![[WWP web page]](../graphics/homepage.gif)
![[News]](../graphics/news.gif)
![[Subscribe]](../graphics/free.gif)
![[Vote WWP]](../graphics/vote.gif)
![[Join us!]](../graphics/join.gif)
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted
from the Oct. 24, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
Students, parents, community leaders and unionists held a news conference here Oct. 4 to condemn a vicious racist attack against African American high-school students eight days earlier.
Mae Green, Monitor Unit chairperson of USWA Local 8751 School Bus Drivers and Monitors union, told the media, "We will not allow the same old racist forces that we have been fighting for more than 20 years to take away gains that took decades to win! We must fight back!"
Green has been fighting the racist forces since the early 1970s when she organized opposition to anti-busing bigot Louise Day Hicks.
Her statement represented the sentiment of the alliance holding the news conference in front of Boston Latin Academy, a high school in the heart of Boston's African American community.
On Sept. 26, carloads of white thugs, some in their twenties, armed with hockey sticks, bats and mace, launched a well orchestrated and coordinated attack on the Black students there.
Some of the bigots, including a 23-year-old South Boston man, were taken into custody by the cops and then immediately released. Police brought no charges against any of the racists.
City Councilor Charles Yancy, a news conference convener, called for an independent inquiry into the Sept. 26 events. He demanded the perpetrators be brought to justice.
On Oct. 15 the Latin Academy Parents Council and the Citywide Council will host a Town Meeting at the school to mobilize parents and students in this important struggle.
Boston's racist forces both in and out of political office have been waging an all-out war against desegregation and affirmative action in the schools. They even are attacking the community's right to democratically elect school committee members.
Democrats and Republicans from the White House down have joined the chorus against affirmative action, giving the green light to these right-wing forces in Boston. School Superintendent Tho mas Payzant, a former Clinton administration federal education bureaucrat known for a corporate downsizing approach to education, has called for "100-percent neighborhood schools."
The calls for a return to "neighborhood" and "walk-to" schools are just code words for totally dismantling desegregation.
In recent months there has been a shameful campaign against the few affirmative-action slots open for getting into what are known as exam schools, which provide relatively better academic opportunities. Decades of struggle won these few guaranteed seats in exam schools, which the racists now want to eliminate.
Even Judge Garrity, who decided in favor of busing for desegregation in a 1974 suit, has caved in to the national racist agenda and agreed with the bigots on the exam-school issue.
Several years ago then-Mayor Raymond Flynn, in an anti-democratic and racist move, abolished the elected school committee, replacing it with one of his own choosing. Mayor Thomas Menino has continued this sham as a way to push his racist education program.
A grassroots campaign in the African American community has organized for a return to an elected committee. The question will be on the ballot in November. An unrelenting hate campaign financed by Boston's corporations and banks has been mounted to defeat this question.
The Oct. 4 news conference indicated that many groups see the need for a united anti-racist mobilization to defend the right of self-determination for Boston's oppressed communities.
At that conference, USWA Local 8751 Chief Steward Leo Edwards pledged the solidarity of his 1,200-member union in the community's fight to build that movement.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@wwpublish.com. For subscription info send message to: ww-info@wwpublish.com. Web: http://www.workers.org)