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.