Capitalism is in decay, and we see it reflected in society.
When dollars matter more than children’s lives, we must organize and fight back.

In many ways, the recent shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is not unprecedented. It’s the second deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, following the twenty children and seven adults killed at Sandy Hook Elementary. It’s the eighth school shooting of 2018.

What is unprecedented is the response from high school students both at MSD and in South Florida at large. School walkouts, protests, and vigils have only been matched by the brave and vital criticism presented by students like Emma Gonzales and Cameron Kasky, both of whom questioned an NRA representative and Florida senator Marco Rubio on the involvement of NRA funding in stymieing gun control laws at a CNN Town Hall.

That young people are rallying in response to the financial corruption of their politicians is powerful and important, but a wider scope shows us that capitalism is the root problem.

Since 1976, campaign contributions have been protected by the first amendment, and in 2010 that protection was extended to corporations. While the NRA is technically a non-profit gun lobby, its role in buying out politicians – in the case of Rubio, to the tune of anywhere between $1,000,000 and $3,000,000 – is one facet of how the capitalist class places the value of profit over human lives, regardless of party lines.

But the reach of the NRA goes beyond policy making. The shooter at Parkland was not only a member of the high school’s Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, he also participated in a marksmanship program lead by the school’s JROTC and supported by the NRA through a $10,000 donation for equipment such as air rifles and targets bought from their supporters.

This is small change compared to the millions spent on Army recruitment in high schools through programs like the JROTC and individual recruiters. For more than a decade we’ve known that these programs disproportionately seek out poor, often black and latino, students through educational and economic incentives. The militarization of schools simultaneously provides bodies to fuel the military industrial complex while diversifying the resources available to public schools that have seen a general decline in funding.

While schools are deprived of the money necessary to make resources available to their students, the school security industry is booming. The presence of law enforcement in schools to prevent violence has only exacerbated the school-to-prison pipeline, which disproportionately sends black and latino students to bolster the prison industrial complex. Teachers could be expected to arm themselves to protect their classrooms while simultaneously being under threat of losing their union rights in the face of already lagging wages. Nationwide, public schools in the wrong neighborhoods have been crippled by the perpetuation of classist funding systems for decades, and school shootings seem to be a symptom of the problem as much as they make the problem worse.

There is no doubt that the Parkland shooter’s actions cannot be separated from his aggressive xenophobia, anti-semitism, and racism. Access to semi-automatic weapons is only one factor of any of the recent mass shootings in the United States. Toxic masculinity, misogyny, desensitization to violence, and access to mental health resources are all a part of the conversation. But the survival of capitalism is predicated on the devaluation of human life and the preponderance of the need for profits. Unless we actively work to dismantle it, it will only find new means of exploitation through any and all of these avenues.

Despite 17 dead students and teachers in Parkland, in spite of the livings’ tears, rage, organizing, razor-sharp criticisms; and despite widespread support for gun control, the NRA and their political representatives refuse to budge.

“BROKEN DEMOCRACY”

These students are showing us first hand that this “democracy” is not actually for us. Since its inception, it has been organized for the interests of the capitalist class. The founding fathers organized the constitution for their class interests, not those of slaves, women, or landless workers. Through class struggle we have gained democratic rights under capitalism, which has given the system a progressive veneer. But these rights became merely small bones to keep us pacified while society functions for the interests of capital and its reproduction.

The inherent nature of capitalism is constant, ever-expanding growth and profits, but capitalism now is facing a structural crisis. The potential to grow and expand is reaching its physical limits. In the case of gun control, the bodies and spaces that once maintained a market for weapons – that is, spaces in poor schools and neighborhoods which saw the deaths of poor children and adults – no longer provides the necessary growth. Public schools that once funneled eager laborers into expanding fields of production can no longer exist in an economy that can’t promise jobs with livable wages.

This is why teachers are told they cannot have meaningful raises; why DeVos and Trump are working to privatize schools and further capitalize on student debt; why Net Neutrality and freely accessible information cannot exist; and why the gun industry and the politicians they own, from all parties, will push for more guns in schools, not less. Their economic interests cannot account for children’s actual safety or education, because the primary concern will always be profits.

As a result, any progressive veneer that capitalism used to retain is being eliminated out of necessity for capital accumulation. Every element of life must be commodified for capitalism to continue, and the scope of that commodification will continue to seep from once “acceptably” exploitable spaces into the realm of middle class suburbia, as capitalism continues to fail.

INDEPENDENT RESISTANCE

School students from Montgomery County, Maryland, rally at the Capitol in solidarity with those affected by the shooting at Parkland High School. (AP Photo / J. Scott Applewhite)

The actions taken by high school students across the country in this moment is essential. We should stand in solidarity with them calling “B.S.!”

But, this fight will not be resolved through new candidates in office, nor reforming capitalism into a kinder version. Politicians in all forms – Republican, Democrat, Independent, Green – will sell us out. New candidates will be absorbed by capitalist interests.  

In the spirit of Parkland students, we need to build upon this moment of spontaneous resistance and get organized. Our power lies in independent organization in our schools, our neighborhoods and in the streets. When politicians won’t meet our demands, when profits matter more than lives, we must resist. We must engage in civil disobedience. We can’t reform capitalism. We must weaken it. To do so, we must rise up!

STAND UP. FIGHT BACK. ORGANIZE.

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