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United States of PTSD
Season One: Mental health concerns are on the rise in the United States. This podcast will look at the influencing factors contributing to the decline of our culture. With the rise of school shootings, political divisiveness, increasing levels of hate, and a chronic war of peoples' rights, we have entered a domestic war that never ends. Our podcast will look at whether this is done by design or is it an abject failure. We will discuss it from a clinical and common-sense perspective. Secondarily we will discuss ways to protect yourself from being further traumatized. Hosted by Matthew Boucher LICSW LCDP (licensed in RI) who has over 20 years of experience working with people who have addictions and trauma with a specialty of pregnant/postpartum women. Co-host Wendy Picard is a Learning and Development consultant with 15 years of experience, lifelong observer of the human condition, and diagnosed with PTSD in 1994.
Season Two: Is joined by Donna Gaudette and Julia Kirkpatrick BSW. Julia is currently working on obtaining her MSW and her LCSW. She is a welcome addition to the podcast.
Season Three: Cora Lee Kennedy provided research and worked as a temporary co-host. Dr. Erika Lin-Hendel joins as a co-host for season 3.
United States of PTSD
S 3 E: 21 Echoes of Cambodia's Killing Fields
Please welcome guest speaker Julie Botom-Richny Chhay. Julie shares her family's experience during the Cambodian genocide, drawing parallels to current genocide in Gaza and how generational trauma continues to impact survivors and their descendants.
• Cambodia's genocide under Pol Pot's regime killed nearly 2 million people between 1975-1979
• The Khmer Rouge specifically targeted educated people - teachers, doctors, artists, and even those who wore glasses
• Julie's mother survived being attacked and left to die in the woods at just 8 years old
• Refugee experiences at the Thai border included further violence against those seeking asylum similar to North Korea
• Children were deliberately separated from families and indoctrinated to view the regime as their true family with parallels of immigrants in the US.
• Cultural erasure included banning traditional music, dance, and other art forms central to Cambodian identity
• Intergenerational trauma manifests in complex family relationships and continues decades after the violence ends
• The targeting of education, suppression of information, and divisive politics follow similar patterns across different genocides
• Modern censorship includes selective blocking of information about ongoing genocides on major platforms like Google
• Survival stories remind us that behind statistics are real human lives forever changed by political violence
https://youtu.be/mNDolWiY440?si=oErM1k0Exy2mTqkX
Opinion | ‘Do Not Forget Gaza’: The Last Words of a Martyred Journalist | Common Dreams
Israel’s “final decision” for conquest and occupation of Gaza - World Socialist Web Site
S-21, Tuol Sleng - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
U.S. Involvement in the Cambodian War and Genocide
walrus_cambodiabombing_oct06.pdf
Cambodia’s ‘Killing Fields’ artist dies | Features | Al Jazeera
Cambodian Genocide: S21 Prison Tuol Sleng Museum and Killing Fields Phnom Penh - FeetDoTravel
We urge you to reflect on these historical patterns as they emerge in current conflicts, and to recognize that peace requires us to confront uncomfortable truths about both past and present atrocities.
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Artwork and logo design by Misty Rae.
Special thanks to Joanna Roux for editing help.
Special thanks to the listeners and all the wonderful people who helped listen to and provide feedback on the episode's prerelease.
Please feel free to email Matt topics or suggestions, questions or feedback.
Matt@unitedstatesofPTSD.com
This podcast is not intended to serve as therapeutic advice or to replace any professional treatment.
Speaker 2:These opinions belong to us and do not reflect any company or agency.
Speaker 3:Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of the United States of PTSD. I am very happy that today I have one of my former students here, Julie, and of course the wonderful Erica is back, which I love, Erica, we all know that.
Speaker 1:That is so kind. I love you too, Matt. And we were so excited to have you here for this conversation and I just wanted to throw out one really quick thing, erica.
