Hey Chinese Americans,
You know all those stories your grandparents told you about during the cultural revolution? Like how your neighbour's uncle got arrested for listening to the radio and and so and so snitched on this person or that person?
If you're lucky enough to have grandparents/aunts uncles old enough to remember any of this, ask them about life then. Ask them how they survived. Ask them what kinds of things they did.
All those lessons are about to become very useful. I heard my grandma tell the same stories and got bored of them. I sure wish I listened when I had the chance and took the lessons in.
There are fewer and fewer who remember those days but there are still some. Ask for their stories. You won't regret asking.
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@chu My parents told me stories from WW II.
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Cedar Fen Farm on 2025-02-01 at 01:26
@chu
I know all my grandma's stories from the depression. Better grow a garden and learn to cook. Stand on soup lines if you can find one. Work for food because there was no money. People moved in w each other and worked together to survive. Thete were food riots in the citied. People ate road kill, squirrels and small birds. The train yards were gathering places, so many men jumping box cars to travel to look for jobs. This is what happens when the economy stops. Goods and services stop moving.
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@oldoldcojote @chu The Depression was a terrible time, but at least people weren't being fired from their jobs for failing ideological purity tests. Growing a garden is probably going to be important, but so will skills for doing things that subtly subvert the autocratic project.
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Cedar Fen Farm on 2025-02-01 at 03:50
@philtor @chu
Yes, they were. Racism was rampant. Women we're trying to get the vote. Jews were being rounded up. The dust bowl caused thousands to be tossed off their land by the banks. There were no jobs...... read the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, labor leaders, read how gay people were treated, essentially outlawed.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/before-stonewall-biggest-threat-was-entrapment/590536/
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@oldoldcojote @philtor @chu Socialists were also prosecuted for organizing and protesting. Labor union members were killed.
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@GuyDudeman @oldoldcojote @philtor @chu
Then the blacklists of the 1940s and 50s, for purported communists
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@philtor
The sad difference is that, during the Great Depression, many people had enough habitation security to have a space in which to grow a garden.
These days, just having a property with a space for a garden is something of a privileged position to be in.
@oldoldcojote @chu
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@Remittancegirl
Except for all the people dispossessed of their land by the banks, and even more on the move in the great migration.
@chu @oldoldcojote @philtor
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@chu @oldoldcojote @philtor @Remittancegirl
If we think the migrant crisis is a new thing: in the US in 1930 .5M were homeless, 3M internally displaced migrants from the midwest in a population of 122M. Double the current homeless and put 10M migrants on the move and you’ll get that picture for today.
Cancel all the New Deal policies that addressed the problems and oddly enough they come back. Who would have guessed?
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@DavidM_yeg Very true. There were many, many. @chu @oldoldcojote @philtor
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@oldoldcojote @chu
There is a series of three books (Stories and Recipes of the Great Depression of the 1930s by Rita Van Amber) that collects first hand accounts & recipes (mostly from the US Midwest) from people that survived.
Sadly, I doubt many will be able to survive off selling cream or eggs these days, but there are examples of mutual aid too. The saddest for me was the person who canned weeds to survive the winter (it is better to dehydrate/dry weeds for food safety reasons, btw).
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@chu My dad was very young, but he remembered the hunger through the famine.
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@chu Farewell Guangdong, published by the Poll Tax Heritage Trust - Lily Lee is the main author of it.
RNZ have done a series of stories from the book - just released in time for Chinese New Year.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/media/242
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/farewell-guangdong
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@chu it is more than Chinese Americans unfortunately. Anybody with immigrant parents or grandparents from anywhere should ask them what it was like in the old country and why they came here. Anybody with Black relatives who lived in the south before the Civil Rights Act should ask them what it was like and what they did. There are all too many examples which today we can take courage and learn from.
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@chu I am in China for the new year, meeting with my wife's 90 year old grandfather and there is still so much trauma from that time. There are still things the family will only talk about in hushed tones.
Heading into dark times in America, it was pretty sobering.
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@chu my grandparents were college professors at the time, so naturally they were punished for speaking factually, it is not until Deng took over that things recovered. I didn’t hear too many episodes from them except for praise of Deng, but my parents certainly experienced quite some years of those traumas.
I don’t know if there are much takeaway from CR for Americans: because“keeping your heads down” were what kept people from punishment, this is a far cry from the activist culture US is in.
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"Hola, estadounidenses de origen chino:
¿Recuerdan todas esas historias que les contaron sus abuelos sobre la revolución cultural? ¿Como la historia de cómo arrestaron al tío de su vecino por escuchar la radio y cómo delató a esta o aquella persona?
Si tienen la suerte de tener abuelos, tías o tíos lo suficientemente mayores como para recordar algo de esto, pregúntenles cómo era la vida en esa época. Pregúntenles cómo sobrevivieron. Pregúntenles qué tipo de cosas hacían.
Todas esas lecciones están a punto de volverse muy útiles. Escuché a mi abuela contar las mismas historias y me aburrí de ellas. Ojalá las hubiera escuchado cuando tuve la oportunidad y hubiera aprendido las lecciones.
