First Published: Unity and Struggle, Vol. III, No. 13, December 1974.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Community and student organizations in the Boston area (Afrikan Liberation Support Committee, Struggle Newspaper, Haitian Action Committee, Ujima Society, Organization for Solidarity of Third World Students, and the Congress of Afrikan People) have come together to form the “Progressive United Front on Education.” This United Front which uses the Roxbury YMCA as a base, also includes many other community people who have no other organizational affiliations.
The PUFE stresses that all children have the right to go to school anywhere they choose without fear of harm or harassment in any form. The right of all children to go to school wherever they wish without fear, to get a quality education based on the community’s needs and not the desires of the handful of elite that presently control our childrens’ education in Boston and throughout the country.
The Front feels that the so-called busing crisis in Boston is only one of the many cover up tactics used by the ruling class to hide the fact that we are presently in a depression, with over 10% of the nation’s work force unemployed. Every major industry in the country is having a period of major layoffs that involve tens of thousands of workers. Sugar has gone to a dollar a pound in some areas, and in Britain, the government has proposed that gasoline go up to $1 a gallon. Already it is projected that in the next twelve months 700 million people around the world will die of starvation! Capitalism is in trouble world wide and people’s militancy and need for revolution is rising dramatically! The busing issue is supposed to divert our attention from the real issues, and have us fight each other instead of the real enemy, the international capitalist system and all of its flunkies.
In striving to insure self-determination (in the Black community) and quality education as well as basic democratic rights, the Front sees the need for more in depth investigation and analysis of the present school situation and the proposed alternatives, i.e., the Mayor’s plan that was defeated in the November 5th election. Despite the fact that this plan was presented to the community as a move to “community control”, it finally only put the power into the Mayor’s hands. Though Mayor White is clearly the lesser of the evils in comparison to the racist Boston School Committee, the plan is still not “community control”.
It is clear that the school committee has to be eliminated in the form that it presently exists, but it should also be clear just what it is that was being proposed as the primary alternative.