Nearly three long months. That’s the duration of an attempted ethnic cleansing in Manipur, a small province of extreme geopolitical importance, bordering Myanmar in North-Eastern India. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ideological fountain head Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh are deeply experimenting with a neo-Nazi model there. Why so?

The seven states in that part of India (often nicknamed as Seven Sisters) are overwhelmingly indigenous in terms of their ethnicity, language, culture, and belief systems. Such thriving diversity doesn’t fit into the fascist ideas of Hindutva brigade there. As a result, this murderous plot was hatched, when Indian prime minister Narenda Modi came to power in 2014, to divide the people across their religious and ethnic identities. In Manipur the majority Hindu Meiteis are living in and around the valley of Imphal, the state capital. In contrast the minority tribes belonging to the three clans Kuki-Zo-Naga are mostly residing in the hilly and forest areas.

To extract the resources from these latter areas, particularly the mineral and hydrocarbon reserves, the rulers (BJP) at the national and regional levels are trying everything to displace and disperse the non-Hindu population. The present mayhem in Manipur, therefore, comes out imperialists and nationalists blueprints of terror.

As of July 21, more than two hundred people, including women and children have died there. Thousands are wounded and a quarter of a million people have either fled the state or live in rescue camps in subhuman conditions. Numerous cases of rape, torture, and large-scale atrocities with active participation from the state police are also coming out in the open as the internet blockade there was partially withdrawn after a directive of Supreme Court of India.

At the height of such large-scale violence, it’s ironic that the fascist Modi was touring the US and the Middle East, meeting the state heads there and was giving lectures on the “great tradition of Indian democracy.”
The experience of Manipur reaffirms the historical necessity of working-class unity, cutting across all other lines at the local, regional, national, and international levels as  the imperialist world system plunges into a third world war.

I’m a Virgo is a new TV series that depicts the coming-of-age story of a 13-foot tall 19-year-old Black giant named “Cootie.” Boots Riley, the series director, was raised in the Progressive Labor Party—in interviews, he often recounts how, in his teenage years, the Party took him on a summer project to organize farm workers in California. I’m a Virgo still retains and forwards elements of PLP’s line: the Big Fascists (liberal finance capitalists masquerading as friends of the working class, see Glossary, page 6) are the greatest threat to the working class and Black workers are key to revolution.

Black Workers Against Social Murder
Centered on the perspective of a 19-year-old Black teenager, I’m A Virgo works dialectically to show how workers develop class consciousness through trial and error. We see the failures of Cootie’s parents, Lafrancine and Martisse, who attempt to shelter Cootie to keep him safe from capitalism while raising him to be a revolutionary. The Marxist theme of discipline is displayed through his parents' expectations for Cootie to read for 10 hours a day, exercise for three, dedicate an hour to hygiene, and a lifetime of abstaining from fast food. But being cut off from the world becomes intolerable for Cootie who wants to learn for himself what it means to live as a Black giant despite the dangers.

Venturing out into the world, Cootie first attempts to play into the capitalist system by being a fashion model but finds himself exploited, unfulfilled, and unable to save his newfound friend Scat from ruling-class social murder. Scat gets into an accident and is turned away at the emergency room because of a lack of health insurance. Scat later dies an ignoble death but in a way that sparks fightback from Cootie, his friends, his comrades, and fellow workers.

The shape of the fightback takes on two forms: Cootie’s anarchism and their friend Jones’ communism. Jones, a Black tenant organizer, explains that the capitalist healthcare system requires workers’ deaths to maximize profit. To fight back, Jones organizes workers to picket and strike against the hospital and greedy insurance executives. Meanwhile, Cootie runs across a police line to write graffiti only to be swiftly arrested by a Big Fascist supercop played by Walton Goggins named “The Hero.” The lesson here is key, individualism in acting does not build toward a revolution—it just leads to a month of Cootie’s house arrest. This struggle between Cootie’s anarchism and Jones’ communist politics becomes the focus of the TV series as they grapple with the brutality and misleading nature of the comic book “Hero’s” liberalism.

The Big Fascists are the Main Danger
Against Marvel’s individualistic, righteous superheroes, “The Hero” symbolizes police terror cloaked in liberal slogans of “justice” and order. As a billionaire, he openly uses marketing and comics for children to delude workers into believing that a white-knight, high-tech billionaire is on the side of the working class. His rhetoric of law, order, and the struggle against “crime” is so seductive that it even gets Cootie on  “The Hero’s” side.