Speaker 3:I shared it with you, but one of my friends had sent me a message saying that he really appreciated how much work we were doing on genocide and how much of an impact it was making. Although it was hard to listen to, so I do want to give a shout out to him for just sending us that feedback. It was really helpful and it was validating to know that we are we're we're reaching people, so I was very happy about that. As I was saying before we started recording, julie, we've been doing the last couple of episodes about the genocide that's happening in Gaza, and you are from your family. Your family of lineage is from Cambodia. You have agreed to come on and talk today about the genocide that happened in Cambodia, and while you're telling your story, I want the listeners to reflect on how that is parallel to what is happening today, because genocides all have the same markings in terms of how they start and where they go. Without further ado, julie, go ahead and tell us your story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've been studying genocide for quite some time. I took interest in it at a very young age when I had found out that Cambodia did go through a genocide and my family my mom and my dad all went through this horrific event that had happened. So the interesting part about how this all started as well is, during this time it was around 1975. And right before 1975 was coming to an end Vietnam War. So Vietnam War was ending and the US decided to actually bomb parts of Cambodia. During this time Cambodia was actually part and involved in a current civil war. So the civil war consisted of the government and the Pol Pot regime. So during this time, because of the bombings, it gave advantage to some of the other powers to kind of overtake. So that's when Pol Pot and his regime took over in April of 1975. So he came in, he fled all of Phnom Penh, which is the city, and his goal was to gather everyone within the city and move them out into the fields, into open fields. So Cambodia consists of little cities here and there, but the biggest city is Phnom Penh, which is the capital, and a majority of the rest of our country is either temples or rice fields, lots of farms, lots of mango trees, coconut trees. So he gathered all these people, told them that they can't take anything with them. Take whatever it is you have and we are going to gather. So during the gathering he would line certain people up. So if you were either a teacher, a doctor anyone who was educated wore glasses, light skins. A doctor anyone who was educated wore glasses, light skins. If you were any sort of threat that you might be towards the government, you were killed. And this also came in like different patterns throughout the genocide.
Speaker 2:So in my mom's case, she was about eight years old when this had happened. She was one of five. My grandmother she is 100% Chinese. She was a migrant from China. My grandfather, my biological grandfather, was a wealthier man. He was in politics. He also was really known for giving back to the community, having his own farms and stuff like that. So they gathered everyone together. They would separate people. So my mom was actually separated. So my grandpa went into one camp. My mom went into another with her oldest sister, to another with her oldest sister and then her younger siblings, which consisted of two sisters and, and I think, another brother or two other brothers I'm not a hundred percent. Sure, they stayed with my great grandma. So everyone's separated and the whole point of this was actually to segregate everyone into, like, different age groups.
Speaker 2:But Pol Pot saw the younger kids as an opportunity to reprogram them. So the soldiers were dressed in tire. It was like made out of tire sole shoes and they wore um, they call it like gama, which is like a scarf, and then they would wear like all black and they would have guns with them and they were basically brainwashed that this is your family, like, this regime is your family. Whatever your family was before, it no longer exists. And they made it acceptable that, like, if you have to kill your family, you have, you're gonna kill them. And it was like a motto of like this is how we're gonna live by. Everyone lives by what they called at the time on goa.
Speaker 2:So there was no more religion, no more um, culture of like dance. So if you know anything about like the Cambodian culture, we're very rich in the arts, so we are known for like our dancing. We are known for our music. All musicians were also killed. So one of the most famous musicians during this time, his name was Cincy Samoit. I actually still listen to his music to this day. Actually, he was killed immediately and then he sang with another female. She was also killed. So a lot of our arts, music, currency, everything during this time was completely killed off. It wasn't allowed. We were no longer allowed to sing or dance, and you could only sing or dance the stuff that Pol Pot taught you to do.
Speaker 3:Julie, can I, can I ask one just question. So when you were talking about how they had killed off the musician because art, any form of art, has always been a way to challenge the norm Did they kill all artists, like painters, musicians? Besides musicians, like painters, writers, sculptors, all of that?
Speaker 2:All of them. I think the only person they kept and actually it is in a documentary and I completely forgot the documentaries mean, I'm not 100% sure if it was like s 19 or something along that line, but there was one painter that they kept. They kept him to paint what they were doing and depicting. So a lot of the photos that were painted were gruesome. If we really want to go into details, this one stays in my mind because it's not only traumatic but it just shows you how severe genocide really is and how much people can't care even for their own kind. And this is a genocide against your own people. It wasn't even a genocide that happened from one country to another. This was just our own people were attacking each other and killing each other. So there was a painting and it was soldiers and they were all standing. One was in the process of killing someone. The other one was holding the foot of a child you could tell was bluntly hurt from a tree that was nearby, because you could see the blood on the tree and that. That painting sits with me because this was the reality. This, this wasn't. Oh, wow, like this is just a. This really happened.
Speaker 2:There are many. There's a white mountain or some sort that's recently come out and that's also known as the second killing field. So what a lot of people don't know is, um, cambodia is known as the land of the killing fields because of all this, uh, hence the book the killing fields that was written by dith pran and he was actually local in new england. He, um, I think, studied in Yukon and he was also a writer and at the time he was a journalist and he wrote about his story during this time and that was his story of the killing field. So that I think really that image was really has always impacted me and I can still see it to this day and I can easily just picture it. But that was part of how gruesome genocide was. I remember reading a lot and hearing that the rivers were flooded with nothing but blood and the lakes and the fields were filled with just bodies, like everywhere you could walk into like a body any moment, and there were just areas.
