Revolutionary students need to stake an independent political position in the current crisis. We don’t have to side with either political camp of the bourgeoisie:

• The liberals, who hypocritically say “listen to science” but won’t provide adequate protections, financial relief, or health care. 
• The far-right and COVID skeptics who refuse to get vaccinated and deny the real dangers and risks.

Neither of these positions meet the needs of students. Neither of these positions represent the politics of the working class. 

It’s not red vs blue: the whole ruling class is to blame. Since March 2020 — under both a Republican and a Democrat in the White House — the government has allowed a pandemic to decimate our lives. They offer empty promises of financial support, debt forgiveness, and safe working/school conditions. Crises are opportunities for the ruling class to consolidate their power, enact policies that impoverish the working class, and disorganize revolutionary and democratic forces – just like the “security measures” of the War on Terror, or the bailouts after the Great Recession.

The schools want to profit while they offer us less. University administrations have shown that they only care about taking our $$$$: charging tuition while campuses are closed, kicking us out of dorms, cutting health care programs, preventing student gatherings on campus, and firing teachers and staff. 

Across the board, the people in charge have mishandled both the lockdowns and the reopenings. With the turn to remote learning, students from working families, already struggling with high costs of living and unemployment, were left without the necessary technology to access quality education. Closing campuses cut off important resources for students. The leaders of faculty and staff unions made compromises with the administration, allowing jobs to be cut and wages to be lost. Every aspect of the current crisis has been an occasion for the bourgeoisie to attack students and the working people. 

In New York City, essentially a one-party city, where worker layoffs and budget cuts are carried out by Democrats, we take a firm stand against liberals and so-called “progressives” while also opposing the anti-scientific paranoia of the COVID deniers and right-wing reactionaries.

COVID is the symptom, capitalism is the crisis. Socialism is the solution.

→ Read our COVID charter of demands for students.

→ Print this article as a leaflet to share at  your school: