Two students who had come to the youth/student conference in San Francisco were inspired and unleashed to invite the Refuse Fascism National Tour to their high school. They had been bringing the Refuse Fascism message to their classmates for weeks, and thought it would help to bring in people from the outside, so that the students would hear it in a different way. They talked to a teacher on the first day back from school and arranged for us to come speak the next day to a group of about 35 students of all grade levels, mostly Black and Latino, who are part of a “social justice” program at the school.
We were given two hours to give a presentation and have a discussion on the situation we face, the mission of Refuse Fascism and the role of students in all of this. Someone from the Bay Area chapter of Refuse Fascism, someone from the Tour, and the two students, led the presentation to the class. We started off with the same icebreaker that we did at the student conference called “fear in a hat,” where we had the whole class write down what their biggest fear is if the Trump/Pence regime stays in power. After we collected them, each of us picked a few out of the hat and read them out loud.
One of the cards said, “I am afraid of women’s rights being taken away and of climate change.” Another said, “I am afraid of nuclear war.” We each spoke about the underlying implications of each fear that we read. We expanded on the policies being passed and what the regime is doing and is planning to do based on the fears stated, many of which the students did not know of and were shocked to hear.
The students had a lot of questions, and the teacher also really helped by expanding on the role the U.S. has played throughout history in the world, and that it is the only country to have used nuclear weapons. She emphasized the point that it is the U.S. that is dangerously threatening North Korea, not the other way around. One of us also explained to the class how in North Korea, many students their age have been participating in bomb drills and preparing themselves for the high possibility of the U.S. dropping a nuclear bomb on them based on Trump’s real threats to do so.
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More than one student expressed the importance of education, because so many people don’t like Trump but don’t know the reality of what’s going on. We showed them the indictment pamphlets we brought and explained the kind of information they have on the regime and how they can be used as a tool to educate others.
A Muslim student expressed how, “The U.S. has been dropping bombs on Syria and Yemen, this is no different from what has been going on.” A Black female student explained how “I’d rather have someone who is openly racist rather than hiding it like how all of the other presidents have.” It was great that this social justice class had been educated on the real history of U.S. crimes against humanity throughout the world! But we also had to challenge the idea that this is just more of the same. First of all, because a society that has become normalized to an open white supremacist as president is a society that would accept genocide. Secondly, because Trump’s blatant white supremacy means a major escalation of the oppression of Black people and other people of color – in the same way that horrific anti-semitism existed in Europe before the Nazis, but the Nazis took it to a new level of horror. And thirdly, because Trump threatens the whole planet with environmental destruction, and even the existence of the human species with his threats of nuclear war!
One of us asked the class if they knew what fascism was. One student said, “It’s when nobody has rights.” One of us explained that fascism is not just a combination of horrific and reactionary policies, but what’s crucial to understand is that fascism essentially eliminates traditional democratic rights, and he broke down how the regime is doing exactly that right now. He also made some parallels between Nazi Germany and the fascism of today, but explained how there are different kinds of fascism, and made the point that Bob Avakian makes in the talk “The Trump/Pence Regime Must GO!” that there is a direct line between the fascists of today and the Confederacy, and the whole ugly history of what this country was founded on.
Then we got more into the mission of Refuse Fascism, to get millions of people in the streets to drive the Trump/Pence regime from power. Many students responded to this and were participating throughout. One of the students said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea because what’s going to come after? We have to be thinking about the future and acting like this is a game of chess, thinking 5 moves ahead.” We talked about how we don’t know exactly what will come after, but we do know that it will be a disaster if this regime stays in power. And this needs to be a movement that includes a diversity of people, with different visions of what should come next, all uniting in the common recognition that the first step to any better future is removing the Trump/Pence regime.
Another student was very seriously grappling with this plan and said, “There’s a lot of groups who are working on individual issues in the community, but if you’re working on these separate issues and not looking at the whole thing and coming together, those separate issues aren’t going to matter. You need to get millions of people demanding that all of it stops so the people at the top are forced to respond to you. But how do we do that?”
The teacher of the class also did some really good agitation on how new norms are being set everyday to where we can get to a point where it’s too late. And instead of being reactive to all the things the regime is doing we need to be acting to stop it. She emphasized that we shouldn’t only be caring and looking out for ourselves, in survival mode thinking this isn’t going to affect us because it will. She gave the example of how she went to college in 2000, right when Bush got elected, but she just focused on herself and dismissed Bush as a clown. But then 9/11 happened which led to the Iraq war and that pulled her into political life. She expanded on all of the horrors that Bush did, but then she said, “Even with all that I would rather have grown up in that era than be growing up in the time you guys are growing up in now with Trump, cuz Trump is way worse.”
Then one of the students leading the discussion talked at length and with a lot of passion about the moral challenge to students right now: “Everyone talks about what they would’ve been doing in the 1960s, but what you would’ve been doing in the 1960s is what you’d be doing right now. You can’t say you’re about social justice when you’re not gonna really be about it. They say we don’t have a voice because we’re not old enough to vote, but we do have the power. If we actually come together in the streets we can drive them out of power.” Her moral challenge was followed by applause and finger snaps.
The volunteer with the National Tour then expanded on her point, and the role students have played historically, by giving examples from the 1960s of the East L.A. “Blowouts” (walkouts by Chicano high school students) and the Freedom Riders (who took on Jim Crow segregation in the South). Then she also said, “We should be educating people who hate Trump, but don’t know the reality, but who is going to do that? We are. It’s on us. Driving out this regime isn’t an easy task, but we have the responsibility to do so. And the movement to drive out this regime isn’t going to happen or be what it needs to be without the students.” We ended it by passing around the sign up sheet, which most people signed. Many took materials, and made plans to get them out, including the teacher, who wants to study the indictment pamphlet with her classes. Some students asked us more questions after the presentation was over, and we hung out with them for another period. After school we saw one of the students putting up Refuse Fascism stickers around the neighborhood.
Overall, the class was really engaged and their questions and comments were very sincere and serious. It was really wonderful to see the two students who organized this play such a leading role. And the teacher, from her own perspective, really contributed to the discussion and reinforced some of the themes we wanted to get across. We need a lot more of this!