 on the proposed budget and tuition and fee schedule. Students and teachers from around the CUNY system came to the hearing to voice their opposition. The BoT greeted them with a show of police force. A week later these capitalist enemies of public education voted the tuition hike, plus raising the Fall 2011 hike to 5 percent. We reprint here the remarks of Kirstine Jungkurth, president of the Internationalist Club at Hunter College, who spoke to the audience at the November 15. CUNY: No Tuition Hike Abolish the Board of Trustees (April 2011)
“Secure Communities” = War on Immigrant Communities
Drive Out ICE – Migra Go to Hell!
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants! Democrats, Republicans –
Enemies of Immigrants! Build a Revolutionary Workers Party!
In May 2010, the governor of New York signed the state on to the Department of Homeland Security’s “Secure Communities Program.” This followed the signing of Arizona’s infamous racial profiling law that allows police to arrest anyone suspected of being an “illegal” immigrant. The CUNY Internationalist Clubs and the Internationalist Group joined protests against the racist Arizona law, but we warned that a much greater danger to undocumented immigrants is the federal government, which under Democrat Barack Obama is deporting far more people every year than Republican Bush ever did. “Secure Communities” establishes a system that allows the ICE police and other federal agencies to work with local police to arrest and deport more undocumented immigrants. To win full citizenship rights for all immigrants requires revolutionary struggle against both capitalist parties, for whom the Secure Communities program is their xenophobic vision of immigration “reform.” Drive Out ICE – Migra Go to Hell! (April 2011)
Coalitions with Democrats, No!
Class Struggle to Shut NYC Down, Yes!
Ever since the bank crash and stock market panic of September 2008, working people, students, oppressed communities, the poor and large parts of the middle classes have been under attack. We are facing a concerted, bipartisan assault on public education by the partner parties of American capitalism, Democrats and Republicans alike. In New York City, a coalition of 50-plus community, student, labor and left groups called a “State of Emergency Protest” on March 24. The CUNY Internationalist Clubs were there calling for militant class struggle but opposing the bourgeois pressure politics represented by the coalition, which includes Democratic Party politicians and a host of groups linked to them. Modeled on the antiwar coalitions of the 1970s, such class-collaborationist alliances are pressure groups on the left flank of the Democrats. The coalition's main demand is to “Tax the rich.” Taxing the wealthy is fine, but it won’t put a dent in the assault on public education and working people. “Tax the rich” and “fight the right” are diversions. The assault on labor can only be defeated by mobilizing to shred anti-labor legislation like New York’s no-strike Taylor Law and breaking with the Democrats to build a workers party that fights for socialist revolution. Coalitions with Democrats, No! Class Struggle to Shut NYC Down, Yes! (24 March 2011)
Mobilize Workers’ Power Against Racist Cop Terror
ILWU Shuts Ports Demanding Justice for Oscar Grant
At 2 a.m. on New Year’s Day 2009, Bay Area Rapid Transit cop Johannes Mehserle stood over Oscar Grant and shot him in the back, killing the 22-year-old black man. It was the kind of cop murder, particularly of African American and Latino young men, that happens over and over in racist capitalist America. But last October 23, Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) shut down the port of Oakland, California for the day shift and led a rally of 600 outside Oakland City Hall to protest the insulting “involuntary manslaughter” verdict against Mehserle (by a jury in Los Angeles on which there was not one black person) and demand “justice for Oscar Grant.” A number of left groups were pushing the slogan “Jail Killer Cops,” one of the main demands of the demonstration. The reformists are propagating the bourgeois democratic myth that under pressure, the state can be made to serve the interests of the masses. Still, although mainly symbolic, the ILWU action points toward a real mobilization of workers’ power in militant class struggle against the brutal enforcers of capitalist “law and order.” ILWU Shuts Ports Demanding Justice for Oscar Grant (April 2011)
NSA Imperialist Spies Off Campus!
The People Who Listen to Your Phone Calls and Read Your E-Mails Went Trolling at Hunter College
Everybody knows about the CIA and the FBI. But the National Security Agency (NSA) is the largest – and most secretive – of all the government’s spy agencies. This is the outfit that Senator Frank Church said, when he investigated U.S. domestic spying and “dirty tricks” back in 1975, could be used “to impose total tyranny.” On March 4, the sinister snoops came to Hunter College seeking to lure students “looking for a career.” The Hunter Internationalist Club called a protest to demand imperialist spies off campus. NSA Imperialist Spies Off Campus! (March 2011)
Join the Fight for Socialist Revolution
Join the CUNY Internationalist Clubs!
We are the CUNY Internationalist Clubs, the organization of revolutionary Marxist students at the City University of New York. We seek to win students to the struggle to sweep away the wreckage of capitalism and to replace it with a socialist society. We educate ourselves and our fellow students about the struggle of the working class and the oppressed, and the revolutionary theory of Marxism. We agitate against all the injustices that are created by the capitalist system: for the defeat of the U.S. in its bloody imperialist war in Afghanistan and Iraq and attacks on immigrants “at home.” We fight against the racist oppression of black people. Together with the Internationalist Group, we organize students to join the struggle to put an end to these injustices by helping to build a revolutionary workers party. The CUNY Internationalist Clubs stand on the tradition and program of Leon Trotsky, the organizer with Lenin of the 1917 October Revolution. We are a small group with big tasks. What we have going for us is a revolutionary program, and a determination to make our deeds match our words. In 2004-05 we were able to kick military recruiters off the campus of Bronx Community College. We have led student/worker protests at Hunter College against tuition hikes, in defense of cafeteria workers against union-busting, and in solidarity with May Day 2008 West Coast dock workers strike against the Iraq and Afghanistan war. We’ve held educational forums for hundreds of students on issues ranging from immigrants’ rights to the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. Join us in the struggle for a socialist world! Join the CUNY Internationalist Clubs! (October 2010)
Mobilize Workers Power – Free Troy Davis Now!
With the stroke of a pen, on March 28 the U.S. Supreme Court rejected every appeal of Troy Anthony Davis, clearing the last significant legal obstacle in the way of his execution by the state of Georgia. Davis, a 42-year-old black man, was framed by police and prosecutors for the murder of a Savannah, Georgia police officer in 1989, based on the coerced and false testimony of supposed eyewitnesses, the majority of whom have since renounced their testimony. ILA dock workers and many others in Savannah, Georgia know know that Troy Davis is innocent. It is urgently necessary to mobilize workers power to stop this legal lynching and smash the racist death penalty! Mobilize Workers Power – Free Troy Davis Now! (October 2010)
CUNY Adjuncts “Won’t Take No For An Answer”
From Mexico: Solidarity with UPR Students
International Women’s Day: A Proletarian Day of Struggle
Defeat NATO Attack on Libya!
The Dream Act Swindle
CUNY Students and the Fight for Mumia’s Freedom
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To contact the League for the Fourth International or its sections, send an e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com |