Cootie has to learn through class struggle that as a Black worker, “The Hero’s” fight against crime is really a fight against Cootie and his entire class. In a Dark Night of lower class consciousness, workers must learn the same lesson and overthrow Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and their ilk. The only way I’m a Virgo could be even stronger in this critique is to have “The Hero” be a non-white person, since the Big Fascists increasingly hide behind multicultural faces like NYC Mayor Eric Adams, NJ Mayor Baraka and Mexico’s President AMLO to inflict capitalist terror.

For all the strengths of I’m a Virgo in showing communist politics in an easily digestible TV series, this season's ending leaves much to be desired. First, there is only ever focus on exceptional, individual characters rather than workers or the working class. Jones, a communist leader, hogs much of the limelight while the workers she organizes remain as a prop in the backdrop. This is in contrast to Soviet films in which the workers that compose the backdrop are essential since it is always about the working class breaking into the frame to make history for themselves. Second, this focus on the exceptionality of Jones leads to an ending in which she uses words and reason to defeat the Big Fascist “Hero.” This is after “The Hero” has tricked Cootie into believing he is on the side of the workers, despite previously brutalizing Cootie and taunting him with advertisements of a 13-foot jail fit for a giant. Rather than showing the power of the workers or that workers need to organize to fight fascism, Jones merely explains Marxist theory to “The Hero” who submits and flies away. This is dangerous wishful thinking! The ruling class will never hand over power peacefully, and fascists do not respond positively to reasoned discussions. We hope workers' power and fightback will play a more significant role in Season 2 of the series.

Young People Need PLP!
Despite its flaws, I’m a Virgo is a sharp depiction of what working-class youth experience and learn through struggle. While the entire premise and style of I’m a Virgo might be off-puttingly absurd and weird for some, it captures the absurdity of the deepening capitalist crises we are living through. After all, it is absurd that young workers are to accept being exploited by capitalists while the climate, housing, healthcare, education, and political crises accelerate. Dealing with capitalist social murder and genocide while business as usual continues every day can can undoubtedly feel absurd without the guidance of a Party. In the face of rising fascism, we need young workers to learn the lessons that Cootie does: we need an organized, internationalist, revolutionary communist Party committed to defeating racism and sexism. In other words, just as teenage Boots Riley on his first summer project: we need PLP!

Astrology, anti-scientific mind trap
Astrology is a device for liberal fascist rule. With there being an exorbitant amount of surplus labor and workers being disillusioned with conditions under capitalism, oftentimes astrology is used as a tool for workers to attempt to learn more information about the world, connect with one another and find solace in decisions that they cannot control. At this stage of capitalism, the use of astrology is a tool to exploit the working class, further drives individualism, false identities and divisions within the working class, and worst of all attaches pitfalls of the ruling class to star, moon, and sun transits.

NEWARK, NJ, July 21—While liberal fascist Mayor Ras Baraka and Newark’s ruling class are preoccupied with portraying Newark as a model city, working people and students in Newark are left to reckon with social murder through police terror, decaying schools, displacement, high rent prices, deplorable living conditions and faux gestures of solidarity between wealthy developers, antiracist fighters and workers. Stephen Crane Village, one of the last housing projects in Newark, with a demographic of mostly poor and disabled, Black and Latin workers, made news when a horrible explosion leveled part of a building. Six people have been injured and one person is in critical condition. A total of 31 people are on the brink of homelessness, living in a hotel that they cannot afford and at the hands of Newark Housing Authority to provide access to the next crumbling complex. This is not a long term solution for working people and the longer we leave our futures in the hands of these crooked misleaders, the more members of our class will die.

The bosses’ media blankly asks, “How did this happen?” But workers in Newark and all over the world have experienced crumbling conditions for decades with no long term solution. The change that’s needed is for workers en masse to no longer rely on lying liberal politicians and their land developer friends. Workers need to turn this crumbling system into an opportunity to build a future where workers lead and run a world based on egalitarianism and commitment to their class–the working class. Under communism, housing will be a right granted to all workers. Slumlords will not exist and anyone that tries to sell out the working class will be jailed or run out of town.

