Students Found Group For Anti-Capitalist Comrades On Campus

Three students at The New School have formed an officially-recognized student organization where radical activist community members of varying political backgrounds can fight to end capitalism and the social class system.

The Radical Student Bloc, which had its first meeting on March 17 in a classroom at The New School’s 6 E. 16th St., is looking to “unite progressive students” at The New School, organizer Helios Bajwa said to the attendees of the preliminary gathering. The group leaders also explained that they want their organization to be a group that can “move past the activist left.”

“Our work should go towards organizing, promoting and engaging in activities that disrupt the status quo of the capitalist order,” read a handout shared at the group’s first meeting.

The organization is led by three undergraduate students from Lang: Robert Griswold, a junior studying political science, Cameron Cory, a sophomore also majoring in political science, and Bajwa, a senior who is wrapping up studies in philosophy. The three organizers refer to themselves as “members of the organization’s executive committee,” and to other members and those who support their causes as “comrades.”

During the meeting, the group leaders remained behind or next to a table with a red cloth that had the words “If you don’t hit it, it won’t fall” stenciled on.

Though two of the three members of the executive committee identify as communists, the group is “multi-tendency [and is] welcoming to students of all political backgrounds which align with anti-capitalism be it anarchism, communism, or even Liberals who are curious about anti-capitalism,” said Griswold.

Though causing the fall of capitalism is one of the group’s primary goals, there are other things its organizers would like to work toward.

“We stand with the oppressed peoples of the world, and find solidarity in the shared struggle against systems of oppression,” said the handout. “We are a proletarian feminist, anti-racist, pro-trans, pro-queer, anti-colonial, anti-Western exceptionalism and anti-ableist organization.”

The bloc’s executive committee believes that the capitalist system oppresses the people in these groups, which is one of the reasons why they want to see capitalism fall, according to the handout.

One of the first initiatives for the group is to provide self-defense workshops for its members and “know-your-rights workshops,“ group leaders said over email.

When comparing their future attempts to other activist groups, Griswold said in the meeting that the “Black Lives Matter [movement] lacks organizational infrastructure” to make its goals become reality, and that’s an issue he hopes the student bloc can work past.

“We don’t want to be feel-good activists,” Griswold said during the meeting.