http://themilitant.com/2015/7946/794605.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 46 December 21, 2015
(front page, commentary)
Attacks on right to free speech are blow to the working class
BY MAGGIE TROWE
A growing trend among academics, students, liberals and some who call
themselves socialists is to threaten and shout down those with whom they
disagree. This is an attack on precious political rights won in
hard-fought struggles by working people and must be vigorously opposed.
Some students have tried to bar talks and performances by Israeli
academics and artists, and those who hold differing views on Israel. At
a recent protest at Hunter College against tuition and for cancelling
student debts, one group, saying the problem was “Zionist”
administrators, tried to drive off four Jewish students who joined with
signs backing the action that also supported the existence of Israel.
During recent student protests carried out under the banner of the fight
against racism at the University of Missouri, Yale, Cornell and other
campuses, the right to free speech became the target, instead of putting
forward clear demands to overturn policies that discriminate against
Blacks and forge unity in action.
On Nov. 9 when student photojournalist Tim Tai visited a University of
Missouri at Columbia public protest calling for more racial awareness,
some students told him he couldn’t take pictures because the protest
area was their “safe space.” Tai replied that the right to protest and
his right to report on the protests were protected by the Constitution,
and another journalist supported him. Melissa Click, an assistant
professor taking part in the protest, shouted, “Who wants to help me get
this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here!”
Many liberals and leftist groups say — mistakenly — that racist attacks
are growing like wildfire, and if free speech must be sacrificed to stop
them, so be it. In fact, the mass proletarian movement of
African-Americans and their allies in the 1950s and ’60s strengthened
the working class and transformed the consciousness of workers of all
nationalities. The fight against police brutality and killings over the
last year and a half have forced the rulers to indict some cops and take
steps to rein them in.
There are fewer, not more, racist attacks today. But because of the
changes in social attitude wrought by struggle, they get more publicity
and response.
Convinced of the opposite, the Ithaca College student government
initiated a witch-hunt “Microaggressions Reporting System” in March,
urging students to report “social exchanges in which verbal, behavioral,
or environmental indignities are committed that marginalize an
individual(s) or specific group(s).”
When Cornell University student William Heisenberg posted on Facebook
plans for a Nov. 13 action in solidarity with protests against racism at
other colleges, he was accused of “microaggression” against “PoCs”
(people of color). The Black Students United asked him to cancel the
event because of “the lack of people of color in the planning and
attendance of this protest,” and Mexican student group MEChA said he
“perpetuates a white savior complex, placing the power to decide change
in the hands of those not living our realities.”
The Yale University Intercultural Affairs Committee sent an email to
students warning them not to wear a Halloween costume that “disrespects,
alienates or ridicules segments of our population” and cautioning
against “cultural appropriation and/or misrepresentation” — dressing as
a person of a different race or culture.
When Yale lecturer Erika Christakis responded, warning that U.S.
universities “have become places of censure and prohibition,” some Yale
students organized angry protests demanding she resign, which she did
Dec. 7.
Reject violence in workers movement
Censorship and thuggery are defended in a Nov. 16 editorial posted on
the website of Workers World, the newspaper of the Workers World Party,
which calls itself socialist.
Free speech is “racism” and “a tool the capitalist ruling class uses as
it propagandizes, organizes and legislates to keep all oppressed people
— and emphatically people of color — silent and powerless,” the editors
state.
“This world cannot be built using narrow legalities put in place by a
bourgeois democratic revolution in the 1700s that framed ‘rights’ as
possessed only by white, propertied men,” the editors write, tossing out
the window constitutional protections won in blood by working people.
Far from being “narrow legalities” of a bygone era, the gains of the
first American Revolution, including the successful fight led by workers
and small shopkeepers for the Bill of Rights, written to protect the
people from the state; and the second American Revolution, the Civil
War, that abolished slavery, initiated Radical Reconstruction and
codified emancipation, equal protection, citizenship and suffrage in the
13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution are sorely
needed for working-class struggles today. They aren’t just a concern of
“dead white men” and “rightists,” as many on the left argue today.
Violence has no place in the working-class movement. Shouting down
speakers, shutting down meetings or banning the expression of opinions
you don’t agree with prevents the debate necessary to reach political
clarity, build a mighty proletarian movement and fight for political power.
‘Operation Mop-Up’
In the 1970s the National Caucus of Labor Committees led by Lyndon
LaRouche — which called itself socialist while on the road to becoming a
fascist outfit — announced that groups in the workers’ movement it said
were obstacles to the struggle needed to be eliminated. They launched
what they called “Operation Mop-Up,” aiming to “pulverize” and “bury”
the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party. Armed with lead
pipes, nunchucks and clubs, LaRouchite goons in 1973 attacked meetings
the groups participated in and members walking home or to work.
The Socialist Workers Party organized a broad political campaign — and
united-front defense squads — that beat the thugs back and brought their
attacks to a halt.
Only by considering all ideas in an atmosphere of free debate and
discussion can working people decide how to effectively oppose
imperialism and war; fight for higher wages and unions; push back police
violence; win affirmative action in hiring for African-Americans, women
and all victims of discrimination; and build a labor party based on the
unions.
Related articles:
Chicago actions protest cop killings, cover-up
Justice Dept. announces probe of city police
Baltimore: First cop on trial in killing of Freddie Gray
Fight cop brutality, defend free speech!
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