Displacing workers through gentrification
Meanwhile, under capitalism, the United States Housing and Development (HUD) and the City of Newark claim to be investigating the causation of the explosion. Angry tenants have demanded answers— but have yet to receive one. Members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) visited some of these tenants and one told us that hours before the explosion, there was a lingering smell of gas. “It always smells like gas here. But they’re going to say and blame us for it like they always do.” Just like this Black woman worker shared, the half-told news is starting to spread that it was a resident that left their oven on that caused the explosion. Regardless of the conclusion Newark Housing Authority reaches, they will never say that it was capitalism and racist neglect that caused the explosion!

For the future that Baraka and wealthy developers at NJPAC, Prudential, Audible, Rutgers University and their friends at Goldman Sachs want, housing complexes like Stephen Crane, Bradley Courts and the Spires must go. The situation in Stephen Crane is part of a decades-long process of urban renewal and gentrification. The number of low income public housing complexes in Newark is dwindling, either being privatized by greedy developers who aim to turn them into mixed-income complexes— meaning that the rent will be set to mostly market rate prices, leaving options for low income residents limited. Or, the buildings will be demolished completely. “The fundamental problem is that investors have heightened reasons to jettison poorer tenants in favor of those who can pay more, and to evade price constrained housing in favor of unconstrained lease terms” (Who Owns Newark, Rutgers CLiME Report, 2022).

In 2022, Ras Baraka and HUD scum Victor Cirillo, celebrated the demolition of Seth Boyden Terrace, a housing complex in Newark’s South Ward and announced that $100M Lionsgate Studio would take its place. One comrade from the headquarters of Lionsgate in Canada shared that her home town is now filled with film studios and is unaffordable to the point that even the film studios refuse to pay to film there–most likely because they can exploit and displace another set of workers for less elsewhere. Now New Jersey workers are next on the chopping block to be exploited and squeezed out. We won’t let them set up shop without a fight.

No ‘safe’ houses under capitalism
When PLP organized with a comrade who lived in Stephen Crane and went door to door with their fellow neighbors, and conducted surveys last year, the residents were immediately receptive and vocalized their displeasure at the poor conditions they faced living in the complex. Those included mold, vermin, insufficient heat in the winter and repairs that often went unaddressed. The verdict is clear: There are no safe housing conditions for the working class under capitalism! Anything that is given to one group of workers is and will always be at the expense of killing another group of workers. The only way that we all win is by fighting for a total overhaul of this capitalist system and building a communist future.

While the U.S. ruling-class prepares for a potential war with Russia and China, more fascist attacks will be amplified against workers, and it will be our most vulnerable- those who live in public housing, where many workers are not only Black and Latin, but elderly and disabled, who will become the first targets. It will be homeless workers (see Jordan Neely) who will be subjected to violent attacks. We must fight back against the racist and classist policies of HUD,  and against two-faced liberal misleaders like Baraka who tells Newark that buying a home is a way to combat gentrification. We must not fall for their tricks to convince workers that capitalism can work for us. This is why we must organize and fight for communism!

CHINATOWN, New York City July 12—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) ended our summer project on a red-hot note, turning the working-class neighborhood of Chinatown into a hub for communist ideas. Workers and students braved the heat and poor air quality (capitalism-induced) and joined a PL'er, leading the antiracist fightback in Chinatown on a historic tour, culminating in a rally to support a two-year picket led by workers in the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and Lower East Side against the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) and the museum’s  board of liberal finance capitalists overseeing the displacement of Black, Latin, and Asian workers.

MOCA accepted a bribe to support the City's racist jail expansion plan. As capitalism tumbles, more workers will be evicted or imprisoned. Nonprofits  like MOCA are just some of the politricks the liberal rulers use to manage the hell they create for workers, using identity politics to cover their racist, sexist tracks.  Experience shows us only our class can  make change. If all workers put their collective muscles and brains together, we can smash this system once and for all!

Learning to fight
The PL’er walked us through landmarks of class struggle they helped lead in the neighborhood and shared stories of antiracist fightbacks. We began our tour on Bowery where an inspiring militant and antiracist multigenerational group of mostly women immigrant workers from Fuzhou, China fought against their landlord Joseph Betesh. The tenants united 100s of multiracial workers against  liberal fascist Democrat Mayor Bill de Blasio’s racist displacement agenda.

