Which way forward after school massacre?
By Sarah
Sloan
The Columbine High School shooting on April 20 in Littleton,
Colo., is having repercussions throughout the country. Most
affected are the students at this school and other young
people.
Some of the students went to picket a conference of the
National Rifle Association. These and other effected young
people are going to become heart-wrenching champions of gun
control. But if the objectives of gun control were to be
achieved, this would only strip the masses of a means to
self-defense and leave only the state--the armed repressive
force of the ruling class--with the weapons.
And gun control doesn't work. Guns are readily available.
The question is, what will be the ideology behind their
use?
The Columbine killings--where two young men shot to death
twelve students, a teacher, and then themselves--took place on
Hitler's birthday. The shooters were white supremacists. They
were openly racist. They were obsessed with Hitler. They went
to a mainly white school but made sure to kill the only African
American student they could find.
And afterwards, President Clinton said: "We also have to
take this moment once again to hammer home to all the children
of America that violence is wrong. ... [We have ] to show our
children by the power of our own example how to resolve
conflicts peacefully. ... We must do more to reach out to our
children and teach them to express their anger and to resolve
their conflicts with words, not weapons."
But what Clinton and the other bourgeois figures don't talk
about are the defining features of the killings--racism and
violence. They spout hypocritical clichés, cry crocodile
tears, and then they go back to their war against Yugoslavia.
They fail to mention the ideology behind the killings, the
source of this ideology, and how to effectively fight it.
But what they do say serves a very important purpose.
The ruling class would love to take advantage of this
tragedy to pass more repressive laws, especially against young
people and oppressed people, just like they used the Oklahoma
City bombing to pass racist and anti-immigrant legislation.
There is no strong working-class movement right now. The
super-rich and their political representatives are doing their
best to make everyone grow up to believe that capitalism is all
there is, that it's human nature, that there's no hope beyond
their system's alienation. But for every two Nazis like those
who carried out the massacre, there's a whole school full of
young people who are horrified and disgusted by what happened.
The question that remains is, where will they go with this
horror and disgust?
Anyone with their eyes open is going to find all of the
ruling-class reaction totally absurd and disgusting.
As they bemoan the violence of society, they fail to mention
the war they're waging and the militarism implicit in the
incident. They don't mention that the father of one of the
shooters is a retired Air Force officer, or that the Pentagon
is preparing to send young people across the world to kill and
be killed--whether it's in Yugoslavia this month, or Korea or
Iraq the next month--to expand an empire that serves only
bourgeois class interests.
The racism and violence of the shootings are taken for
granted because they're endemic to capitalism. Because they are
necessary for capitalism to survive and prosper. The
bourgeoisie is feigning being all aghast, asking where all of
this alienation and nihilism and hatred comes from, like it's
all some big mystery.
As Marxists, we can look at this scientifically and
understand that these were fascist youths and that they are
products of capitalism. We can work to build a revolutionary,
multinational, working-class movement that fights racism,
oppression, and imperialist war. And that is already
beginning.
On April 24, 30,000 people--mostly young, Black, Latino,
Asian, Native, Arab, white, lesbian, gay, bi, trans and
straight--marched through Philadelphia to demand freedom for
Mumia Abu-Jamal. Twenty thousand marched in San Francisco.
And on June 5, tens of thousands will march on the Pentagon
to end the war against Yugoslavia.
Young people are rising to the challenge by taking the front
lines of these struggles. And when the struggle grows, everyone
will have to decide whether they are going to fight for or
against fascism, oppression and capitalism.
The writer is a youth organizer for Millions for Mumia
and the International Action Center and a member of Workers
World Party. To get involved in the June 5 March on the
Pentagon and the struggle to free Mumia, contact the IAC. Phone
(212) 633-6646 or email iacenter@iacenter.org.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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