Speaker 2:So actually the men would get gathered, sometimes the women, mainly men. They would actually gather them at night and they would tell them like, hey, I'm going to pick you, you, you, and we're going to take you here, and once we take you here, we have a job for you. Those men were never seen again, so wherever they went, they're most likely not alive. There was also. They turned a school and this is, I think, part of like the documentary on the S-19, if I remember correctly if that was the title, but don't quote me on that there was a school that they actually converted into an execution area. So each classroom had a bed and in each bed they would strap someone down and they would say, hey, you're going to stay in here and you're going to tell us everything we need to know about the government, and, like, like they're trying to get information from regular people who have no idea, like why am I here? So they would strap them to the bed, no food, no water, and their photos would be taken, with like a number on it and and you can actually look this up they have files of like photos of these people and they have never been seen again. So that that was one of the things that they did.
Speaker 2:But going back to my mom, so my mom was sent to a concentration camp, so she was separated from the rest of her family. My mom is now in a concentration camp where, as you know, most concentration camps are known for killing people, right. So my mom was in there with my sister and somehow word got news, news was told that my mom and her sister came from a very well-off family and my mom did get news that my grandfather at this time is now missing. So it is assumed now that my biological grandfather has been killed. So the only surviving member that my mom knows of right now is my grandma and her other sibling, so my mom's oldest sister's name, lynn my, my mom is the second oldest. My mom witnessed lynn get killed in front of her. So she was shot in front of my mom. They took my mom and they slit her because there's a very important vein in the female body that runs through your underarm. So they slit my mom there, they left her in the woods and they said she's either going to bleed to death or there's an animal that's going to come and they're just going to, they're just going to get her.
Speaker 2:So before this all happens, you're also slaving away in the rice fields. So before you're executed and before you're sent to your death, you're literally slaving away in rice fields, working all day. You're just served one meal, which is like one little bowl of rice congee. No protein, no, nothing. You weren't allowed to like find your own food. You were only allowed to eat what was given to you. If you didn't, you were ungrateful, you were killed. Basically, whatever you did, whatever you said, it would be held against you.
Speaker 2:So my mom, she survived. And towards the end of 1979, there was bombings that were happening and I guess what had happened was the Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were coming into Cambodia for some reason. So the Pol Pot regime was scared, so they went into hiding. So they all started running away and they hid inside the woods and they were coming in and I don't know if they were really trying to help us. I don't know what was exactly going on, but they did come and during this time my mom fled. So she was like all right, I'm going to live, I have to live. So she was like all right, I'm going to live, I have to live.
Speaker 2:So she was able to go to the Thai border and somehow reconnected with my mom's, now the only survivor of this war. So they made it into the Thai border. Now, in the span of 1975 and 1979, almost 2 million people were killed by their own people. That's like a shocking number in a span of just four years, four or five years. So my mom made it to the border of Thailand, and the tragedy doesn't end when you think it's safe that. That that's the crazy part.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if you've heard much recently, but Cambodian Thailand or current Thailand, as of right now, there's tension between Thailand and Cambodia over land and over temples. This tension has happened for quite some time. But I think too, with the Cambodian people, they've just gotten to a point where it's like we just want peace. Our country has dealt with so much pain and tragedy and they're still picking themselves up. It's still a third world country, but they're doing everything they can to pick themselves up. From what has occurred to them, you know, years before field.
Speaker 2:So this killing field was actually a mountain. So it was agreed that Thailand would actually take in the Cambodian people as refugees, and as refugees eventually, like you'll either re home, into, like somewhere else, or you'll move back home, but it was just a refugee camp, or you'll move back home, but it was just a refugee camp. So on this mountain, um, and to get to to thailand, that was a feat in itself. So they actually planted landmines. So there were landmines right before thailand and cambodia to essentially hurt people from not getting over.
Speaker 2:There. There were rivers, there was also a mountain. So this mountain the thai would actually stand on top of the mountain like wait for the cambodian people to get up to the mountain and they would actually push them off or kill them. So they weren't allowing them to enter thailand, even though it was agreed upon that they would. So the government had found out that they were doing this and they were like you can't do that. We have an agreement that you are supposed to take these people in as refuge and even if we're overflowing with people and even if there's a lot of people at the border, we need to do what we can to take them in as of right now, because they're now here on asylum.
