Phoebe Prince. Bullied to death by the system.
It is horrific. This young girl being harassed by her school mates until she puts her scarf around her neck and hangs herself from the stairs in her home. We as socialists have to have something to say about this?
First we have to condemn it unconditionally. And not just in a general way. We have to condemn the actions of the young people who did the bullying. Apparently Phoebe Prince dated a fellow student, this relationship ended, and then in revenge this young man and his so called friends ganged up on her and harassed her for months. Calling her a whore, an Irish slut, and she was allegedly the victim of statutory rape. This young woman was living a nightmare.
The actions of these young people were brutal and cruel in the extreme. They kept after Phoebe non stop and made her life a misery. They have to be called to account for this and made to face up to what they did. This is not only for the sake of justice for Phoebe. It is also for their own sake. To get their lives on the right lines again they have to face up to what they did, take responsibility for their own actions.
The children's parents have to do this also. There is no way this could have gone on for months and parents not know that something was happening. If it was the case that some parents tried to stop it and were unable to do so they are to be commended. If it was the case that other parents out of misplaced loyalty to their children either ignored it, or as we have recently heard from one parent of the children who did the bullying and tried to justify it, this is not good for their own children, it is not in the interest of justice for Phoebe, it is nobody's interest.
However while being clear in our condemnation of what went on we have to go much further than this. We have to understand the causes of this horrific event. We have to draw conclusions. The mass capitalist media have their right wing bias as usual. In order to cover up the role of their capitalist system in this crime they exclusively blame the kids who did the harassing, their parents, their teachers and their school. They blame everybody and everything except the real culprit. As said above we do not ignore these participants in this tragedy but unlike the capitalist media we do not cover up the source of the problem, that is the system under which we live, the system under which these young people were brought up, the system that shaped them and their outlook, that system is capitalism. We start from the source of the problem, from the real culprit, the system that shaped these young people, capitalism.
This tragedy took place in a capitalist society. This society bombards the youth non stop with its propaganda. It creates the dominant atmosphere and thinking amongst the youth. Its movies, its magazines, its mass media, its education system, they all glorify and emphasize competition and violence. The capitalist media and education system does not emphasize helping each other out, being kind to each other. This would be too dangerous. Along with these positive attitudes and emotions would inevitably come solidarity and with this would come helping each other out to have better wages conditions etc. People would begin to become more class conscious and a new working class movement could grow. From the point of view of capitalism and its mass media people must be indoctrinated to look at each other with antagonism and every person for themselves and to hell with the rest must be the rule. This capitalist society is a vicious cruel and selfish place. This is the world young people are brought up in by capitalism. Capitalism is ultimately to blame for the death of Phoebe Prince.
Many many working class people try to stand against this atmosphere which capitalism creates in society. They try to act decent and teach their children to act decent to be helpful and practice solidarity to their fellow working people. But the huge weight of the mass vicious capitalist media makes this very difficult. The owners of the corporations, the capitalist class that runs this country creates through their mass media and control of the education system this atmosphere of selfishness and competition and violence. To state again. Capitalism in the last analysis is to blame for the death of Phoebe Prince.
There is a lot of focus on the school authorities. What about them? They are part of the capitalist system. They are trained to run their schools like authoritarian workplaces so as they can train the children to go to work in such workplaces. They are also very short staffed and do not have enough resources to participate in the running of the schools. To take the attention away from their system the capitalist media and state are focusing on the school administration and the teachers and blaming them. But it is the capitalists' system which has dictated the atmosphere and thinking both in society and in the schools and has dictated the shortage of teachers in the schools. We have to step up our struggle to defend public education, to have more teachers and staff and also we have to appeal to the teachers and staff in the education system to help their pupils see how capitalism seeks to brainwash all of us in their dirty individualistic way of seeing things. We also have to see that the capitalist media are using this tragedy to portray teachers in as bad a light as possible to help them in their campaign to privatize public education, to attack the teachers unions and to cut education opportunities for the youth.
Capitalism also dictates the management structure in the schools. This has to be questioned in this tragedy also. Instead of the top down administration, teacher, student structure we have to stand for a collective approach. We should begin a discussion on this. Should the schools not be run by democratically elected committees of students, teachers, staff and parents. Such a body to continually discuss and oversee the workings of the school. At the same time every class have a democratically elected body of students and teachers and parents to continually review the workings of the class. If there had been this type of democratic structure in place in Phoebe Prince's school the students and teachers who were witnessing what was going on and Phoebe herself would have had a way of dealing with it, a channel through which to make their voice heard and to bring the collective opinion and pressure of the students, teachers and parents to bear to stop it.
To avoid the tragedy of more Phoebes what is needed is an open discussion in society and in the schools about the atmosphere of violence and competition and selfishness that is fostered by capitalism in society as a whole and how to replace this with by an atmosphere of solidarity and kindness and working together. We must warn in advance of course that such a campaign would immediately be opposed by the people and corporations that run this country. The last thing they want is a working class population who practise solidarity and are kind to each other. They will sacrifice any number of Phoebes to keep in place their system of division, competition, violence, selfishness and individualism. Their profit addicted system depends upon it.
And finally there are about 12 million members of trade unions in this country. There are the huge teachers unions. The leaders of these organizations are failing their members and the Phoebes. They put forward no alternative to the dirty propaganda of capitalism. They should stop supporting the Democratic Party, they should build a mass working people party which could put forward a socialist collective view of the world as opposed to that of capitalism. They could have mass daily papers, radio and TV stations, they could build student, teacher, parent committees in the schools. That is they could begin to use their resources to build an alternative structure and view of the world to the authoritarian top down individualistic one of capitalism. They could begin to offer an alternative to the youth. Instead they boot lick the Democratic Party, suppress any talk of an alternative to capitalism, vilify and suppress the most combative and anti capitalist forces in their own ranks. They also block either consciously and deliberately or by their insistence in clinging in desperation to capitalism any effort to organize the unorganized. They are an absolute scandal. They have forfeited the right to lead. They have to be removed by the building of fighting rank and file bodies in the workplaces and union rank and file and the building of a fighting anti capitalist leadership. The pathetic role of the trade union leadership in society is also one of the causes behind Phoebe's death.
Sean.
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