The Tragedy at Virginia Tech is a Tragedy for Everyone

My condolences and sympathies to the families and people who are suffering now from the Virgina Tech tragedy. 

For those who are following violent school incident after violent school incident, my view is that, these violent and disturbing incidents will not let up, nor will they go away of their own accord.  In fact it is my opinion that without a reorganization of society as a whole for the advancement of society and its members by the working class and people, these features of a society gone awry will only increase. 

All this talk and movement towards more security, more metal detectors, more police and guards at the schools, more repression has not solved the problem one iota.  I feel, rather, all these “security” measures contribute to this very atmosphere of fear, anxiety, uncertainty.  It is tearing apart the fabric of society and community itself. 

Very recently, within the past six months, school shootings have taken place in Montreal, Colorado, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Washington.  (Timeline: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html) There are a number of indicators that measure the grave and dangerous situation confronting the youth today.  There has been much discussion in my neck of the woods of the tremondous pressure being placed on school officials, teachers and faculty, and most of all students. For example in the high schools, teachers are expected by school authorities, to police youth and students in a “law and order” fashion.  I was reading this passage from an article by a Buffalo teacher who writes:

“I was in the cafeteria for lunch duty. Even though the cafeteria is a public place within the school and really the only place the youth are allowed to talk with each other, our school requires that students be silent for the last five minutes of their lunch period.  The justification given for this is that it helps to ensure ‘a quiet and orderly dismissal’ as students make their way to their afternoon classes.  This rule is pretty strictly enforced, often with the use of collective punishment — if a few students or one table is talking everyone is punished.  No one is supposed to question why imposing silence on the youth is acceptable, nor why ’silence’ and ‘order’ are equated. Why aren’t silence and repression equated?” (Buffalo Forum Vol. 11 #12)

Many of the youth in our discussions have spoken of their experience in which the role of teachers and faculty have been reduced to that of police in watching and regulating the students throughout the school day.  This, as well as the students and youth concerned with the increase of actual police in the schools and military recruiters. 

Why this increase of police and military recruiters in high schools and college campuses?  This question can not be answered without looking at the objective reality that exists today.  The anti-social offensive of the forces of capitalism and imperialism are not only destroying nations and peoples abroad, but are wrecking society and those who live right here at home. 

With cutting funds for social programs and services, the degradation and rejection of human rights for all, with increased militarization of society and the schools, the rule of entropic monopoly capital clearly can not provide a coherent future for members of society, especially for the youth, who are most vulnerable to aggression and attacks.  In fact, the situation is getting worse and worse for the youth and the rule of monopoly capital takes advantage of this situation by placing before the youth an “alternative”:  “Fight my wars and you will have privileges, rights, safety, security, money for school, citizenship, a place in society. Enlist and reap the benefits.”

One only needs to look at U.S. crimes against humanity in the present period (not to mention the war crimes in other periods of history as well) in its imperialist and aggressive wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and the “war on terror” to know that this “alternative” provides no future for the youth either.  While atrocities are being commited by U.S. imperialism against peoples and nations with impunity, there is pressure on the people by the State to not look at these atrocities as crimes, but to accept them in the most pragmatic way, to accept their notion of the “ends justify the means” approach to problems taking place in the world. 

For the youth whose active role in determining their future is being decimated and wiped out, what recourse can they have and what measures do they turn to?  This is how the Buffalo teacher places it:

“The very core of the existing social, political, cultural, economic set up is rotten. It demands renewal. It demands change. Is it any wonder that the youth reject this? What future do they have other than more poverty, more war, more repression at every turn? The problems are huge, but not unsolvable. And the youth play a vital role in changing the situation.” (Buffalo Forum, “Target the Inhuman Conditions of Life”)

I am re-posting an article I commented on before from another blog I used to have when the Dawson shootings took place in Montreal not too long ago.  Although it speaks to that incident, I think the CPC (M-L) statement on such tragedies are important now more than ever. 

22 SEPTEMBER 2006

Some Thoughts on the Situation Facing the Youth
I was reading reports of the Dawson College shooting that took place recently in Montreal and hearing about this I was quite bothered by it.  I was talking to a friend of mine about the shooting and we agreed that it was a tragedy for the nation of Canada.  It is also a tragedy for all of us non-Canadians too.  The recent shooting was being related to the U.S. tragedy of Columbine.  Canada, as far as I know, is not usually marked with school shootings as their neighbors to the South.  Yet this has been a second or third incident of this taking place in Canada.  For me, the tragic incident indicates that something terribly wrong is happening to society.  This is not a new incident as there has been a train of such incidents in so-called “western civilization”, predominately in the United States.   As a particular feature of “western civilization” this is not a surprising or unique phenomena.  It is, in my view, an abberation and very much related to the politics that are being carried out by the state.
 
One of the things that needs mention is the failure of linking between incidents like these that happen on the local and national level - that is incidents much closer to what we consider “home” - and the incidents taking place abroad. Canadian Prime Minister Harper has declared the incident as a “cowardly and senseless act of violence.” Yet, it needs to be reminded that Canada and the United States are engaged in these very acts upon other nations and people in their “global war on terrorism”.  My comrade and friend pointed out, just because an act or incident appears to be “senseless”, it is our human duty to make sense out of the situation in order to find resolution and to move forward.  I couldn’t agree more. 
 
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) in their “We Must Together Avert Such Tragedies” analyzes the situation in this way:

 “The events at Dawson show how some youth are being driven into a disconnect, leading to truly crazy and barbaric acts. We are not surprised that such things are taking place when the leaders in the U.S. and Canada act in the same fashion in the name of the highest ideals. In the case of the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, these leaders openly promote torture and mass killings as acts of great courage and valour. They declare that they will continue doing this because they can. When the tragic consequences of such a culture are revealed, they declare that some individual has a behaviour problem and refuse to take social responsibility.”

After having read this statement, it brought the issue into a more clearer and focused context.  I could not help but think of Columbine and how the question of what happened and why remained, to this day, a mystery.
 
The critical and core issue is what world and conditions the youth are facing, in particular, the youth in the United States.  A large number of youth are concerned by what is happening in the world. A great example of this is when the hundreds of thousands of immigrant youth walked out of school in response to the mass immigration demonstrations that shook the U.S. recently.  Another great example were the mass demonstrations of youth who took to the streets in France taking place around this same time. 
 
But the question that remains is what happens when there are sections of youth who are guided by leaders who have the most backward principles and refuse to take up social responsibility? 

FYI:

The Marxist-Leninist, CPC (M-L)
“We Must Together Avert Such Tragedies”
http://cpcml.ca/Tmld2006/D36132.htm

Buffalo Forum, a publication of the U.S. Marxist-Leninist Organization
“Target the Inhuman Conditions of Life”
http://buffaloforum.org/2007/04/target-inhuman-conditions-of-life.html 

“Stop Vindictive Punishments against the Youth”
http://buffaloforum.org/2007/04/stop-vindictive-punishments-against.html
 
“How To Intervene Without Denying the Needs of the Youth”
http://buffaloforum.org/2007/04/how-to-intervene-without-denying-needs.html