Speaker 1:It's not it's a fear of their own life. One thing that I wanted to make a reflection on is, like how you're describing this violence towards refugees right, this is something that we've seen over and over again and I just really wanted to number one. Thank you so much for bringing out the point. In addition, all of the other storytelling, as far as you know, forced family separation and people recognizing that if you indoctrinate children, you can create cycles of violence and that is something that I see parallel Perhaps we can talk about that a little bit as far as how early people at times target children for indoctrination about militarism and violence, and also the targeting of refugees. So we have other instances of within borderlands, of extreme violence against refugees and killing areas, and so this story is just like. It's so important for us to listen to these stories and understand that this has happened all around the world at these borderlands, where people have shot at people just trying to flee conditions of violence. So, yeah, thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course, and I find that children become. It's very sad because children become part of this thing that they shouldn't be involved in, right, and it's like they shouldn't be holding guns, they shouldn't. It's like they shouldn't be holding guns, they shouldn't be. You know the thought of killing other people. I mean my uncle. He served two tours. He was in Afghanistan and Kuwait right after 9-11. And he would come back with stories and he was like these kids would run up to me but I couldn't trust them. Like I wanted to trust them and I wanted to trust them and I wanted to see them as children. But you can't see them as children because they might actually be a threat and that's due to humans, that's that's due to adults, that's that's due to how they program them. That this is how it should be, because it's it's right to do for your country and, like you said, it is. It's horrible and we do see a pattern of it. We see it in Sudan when it happened. We've seen it in Afghanistan.
Speaker 3:We're seeing it now, you know, but yes, If I could just add to that something I saw the other day. I just looked it up, I'll include it in the notes for the episode and again, I just want to thank you as well. This is really hitting me, so I'm having a hard time with this, but thank you again for sharing this. Yeah, so I saw this video the other day. When you're talking about children, it's an Israeli father reading a book to his son and it's about invading Lebanon and why the Lebanese people are like terrible people and the kid is just repeating back what the father is reading to him and it's highly disturbing. But I'll put it in the notes. But, as we can see, this is a pattern. Everything you're saying with what erica talked about, about separating the families, I mean we see it at the border. Now we see them where you know they're selling merchandise for alligator alcatraz, which is a concentration camp like the fact that people are glorifying this now in this country is sick. It's. It's so disturbing it.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 3:But I just wanted to add that, if you can, keep talking please.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So my mom was able to make it to the refugee camp and unfortunately she was not met with any of her other siblings or her father. She was only met with my grandmother and her, her aunt, which is my, my grandma's um younger sister. So during this time so actually Cambodia is very it's so rich in culture and the arts, like I mentioned before, and since we were colonized by the French part of the education system you actually learned how to speak French. So my grandma actually speaks, she speaks French, she speaks Khmer, which is the Cambodian language, and she actually speaks two different dialects of Chinese. One of them is Chu Chow, and then there's like another dialect that's kind of like the Cambodian mix of like like a Cambodian Chinese dialect. So a few of the people who have migrated from China that lived permanently in Cambodia, a lot of them speak this, this dialect. So my grandma spoke those two dialects. Grandma spoke those two dialects.
Speaker 2:My grandma had, at the time, known of people who had gotten away out of the country before the war had even started and had news. So she wrote letters in French, she wrote letters in Khmer, she wrote letters to people that she knew that she could get a hold of and the whole point of this is actually to get sponsored into the US. So that was part of like, essentially, when you get sponsored which I know we don't really hear that word anymore but basically someone takes you in and they kind of like rehome you, they rehouse you and they kind of get you set up for your future in a different country, mostly in America. So my grandma got a hold of someone here in Rhode Island. It was a gentleman who actually wanted to take my grandma's hand in marriage. My grandma was able to take the flight with my mom. They were able to get, you know, all the photos not photos. They had their photos taken. So there's actually the only photo that I have of my mom as a child and of my grandmother was this refugee camp photo. So that is the only photo I have of look at my mom. It's it's a stoic look on her face. So now at this point she's 12 years old and she's just went through like four years of everything that no child at that age should even witness in life and her face is just so expressionless and it's just so like what? What happens from here? Like will it be good, will it be bad. Is this really a new beginning for me, or is this just the beginning of something of more challenges to come? So in the photo was my grandma, and then it was also my grandma's sister and her new husband. So they were able to move. They landed here in Providence.
Speaker 2:My mom came here on a plane in the dead of winter and she had nothing on but a pair of flip-flops and whatever clothes was on her back, which was very minimal. Cambodia is a very hot country, so my mom did not know what to wear, how to dress. They were housed in a housing unit and they all lived in this one apartment. And that was the beginning for my mom in the US and her age was changed. So they actually backtracked her age. So she's a few years younger in the US than her real age.