Our guide exposed the harsh reality behind the myth of "good Chinese workers"and revealed how these so-called "prosperous" businesses were built on the backs of underpaid and overworked Chinese workers.

We then saw the four restaurants her organization picketed to demand the $1 million in wages stolen from exploited workers. She spoke of the struggles of the first Chinese restaurant workers’ union, which struck against powerful Chinese boss gangs, exposing the nationalist lie that bosses and workers shared the same interests. Despite a hard-fought victory resulting in a temporary win for workers, the restaurant shut down, and many of the relegated workers have been central in the mega-landlord Jonathan Chu-MOCA conflict.

For more than a half-century, the Chu family increased their wealth through property investments in Chinatown, owning Hotel 50 Bowery, East Bank and more. During the pandemic, Jonathan Chu closed the largest dim sum eatery in Chinatown and threw 180 employees out of work. They picketed his business, while MOCA called for his reopening of one of the only unionized restaurants in Chinatown. Recently Jonathan Chu had a hand in a local rezoning plan to destroy rent-controlled units and incentivize luxury development.

Inside NYC liberal fascist toolkit: jails and museums
In an act with seemingly good intentions, the Big Fascist Bill de Blasio administration, and City Council green-lit plans to shut down Rikers Island - one of the most oppressive jails in the nation. But they had another agenda: providing lucrative building contracts for their developer friends, funded by taxpayers' hard-earned money. In Chinatown, they proposed constructing the tallest jail (40 stories) on North America’s soil - demolishing the current Manhattan Detention Center and displacing Black, Latin, and immigrant  youth and working-class victims of their profiteering for whom they deny education, living wages, employment, and housing.

Capitalism forces two options for workers in Chinatown: To be buried in their jails or be displaced and have a historical marker put on display at MOCA. It is with these two options that workers see how liberalism seamlessly paves the way for fascism.

When MOCA opened in the early 80s it was run by Chinese scholars and organizers with the intent of popularizing Chinese working-class histories. Since then, however, it has strayed from its roots. It got swept up in the non-profit industrial complex, receiving funding from foundations like Bloomberg Philanthropies and a  board stacked with finance capitalists of Asian descent. Nancy Yao Maasbach, MOCA's former president and Goldman Sachs financier, initially opposed the new jail construction —until she accepted Councilmember Margaret Chin's $35 million bribe as part of a community agreement deal. Now, while workers suffer, MOCA plans to expand with this money.

From the South Bronx Hip-Hop Museum to Chinatown’s MOCA, cultural institutions are being used by real estate bosses to promote toxic identity politics and push their liberal fascist agenda.

Fighting  to Learn
At the end of our tour, we began to prepare for the picketing. We made colorful signs and practiced chants. We fueled ourselves for the fightback with steamed buns and dumplings while our comrade shared a victory for the picket line: in a similar fightback, Nancy Yao was ousted from her #girlboss gig at the Smithsonian Women’s Museum after the picketers exposed her sexist dismissal of sexual harassment at MOCA (NYTimes, 7/5).

Our multiracial contingent headed down to MOCA armed with our signs that read “Displace Racist landlords with communist revolution.”

The chant "M-O-C-A: how do you spell racist?" reverberated in the air.

PL’ers distributed dozens of CHALLENGE newspapers and flyers while curious onlookers stopped to talk to us about what was happening, asking questions about the issues behind this fight, and walked away with a copy of our paper. Two PL’ers gave speeches exposing racist displacement and criminalization of Chinatown workers, saying the only solution is a communist revolution, as workers drove by and honked in approval.

Though MOCA doors were closed, their racist building director wasted no time in calling the kkkops to shut us down. Two kkkops approached the PL’er giving the speech to snatch the bullhorn but they were quickly intercepted by two other comrades. As they talked the cops down, our group began to chant without the bullhorn: “Cops and landlords don’t protect us, working people defend us.”

A red delicious lesson
We ended the day with ice creams from Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, and digested an important lesson. We, the working class, have the tools to run society. The workers fighting in Chinatown are an example of how we can unite and fight racism with one of our sharpest weapons: multiracial unity.

PL’ers will continue to fight alongside workers and youth, raising the need to go beyond reforms and realize that the only way out of a racist system is to fight for a communist system where we will be in full control of the property, wealth, culture, and history WE create.