Cada vez hay menos personas que recuerdan esos días, pero todavía quedan algunas. Pídanles que les cuenten sus historias. No se arrepentirán."
@chu
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@chu Yes, have been asking.
The alternative, while it is still available, is to move to those countries that still remember this history.
Japan, Taiwan, Canada, Europe…
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@ShrikeTron @chu
Yeahhhhh maybe not Canada, our Nazi is polling at the top
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@Maxfieldripken @chu Thanks. But I think all-in-all Canada wouldn't be as bad as actually having a coup -- having multiple Oligarch fascists already in the government buildings purging the systems -- as the US is now.
Meanwhile, hoping California can weather this, but still keeping an eye on backup options.
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@ShrikeTron @chu
Ah yes, I was responding to whether we remember those older resistance skills
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@Maxfieldripken @chu Sorry, I'm of the opinion that Resistance did nothing since #OccupyWallSt .
We need actual people doing the same things the Oligarch facists are doing -- ripping up and throwing the needle -- but in the opposite direction vs small actions of nothing that lull people into feeling like they did something.
To me this is War, not a gentleman's game of tag.
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@ShrikeTron @chu
Yeah I don't think we've dug into anything real since Occupy
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@Maxfieldripken The US had the Women's March, that was good, and some other events, but nothing sustained nor impacting.
Definitely nothing like a "normal" country like South Korea where they recently impeached their nutty President with a majority, instead of struggling to do so with KingT.
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@chu I was just informed that can't ask my mother-in-law as she had an aortic-dissection (but survived it) last time she talked about the Cultural Revolution in Hong Kong.
That's how bad it is to the people that lived/remember it.
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@ShrikeTron @chu
Sadly enough, Europe has a huge rise of far right extremist politicians followed by masses of people. I thought I never in my life would experience what my parents lived btw 1930 and 1945.
My father always told me the First Responsibility of Politicians, and people, was to avoid anything that might lead to War. That very thought at the root to the creation of United Europe' first EEC has long been forgotten.
Europe is Not a Safe place any longer.
We have to prepare to Resist.
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@RosalieRose in the Netherlands so-called liberals and 'decent' 'Christian Democrats' work with them, next to a company basically based on romantization of farming. I don't have a good sense of Germany's politics, but i see indications Christian Democrats will end up working with AfD too.. 😞
Though they're better, dont mean to say we should have too much faith in Green parties or centrists either. Also because they did not really join anti genocide protests @ParabenAparaten @ShrikeTron @chu
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@jasper @RosalieRose @ShrikeTron @chu
I would not say that Green parties did not really join anti-genocide protests: it is possible however that she is not representative of all green supporters.
[#]gretathunberg
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@ParabenAparaten she isn't there for a particular political party?
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@chu If anyone out there reading this has family who has lived through totalitarian regimes, absolute breakdown of social services, and so forth, ask them how they managed. It doesn't matter where they came from, we need to listen to their stories. Learn from your elders.
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@cynthia1960 @chu It's not complicated but it is very time consuming. On the other hand it's something I want to do in life anyway. People show their true color in a crisis so try to find ones you can truly trust, as many as possible but don't get sloppy.
Similarly people show their nature interacting with animals and people in their power.
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@chu meus pais me contam histórias sobre a ditadura no Brasil. São bem impactantes
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@chu Please fill us in we will need them too
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@chu my mother told me about when happened before that.
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@chu One thing I see coming up a lot is this idea is that you can just keep your head down and that this awful time will somehow pass and then there will be some magical return to normalcy. People are taking their inspiration from the past.
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@chu The past offers many useful lessons, but understand that this is a different time, when many people's political inclinations are strongly marked in many databases, in which those in power have both meta data and perhaps META data on everyone. Understand, they know where everyone lives and who they talk to and what they say when they did. People have been bugging themselves for decades. Hiding is not an option.
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@chu my parents were a part of the Turkish troubles
They were in a communist part of the city, my grandpa owned a store and communists generally raided it without compensation
My dad had to pass by several far right neighbourhoods for school and had the risk of being beaten up just for coming from a communist neighbourhood
My mum explicitly remembers how they had rallies in the main street with lit torches and my dad says there were gun fights until the military police occupied the city
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@chu while I think the US might be going at the direction, it was still 20 floors away from cultural revolution China.
Of course we don’t know if there’s an elevator
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@aojiaohu
The elevator is on a fast descent. Someone cut the cable. Not sure if emergency brakes work.
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@chu if Trump get his 3rd term, then I am sure we are on the elevator
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@aojiaohu
Almost a certainty he will. If he lives long enough
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@chu my grannies had different stories about WW2. One had already children and worked in the field to harvest the crops. In the war nothing happened. She told about Germans who shot a man around her house.
The other granny worked in Amsterdam as a servant for a Jewish family. In 1942 it was to dangerous for the family and my granny was asked to go home. In that tiny village people where close and hid a lot a jews. After WW2 the village was honored with the Yad Vashem.
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@chu worked with mates with living memories if the CR. Family re-located from city to the wilderness. A lot of hardship when he was a kid. The key lesson I got was, it didn’t change his positive outlook and personality.
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@chu They left.
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