Speaker 2:But, with that being said, she doesn't have a birth certificate. So for many, many years she thought she was this certain age and my grandmother recently told her like no, you were born this year, stop lying to people. And my mom's like I don't know, I don't have a birth certificate. I can't even tell you where I was born, what time and what hospital. There was no documentation. So during the Pol Pot regime they made you get rid of all of that. So you weren't allowed to have photographs, you weren't allowed to have jewelry. Jewelry ended up becoming currency and a way to trade later. So my grandma was able to keep the jewelry, but that was only for trade, so you could trade it for, like food, if you, if someone had food or clothing or anything like that, but actual money, currency it was useless. There was no point in using that.
Speaker 2:So my mom made it to the US and she went through her own trials and tribulations. Coming to the US. It was not any better. She had to deal with racism. She had to deal with you know, again being looked at as well. You're a refugee. You're a refugee. So during this time in the 80s now the 80s, early 80s it's like wow, there's like a flood of Cambodian people, like what is going on? And, as we know, with immigration, when there's a new group of people coming in, it's like whoa, what is going on. So my mom had to deal with many, many more issues after that and my grandmother, who's an amazing grandmother.
Speaker 2:I love my grandma with all my heart and soul, but I know the relationship that my mom has with my grandmother is also very different. So my grandmother grew up very wealthy and her husband gave her the life that she loved. My grandma loved to go dancing. My grandma loved music. My grandma had a nanny for every one of her kids, including my mom. So my mom had her own nanny. So my grandma wouldn't really tend to her kids. She would spend time with them but it wasn't like a motherly type, like she had other priorities.
Speaker 2:Basically, from what my mom has told me and I think, with my grandma adjusting, I think the trauma just kept going and I think my grandma looked at my mom as, like you are my child from my first marriage and I think it pained my grandma to see it because I think it like my grandma wanted to embrace my mom, but I don't think my grandma understood how to do that and I think it was very hard for her to be a mom to my mom during this time.
Speaker 2:But my grandma started work. My mom actually started work in her early teens as well, which, you know, at the time there were no laws on child labor, so my mom did like little small odds and ends job. My mom wanted to put her education first, which my mom did, and she went through a lot. After that, my mom was sexually assaulted by a family member. My mom was able to get away, so that was one of the things, but one of the things that really guided my mom were teachers, and I think, too like that, that was for her, her guiding grace, she, um, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I. There are a couple of things that I wanted to reflect in this. So number one, as far as, like, intergenerational trauma like my family also had experiences with war, and this concept of the different ways that different generations will talk about that trauma yeah, so you know, I have stories that my grandmother would tell me that she never told my dad.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or my grandmother on my mom's side would tell my mom certain stories that other people within the family wouldn't know. So, this is and the complexity between intergenerational relationship and how you're bringing up the intergenerational trauma.
Speaker 1:It's so important what you said that it doesn't stop when the violence stops. And and I I am curious because for me, as someone also that has intergenerational trauma around war, I have the last two years, you know you just think about all of the people impacted and how the next generations are going to be impacted, and I keep on communicating. I'm like I'm two generations away from the worst that my family experienced, away from the worst that my family experienced, and I am impacted. And I am impacted through the relationship and, for example, your mother describing how teachers or people outside of the family in some ways needed to be part of that raising of a human being, which I think I would really invite our, our listeners and other people that they know to really reflect on some of those things about what does it mean to require a collective raising, being raised collectively in this kind of way, because the relationship within the family is fractured due to this trauma that has been inflicted by people in power who have made these decisions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's true.
Speaker 3:Something I wonder about, and I'd be curious when you both think about this, is, julie, you talked about how things happen really quickly in Cambodia, and Cambodia, land-wise, is fairly, is fairly small, correct in terms of size wise it's a pretty decent size.
Speaker 2:so if you look at the map, cambodia is very close to thailand, vietnam and like laos, so we're all like kind of like heavily influenced by each other, which is very interesting, but it is like a good decent size. It's not like extremely large, but we have a lot of open land.
Speaker 3:The only reason I was asking was because I was trying to compare to. If you were trying to do that in a larger, mass land wise country like the United States, it might be not as easy to do it that quickly. Yeah, correct, so it would have to be a lot slower. So then I think about, over the years, how teachers have been continually vilified and how we are trying to get rid of education and we are. We are doing it in a lot more system, systematic way, over a longer period of time, and I can't help but wonder if the end results, if that's the plan for the end results, is the same right, because a lot of what we're seeing it's parallel, it's all happening. It just isn't happening as quickly as it happened in Cambodia or as quickly as happened in Gaza or in Sudan or in places that are just land, wise, smaller right, so it's easier to contain.
