BY TED LEONARD
CHELSEA, Massachusetts - "Chelsea High School Jail." That is how Tyesha, a 10th grader at the school, described it to Linda Marcus, the Socialist Workers candidate for City Councilor at-large in Chelsea. The candidate and a team of supporters went to the school to express the campaign's solidarity with students who had staged a walk-out there and to protest the harassment of the Socialist Workers campaign a week earlier at the high school.

Forty students walked out of the high school September 17 in protest of the school administration's refusal to hold an assembly to discuss draconian new rules it had implemented. Dozens more attempted to leave but were prevented by the police, who blocked the doors of the school. The students who got out marched to City Hall and asked for a meeting with school Superintendent Douglas Sears. He refused, saying, "I don't meet in the face of demands couched in abusive language and loud tones."

Responding to the walkout in an interview with the Chelsea Record Chelsea High School principal Lincoln Tamayo said he was "not going to succumb to mob rule."

The new rules lower grade points for being late to school and a student automatically fails a class for six unexcused absences. Also prohibited are cellular phones, beepers and other electronic devices.

Marilyn Justiniano, a junior, explained to the Chelsea Record that she has a problem making it to school on time because she has to take her four-month-old baby to the sitter in the morning. "I come in two minutes late and I get two points off my average," Justiniano said. Jon Pistone, a 10th grader, told the socialist candidate that the walkout "was like a strike." He added, "We tried to deal with the rules but they kept coming -like they were making them up as they went along. They made up a student handbook, then added new rules as the days went on."

In a campaign statement defending the rights of the high school students Marcus, a railroad worker and member of the United Transportation Union, explained, "These rules are exactly what capitalist education is about. The capitalists want youth in school to learn to be obedient, to be prepared to work hard throughout their life as a wage laborer and to be grateful to get any employment at all....

"For workers and youth, as the Teamsters at UPS and fighters against police brutality in New York have learned, our strength is in our collective direct action. It increases our self-confidence and develops leadership. This is the opposite of `mob rulé as the student walkout was contemptuously described by the Chelsea Record and the school administration."

On October 7 the School Department and the Chelsea Police signed a contract placing two officers on full-time in the Chelsea schools. They will be permanently stationed in the schools and their positions are paid for by the school department.

The socialist campaigners got a taste of the police activity at Chelsea High School September 30, when Marcus and her supporters made their first visit to the high school to express solidarity with the students. They set up a table across the street on a public sidewalk and passed out dozens of flyers and had friendly discussions with students.

After the majority of students had come out of the school, a Chelsea police officer pulled his cruiser into a driveway near the campaigners, blocking the sidewalk, and approached the table. He threatened the socialists with arrest for blocking "public access." He said he had received complaints about this "military shit you were passing out." The Chelsea Police Report Department record indicated that the cops were dispatched to investigate "people passing out military flyers."

After talking with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Chelsea City Solicitor, and some students, and filing a citizens complaint form with the police, the candidate and her supporters returned to the school a week later without harassment from the cops. They passed out campaign statements demanding "Police out of Chelsea High School - Stop the Harassment of the Socialist Workers Campaign." Many students stopped to talk with the campaigners, whose placards read "Student protest is not mob rule" and "Defend Immigrant Rights and Affirmative Action."  
 
 
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