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Thomas Fiske      Response 6

Question 6: In recent months we have experienced a spate of bloodshed in our nation's schools. What steps, if any, must the governor take to ensure that a similar atrocity does not occur in Minnesota?

There is not a "spate" of bloodshed in the nation’s
schools. The question appears to refer to the relative
handful of spectacular incidents involving young
students. These are terribly tragic events. In these
cases it is clear that the youth, acting under the
feelings of alienation and despair, have acted without
any sense of human solidarity and social responsibility.
This fact mirrors what is happening more broadly in
society, where the number of these acts is increasing.

These anti-social acts are symptomatic of the decay of
capitalist society. They become more common as the
dog-eat-dog values of the system of production for
private profit tear apart social solidarity in a period
of developing social crisis. They cannot be "ensured"
against.

The example for these kinds of acts are set by the
highest authorities and wealthiest capitalists in the
country. The bombing of the pharmaceutical plant in the
Sudan by the Clinton administration was a similar act.
So was the "Turkey Shoot," the massacre of tens of
thousands of Iraqi soldiers at the end of the Gulf War
who were fleeing to Iraq on the road to Basra. So also
is the cynical manipulation by US speculators of currency
exchange rates with underdeveloped countries, policies
which rob the working people of these countries the
right to economic self-development.

The most important steps the governor can take to
minimize the possibilities of further acts such as these
is to join the real fight for human solidarity today.
This begins by using the full powers of the office to
advance working class struggles for social justice. Such
involvement would have a dramatic moral influence on the
young, much as the impact of the leadership of Martin
Luther King and Malcolm X had on a generation of young
Blacks several decades ago. It would have a dramatic
impact on the ability of teachers and students to reach
out and help troubled youth in the schools today.

Among the most important of the current struggles are
the labor fights for a shorter work-week, demonstrations
by farmers against low crop prices, and actions for
affirmative action. Also important are the
demonstrations against cop brutality, media racism and
the resegregation of the schools.

It is the working class which has the social position and
stakes to take the moral high ground in the developing
social crisis, much as the civil rights struggle of three
decades earlier was based on workers and farmers who were
Black. Fights for social solidarity today point in the
direction of the fight for a society of human solidarity,
one without the exploitation of the vast majority by a
handful of billionaires.

Finally, these kind of acts will not be lessened by more
cops or more surveillance in the schools. My campaign
stands four square against the new campaign in capitalist
politics to criminalize youth. We oppose the trying of
youth as adults, the imposition of the death penalty and
cop intimidation of accused youth to give up their
rights.