We Don’t Need Drugs, We Need Revolution here ♦ Racist Attacks on College Students here ♦ Communist Ideas Welcomed at Oakland Protest here ♦
Oakland, CA, USA, March 4—Over 500 teachers, parents, and students marched to demand “No School Closures in Oakland!”‘
We Don’t Need Drugs, We Need Revolution
LOS ANGELES (US), March 5—”The Biden administration is funding crack pipes.” This narrative has spread for the last few weeks as the administration revealed a $30 million harm-reduction plan for safe-smoking kits which provide a cleaner way to use drugs.
Communists ask: Why do workers turn to drugs in the first place?
On the one hand, capitalists have historically used drugs (including alcohol, opium, heroin, and opioids) to make big profits while keeping oppressed people marginalized and pacified.
On the other hand, following the uprisings of the 1960s and 70s in US Black communities, the US ruling class used drugs as part of a strategy to systematically target and destroy the militant unity of Black workers.
The CIA-backed contras of Nicaragua funneled drugs into Black and Latinx neighborhoods through drug dealers like Ricky Ross in South Central Los Angeles. The criminalization of crack and the war on drugs waged on communities of color saw harsh sentencing for workers. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump especially targeted Black men as “super-predators.” Joe Biden used similar language when arguing for the 1993 Crime Bill that led to racist mass incarceration.
Is drug use a “choice”?
Capitalism uses this argument to justify drug use. Communists look at the societal circumstances for that freedom of choice. Capitalism puts workers in the individualistic mindsets to look out for themselves. Workers turn to drugs often when others around them are using in communities where poverty, drug use, and unemployment are high.
“Having seen the long-term effects of drug use in South Central Los Angeles,” said a young comrade, “I have never seen a world without drug use. I chose to be a communist because I saw people who had made that choice. But choice is based on what options you have around you.”
Communist society will have a real public health policy
“Portugal decriminalized all drugs, spent millions on treatment and rehab, and saved millions,” commented a friend.
Drug legalization isn’t designed to get to the root of the problem. Legalizing drugs lets the ruling class collect taxes from their sale.
Needle-exchange public health programs may slow the spread of disease from shared drug paraphernalia and reduce hospitalizations. But they do not address the root social causes of drug use. If capitalism as a system wanted to eradicate drug addiction, it would have jailed the billionaire owners of Big Pharma (like the Sacklers) for the opioid murder of hundreds of thousands of unemployed or partially employed workers. Instead it slapped them on the wrist with fines that barely touched their astronomical fortunes.
The ruling class wants us to think there is no other way
No one should feel like they have to deal with their past traumas and struggles in life alone. We must not be deceived by the same government which created the conditions for drugs to suck the lives out of so many. We must build the communist ties within the working class that embody the collective society we are fighting for.
When we overthrow capitalism, the bloody life-practices of drug use to cope will begin to disappear because the day-to-day struggle to survive will be collective. Communist society will nurture the human interactions and interconnected relationships that we will build with our neighbors and friends.
The working class doesn’t need drugs. We need communist revolution.
Racist Attacks on College Students: Opportunity to Build ICWP
“This educational crisis parallels the health care crisis, the infrastructure crisis, the environmental crisis, and now war in Europe,” I posted in Zoom. “The system is failing. If we want a society where those who do the work (like educating students) make the policies, we should be talking social revolution.”
“It’s so disgusting,” replied a colleague. “And I love your comment about social revolution!”
This story is about how class struggle is everywhere. Even as capitalists aggressively push nationalism and “national unity” amidst the Ukraine war. A story about using the opportunities this creates to advance communism.
The Zoom meeting was discussing a proposed state law (AB 1705) that would require community colleges to enroll almost all new students in transfer-level Math and English. Unfortunately, even pre-pandemic, many working-class youths (especially Black and Brown students) were pushed through high school without the necessary skills.
Schools serve capitalists’ needs, not workers. Fifty years ago, US capitalists expanded community colleges to build illusions in the system. They wanted to get the growing numbers of rebellious young unemployed workers off the streets.
Now – facing a global crisis and the decline of US imperialism – they have different needs. The number of US-born young adults is shrinking. The rulers will need them as cannon fodder in expanding wars. Fewer workers born elsewhere are getting into the US due to racist immigration policies under Trump and Biden.
Now California capitalists want young adults competing for low-wage jobs, not in college. They are pushing working-class college students through as fast as possible. Those who have to drop out are encouraged to blame themselves.
Math teachers and others are pushing back against AB 1705 and the LA Community College District’s attempt to cancel all non-transferable math and English classes. A college official told me that “the law requires it” (untrue). I replied that “the law” once required everyone to help return formerly enslaved people to their so-called “owners.” She needed a better reason.
I have been talking and emailing about this with about fifty teachers, including ten who have read Red Flag. Most see AB 1705 as a racist attack on student success. They see that the state legislature hopes to save money by driving students away. LACCD officials moan about decreasing enrollment, but their own policies accelerate the decline.
“We could easily figure out 100 ways to arrange things so that everyone gets the lifelong education they want and need,” I messaged a friend. “Capitalism can’t stop or manage climate change, can’t provide decent health care, can’t feed the children, can’t prevent more and deadlier wars…. and can’t educate people either. Time for revolution.”
The slogan “A system cannot fail those it was never built to protect” went viral after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin’s murderer, ten years ago. It’s true for the legal system and true for capitalist schools.
Few expect to stop the racist attacks on our students and our jobs, though many are fired up to fight. The alternative to cynicism and passivity is the struggle for the possibility of communism.
—Los Angeles college teacher
Read our pamphlet: “Communist Education for Classless Society” here
Communist Ideas Welcomed at Oakland Protest
OAKLAND (USA), March 5— Over 500 teachers, parents, students and Oaklanders marched two and half miles to demand “No School Closures in Oakland!” After closing 20 schools since 2003, the state agency FCMAT insists on even more drastic budget cuts and 11 more school closures. All these schools have mostly Black and Brown students. It was a tremendous demonstration of the anger and determination of teachers and parents to resist the continuing attack on life and schooling in the working- class communities that make up the Oakland flatlands.
The Charter School movement serves real estate developers like the billionaire Fisher family in particular, but also other sections of the capitalist class in general. By cutting the cost of schooling it helps cheapen the social welfare cost of government and so frees up more tax dollars to feed the enormous military budget.
It was among these committed pro-working-class activists that two retired teachers distributed Red Flag, ICWP’s Communist Education pamphlet, and made contacts among the marchers. Introducing the idea that communism is a real movement to abolish the present state of things is a novel idea, even to those activists who are familiar with the history of socialism. But after twenty years of unsuccessfully resisting the advance of Charter Schools, the understanding of the need for revolution is growing.
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