The first unofficial meeting of the student communist reading group of the Baltimore School for the Arts was held at the dark and disturbingly moist coffee establishment known as the Bun Shop on Friday, September 1st at 4:14 pm. 

This was a planning meeting— the agenda was to come up with a name, a date, a place, and the content of the communist reading group, the brainchild of senior visual artists Rose Weiser and Jasper Pocock. 

Their goals as said by Weiser are: “I’d like people to be able to discuss, and I’d like people to be able to disagree and have strong opinions and be able to have a space that they are allowed to talk about that in a constructive manner.” 

During this meeting four possible group names that were being argued over, none of them were used in the end as they were deemed “too silly.” 

The passed up names were Coop, Scram, CBC, Marks in the parks.

“Coop” stands for “Communists or other proletariat”, “CBC” stands for “Communist Book Club”, and my personal favorite “Scram” stands for “Soviet, Communists, Radicals, Anarchists, and Marxists.” 

The most crucial thing the two comrades needed to decide on was whether the club should function within the domain of Baltimore School For the Arts. Weiser stood on the idea that in order to make it most accessible to all who wanted to join, it should be within school jurisdiction.

Pocock stood on the other: “My fear is that no matter how we conduct our meetings as a group there will be a sense that we are inside of a school system. The idea of the school would have a certain influence over people, because people generally act differently when they know they’re in school. And I think that people should be able to discuss what they want to discuss without the fear of being in an institution.”

Censorship and the constant need to carefully navigate the bureaucracy of the school system were among Pocock’s main concerns but he was not opposed to school faculty and admin contributing and participating within the reading group. 

“I think that will lead to more people coming, including faculty of BSA. I’d like for there to be faculty both, I don’t think there is a lot of chance for people to really talk on an equal level with their teachers and have a discussion of teachers and pupils on an equal ground. And I think that would be an interesting thing to pursue,” says Pocock. 

The two marxists wanted to have the first meeting focus on analyzing the communist manifesto but it was unknown where they would go from there.

Weiser wanted to take a deeper dive into critical theory— “I think communism is perhaps a term that says in of itself that it’s radical. And it’s also just a term in more widespread use now, but also one that can be inflammatory or reactionary. But what communism is is critical theory. And I think communism that aims not to be critical theory is an authoritarian form of communism that views itself as too idealistic or an end in itself as a sort of authoritarian presence instead of mass or group engagement.” 

“So that’s why keeping it a little bit broader with the ideas of critical theory means that we can bring in a lot more literature that might be communist in nature or might make references to communism or be inspired by communism but that are not necessarily proponents of it but still have radical theory that they want to propose and deconstruct,” stated Weiser. 

After quite a lot of arguing two things were “hammered and sickled” into stone. The club would function within BSA and it would mainly revolve around communist and socialist theory. 

On September 7th, at 4:06 PM, Book Club co-leader Odelia Elliott said that upon speaking about the communist party with a faculty member, they were told that political parties cannot exist as clubs within the Baltimore School for the Arts, and the communists would have to do some rebranding if they wanted to function within BSA. 

This was later proven to be incorrect after a loose scroll through the Baltimore City Public School’s Students rights and responsibilities PDF 2023-2024 which states: “Student-led organizations are all other student groups developed and led by students and approved by the school. Examples are religious, political, issue advocacy, and student affinity groups.” 

Unfortunately, since neither Pocock or Weiser decided to investigate this further, they were rather unhappy upon receiving this information and took it as fact. 

An attempt at name modification by Weiser without Pocock’s knowledge took place which resulted in the following series of errors: 

On Sept 8th, the communists took a hit, when they were branded the “Critical Thinking and Radical Reading Club” at the club expo. 

This development was everything Jasper had feared and spoken over. 

Rose Weiser went home early. 

Later that day a time and place were selected for the first meeting: Friday, September 22nd at 4:00 pm in Mount Vernon Square Eastern Park 

The first meeting was small in numbers (about seven people including myself, Pocock, and Weiser) went fairly smoothly, the communist manifesto was handed out to be read through and discussed. 

One moment that stood out amongst the rest was when Pocock loudly condemned the act of hand raising saying that it caused all discussion to lose momentum and that members of the reading group should feel free to speak amongst themselves conversationally. 

While a good point this did unfortunately halt the momentum of what was previously being discussed. All in all the meeting was a success. 

Weiser seemed fairly happy with the first meeting: “I think it was decidedly small, but the interest and participation was greater than I had set my expectations at.”

The second meeting was badly advertised and the crowd dwindled considerably quicker, perhaps foreshadowing the possible fizzling out of the reading group. While seven people showed, they were all not the same characters who showed up the week before. 

Although the communist reading group has not met for around a month and a half at time of publishing they claim to have more coming. 

“I’m working on setting up a meeting with a 1960’s peace activist (Dave Eberhardt) and a woman from the Maryland Workers Party (Cathy Permut),” says Weiser. 

Until then, it is up in the air whether the party can continue despite what the two comrades say.

“My hope is that it will continue after I’ve left BSA,” says Pocock.

Perhaps there is a future in which little freshmen boys and girls of the class of 2035 will join the Communist Reading Group and lead the micro plastic generation into the revolution.

Until then communist readings will be held at Mount Vernon square eastern park at four pm on Fridays that Pocock and Weiser deem fit to grace with the voices of Marx and Lenin.

To contact this writer, email Muse Newspaper at musebsa@bsfa.org.

Featured photo of students Jasper Pocock, Rose Weiser, and Piper Cooke at the first official Communist Literature Club meeting. Photo by Asad Ali for the BSA Muse.