---

The Working People’s Associations stands in unwavering solidarity with students at UNC-Charlotte who have been experiencing immense repression over the past few days in an attempt by the university to silence their opposition to the genocidal, settler-colonial project known as Israel and the university’s investments in it. Tuesday morning at 6 am, campus police, fulfilling their role as the armed enforcers of the ruling class, shut down the Gaza solidarity encampment, which had stood for weeks. Campus police gave nothing more than a short sham warning before dismantling the camp through force, arresting one student, and leveling a series of trumped-up charges on them. In addition, they stole thousands of dollars’ worth of items from students, and have refused to return anything.

UNC-Charlotte, in its campaign of intimidation, has suspended a continuously growing number of students, preventing them from having access to their housing and those who are seniors from graduating. This has included the suspension and firing of a student teacher. The university has also threatened to suspend countless other students and to terminate faculty if they support the student encampment. All in an attempt to silence those who call out the university’s complicity in the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

This of course is to be expected. We have seen thousands of students across the country face repression over the past few weeks, and the leadership of universities are firmly vested in the interests of US imperialism. In stark contrast to capitalist propaganda, which labels them as “leftist indoctrination chambers,” universities play a vital role in upholding the capitalist system, reproducing the middle class, and promoting the faux dream of upward mobility for the working class.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the last time there was a major campus movement against an imperialist war, the Vietnam war, it was followed by immense attacks on higher education and sharp hikes in tuition. Many workers would now be unable to attend college, and those who do would be chained to massive student debt. Any semblance of upward mobility was closed off for the working class. At the time, aide to Ronald Reagan, Roger Freeman, stated “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. … that’s dynamite!” As the middle class in the US shrinks, the fates of students are linked with that of the working class.

While the working class will be the primary and leading force of any revolution in the United States, students play an important role in the revolutionary struggle. Today, the campus movement against US imperialism is far more active than the working class movement against imperialism. Despite this, students are incapable of defeating the enemy on their own. As workers, we must take lessons from this movement and strive to link it firmly with the working class movement.

The Working People’s Association and the burgeoning revolutionary labor movement remain unwavering in our support of the countless students facing repression today.

Build up the worker-student alliance!