Speaker 3:I don't know what do you, what do you think on that Curious?
Speaker 2:I, I believe that teachers have like a major impact on, like on on students and like a difference that they can make in their child's life, especially someone who might be newer to the country, and for me it also comes with like they're really good teachers and they're really bad teachers, right.
Speaker 2:So I think it all comes down to like what teacher will affect my future in the next year? Right, that you have them, and it's and I think that's where, like, the change can happen. You know what I mean, and I think that's why it's not as progressive as it should be. It's because it should be in masses, right, like I'm sure we've all heard like oh wow, that that teacher was horrible, or oh, this, this professor was great, or there's a good police officer, but then you hear like, well, that's a bad officer, and I think there's so much negative that we don't really get to the positive, and I think we need to reflect more on the positive, because those are but I wonder, Julia, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm talking about in terms of the cultural shift, not necessarily like individual teachers.
Speaker 3:So when you see the Department of Education getting the funding cut and when you see students who are being politically active getting thrown off campus and getting expelled. Active getting thrown off campus and getting expelled. When you see teachers who are standing up for genocide getting fired. When you see um us fighting against funding students having free lunch but we're trying to get teachers to carry guns right, like there's something fundamentally wrong and I just I wonder if what happened in the killing fields is going to happen here.
Speaker 3:It's just that the way it's happening is much slower. That's kind of what I thought. Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 3:Erica, you had yeah.
Speaker 1:I just want to mention the things that really emerge forwards for me are number one we talk about the, the vilification right on a systemic scale.
Speaker 1:When I think about the vilification of science, the vilification of teachers, there's the, you know, the one thing that's absent is vilification of the rich and the political class right in the United States. I think everyone and the listeners can recognize the fact that the targeting has been a progressive thing in order to undermine legitimacy and discourse and dissent, Like. I think that in any of these examples, what we see is an elimination of dissent and fundamentally, if we eliminate the dissent, I mean the US education system has already been suppressing information. Anyone who has come from international spaces can tell you all of the things that the United States of military has been doing around the world, including, you know, Vietnam, Cambodia, all like so many different Latin American countries, like Guatemala, right, Like it, our education system is already insufficient, is already showing a narrative that puts the military in a position of being like um, like idolized, uh, and, and so I would say that in some ways, we've already been in that position for a pretty long time.
Speaker 3:yeah, if I could add to something that, to that too as well. Erica, julie, this actually happened in your class, I think you you may have heard us talking about it, but but we one of the groups had done a. They had looked at the ecological impact of genocide, of the genocide in Gaza, and I had found on my phone, because I was trying to help them out I found an article that talked about the, the zoo, for example, and like how 95% of animals in the zoo had been killed and how the damage it was doing to like the wildlife and the water and land and all that stuff. And I had showed it to one of the students and I said pull that, you know, pull this up and read it when you're doing, when you're doing your research. And she went to pull it up on google. It didn't exist and then we couldn't find it right. So, like I'm thinking myself to my phone was safari and I did, I didn't make that connection and she's like I can't find it.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking when I looked at my phone, it was Safari.
Speaker 3:I didn't make that connection. She's like I can't find it. I'm like well, type in the name of the article. I'm trying to help her find it. It is not popping up. One of the other students tried to look it up and it wasn't popping up. Then somebody said do you think it's Google? I said I never thought about that. We pulled up Firefox and it was the first thing that popped up. Google had actually made the article not there and it was not. It wasn't like an opinion piece, it was an actual article, like a scientific article, about the damage and the impact that it was happening to the ecology in the area. I was blown away by that. So we were already seeing it in that level too, where they're censoring information that we're getting. We know that Google is heavily influenced by Zionism. I will say we know that.
Speaker 2:I also feel like I know you had mentioned to in class. You had recommended me to watch a movie and I had told you and I forgot the name of the movie.
Speaker 1:I don't remember what the movie was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was for our group project. It was for a group project.
Speaker 3:I totally don't remember what it was.
Speaker 2:For our final and you were like, jules, you guys should look up this movie. And I was like, wait, I remember that I had another professor actually tell me to watch the movie as well, but I remember telling you I couldn't access it, I couldn't open it, and you were like you were saying like, oh, they do that. Like you have to try and find it on a platform where it allows you to watch it. And I was like, well, I could have swore this platform worked, it allows you to watch it. And I was like, well, I could have swore this platform worked, but it didn't an hour after she had posted the video for us to watch. So I think it just shows you to like there are a lot of things that like, like even with the Cambodian genocide like.
Speaker 2:So I took, I took actually a genocide class in high school and the professor at the time was one of my. I've always loved history and he was one of my favorite professors, or my favorite teacher, not professor at my high school and he had me teach that part of genocide, the Cambodian genocide. But he kind of like really skimmed like the Cambodian genocide when he was teaching it. But I had one professor in history at CCRI, who actually was the only professor and the only history teacher that I've met that had mentioned that that Cambodia was bombed by the U? S like no one ever knew like this happened that like wow, like the U? S like bombs other countries.
Speaker 3:I think it would probably be easier to make a list of the countries the United States has not bombed. It might actually be shorter, right, we can probably do that.
Speaker 2:At this point. But those are the things we don't talk about. Or, like I know I talk about this with, like my fellow students, like why don't we see, you know, the black community? And like slavery and like what they went through, why is that not genocide? Or how about the native Americans? That's a genocide in itself, but on our land we don't want to see it that way. It's kind of like the glorification of like we're like great and we're like perfect and we don't do anything wrong.
Speaker 3:This entire country is funded on genocide, and that's how. That's how it happened. And then the Native Americans and the African Americans. I was reading a biography the other day. Well, actually it wasn't a biography, it was a. What do you call it when somebody else writes this? I guess it would be a biography right, Because it wasn't an autobiography.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was right Of one of the first freed slaves in Connecticut who actually purchased land and property, and I was reading all the documentation in this book about it and it was just disturbing the stories that they don't teach you about what was actually done to the slaves and it wasn't there. He had also referenced Irishish slaves as well, which I I don't even know that I knew was a thing, yeah, so there was quite a lot of information in there that I thought how come we're not told any of this stuff?
Speaker 2:yeah, well, I think too, like part of like immigration too is that it comes in patterns, like I remember remember doing a project recently on St Louis and I forgot in what years, but like the Irish and the Italians, they were the newer immigrants that were coming into the US and they were doing the jobs that at the time people were like we don't want to do them. They were like doing the coal mines they were doing. And you know, when we look at the time, people were like we don't want to do them. They were like doing the coal mines they were doing. And you know, when we look at the pattern of immigration, this is what it is.
Speaker 2:It was built on the hands of immigrants that essentially did not want to do the jobs that people currently don't want to do. Now, you know it's it's it's like that dirty work, you know, like one of the things that, um, you know it's kind of not spoken about as well as actually the Chinese immigrants Chinese were slaves, so it's more popular on the West Coast where that history is very lucrative in that. But they built train tracks. They were in charge of building train tracks, and my mom actually, so she was actually on the Newport Preservation Society for a few years. She's no longer on there, but she was on there to educate people on the fact that Asian people built all of this. They built railroads, they've built things, and they weren't granted citizenship.
Speaker 3:No, and then what we also did and we do this as well with many minority groups is they were then targeted, as part of the opiate crisis, as causing the opiate crisis. They brought in opium and it was all their fault. Because we do that?
Speaker 3:We've done that with every single group that we don't like we vilify them and then we say that they're coming in and they're spreading drugs and they're raping people and they're doing all this stuff. It's the same story on different faces, when the reality is, the only people who are doing that are the colonizers. They're the people who have been doing it since day one. Big pharma.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:The biggest legalized drug trade I've ever seen in this ever right. They do that legalized drug trade I've ever seen in this ever right. They do that and we we, historically have been the ones that have been enslaving and raping everybody, not not the groups that have been coming in to like help. It's infuriating.
Speaker 2:Yes, no, it and it's, it's, it's, it's really true. Like we, we see all of this and you know withrican-american community too, like we look at them and it's like it didn't end for them after slavery. It continued. You know, like they had so many other things that they had to go through in battle. You know as we taught, you know as we learn in like oppression and you know diversity. This is a lot of the things we learned, but also, too, like the killing didn't stop either. Like they were lynched, they were killed, they were targeted. It was violence, were always towards a group of people, and them too, specifically at this time. You know it's just, it's like this cycle julie, you have said so many powerful things.
Speaker 3:really you have. I can't thank you enough for coming on and talking about this and we've seen I think we've seen the parallels. We've talked about the parallels. When you were talking about the landmines, I was thinking about how North Korea does that.
Speaker 3:right, they make it impossible for people to get out and they use all sorts of ways, including spies within their own people, which you've also referenced. That which, minus the landmines, I mean we're pretty much doing the same thing here. We've got ICE, we've got all sorts of informants all over the place. Like you, never know what's happening, and it's really scary. You talked about fighting amongst themselves. I mean, that's what this whole country is about is being as divisive and tribalistic as possible, and as long as that continues, we are never going to be unified. And as long as we're never unified, we're going to continue to be torn apart.
Speaker 3:And the idealizing of politicians. I saw something the other day I know I've talked about Bernie a lot, but he pisses me off a lot is that he's saying the right stuff and his, his followers are like sycophants. They're like oh, he should be president. He's like the greatest person in the world, blah, blah, blah. He still can't say genocide. I actually saw an interview with him the other day where he was dodging the word, like dodging it. He was trying not to use it and at one point he said it doesn't matter what we call it. No, it absolutely matters what we call it so stop pretending it's not genocide.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he is just as bad as the rest of them and I'm sick and tired of people. Putting them up on this pedestal pisses me off. I think they're worse than mega people. I really do yeah, because they are so delusional that, yeah, he is this great guy and he's not sorry, that wasn't a soapbox.
Speaker 2:No, no, I know I feel like every Bernie follower I've met. I'm like you guys are like, so down my throat, like with all this, like Bernie stuff.
Speaker 3:They're delusional, they're absolutely delusional. They just they think he's this great guy. I mean, at the beginning he was closing this door on people's faces when they were trying to talk to him about genocide and I still, to this day, cannot believe Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the people, of the voice of reason right now, which just blows my mind. I don't know what planet I'm living on at this point. And I do want to add to this I mentioned to say that I emailed my senator who is Glumenthal and he's in Connecticut. It is my opinion that he is a raging Zionist. That is my opinion and I think it's pretty well supported.
Speaker 3:But I sent him an email saying that I do not support my tax dollars committing genocide and that Israel is an apartheid state, and blah, blah, blah, blah blah. And he basically responded back and said October 7th blah, blah, blah, I will always support Israel. I don't care what you know, you know, basically, I don't care what the constituents say, I will always support Israel. I don't care what you know, you know, basically, I don't care what the constituents say, I will always support Israel. And that was, that was the gist of his email. So then I called his office and I said well, he clearly didn't read the email, because there was nothing in my email. They were supporting Israel, it was the complete opposite. And I don't even think they cared what I said, because you know they don't work for us anyway, they work for Israel. They don't work for us anyway, they work for us they don't work for any of the voters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh my god, yeah I, it's like you. You look at, like this pattern and it's like we're given, we're taken, our rights are taken away from, like talking about it right, like we're not allowed to talk about it, we're not to, we're not allowed to do this, like as students, we can't mention it, like there are just so many things that work against us. But it's like, at what point are we going to open the door and realize that, like, we're hurting innocent people, like people are affected by this, and it's not even people, it's literally children, it's, it's. It's just so, it's just so upsetting and like, like we've said, like history always repeats itself.
Speaker 3:Erica, what is your reflection?
Speaker 1:I wanted to circle my reflection when you're, when you're talking about like it's people, like it's innocent people, and I I'm reflecting back to Julie, the moment where you said they would like strap someone down onto a bed and and torture them and starve them, being like, give information, give us a yeah, like. And when you think about the stories of palestinians coming out of these torture prisons, um, that israel has where it's like you know you work for hamas, like who do you know? What do you know? And, to be honest, like, do you hear those stories about american soldiers, um, in iraq, in afghanistan, like asking, like doing these things where they were? Like I was told in this room that there was information to get out of this person and there are soldiers who, like look back on that now and some of the times they're like I honestly don't know if that was actually, that was, that wasn't, that was where I needed, yeah, that that person was not involved or did not know those things.
Speaker 1:And you know, like the united states engaged in torture, israel in engages in torture. Uh, the united states, here right now with the ice condition, like conditions of the ice and prison concentration camps, is engaging in torture. And if we do not name this specifically and explicitly, we are going to continue to live in denial and continue to be in this space where the ethics of humanity just has been dissolved. And I am not like none of us are willing. We're not okay with it, and that's why we're not okay with it, and that's why we're having these conversations right.
Speaker 2:I agree 100 with you.
Speaker 3:Yes not okay with it one bit, and I I talk about it every day and I'll continue to talk about it every day until they kill me. I don't care. Right, like seriously, like that's just the way it is, and it's gonna be the way it is yes so, julie, thank you again.
Speaker 3:and then I did want to um spend, because we're doing the end of every episode. Yes, one was absolutely heartbreaking. They're all heartbreaking, actually. But the last five journalists in Gaza were killed, and their names I'm going to probably butcher the names Anas al-Sharif, mohammed I think it's pronounced Quraik Ibrahim Zahir, mohammed Nofal and Mohamed Aliwa are the five journalists that were killed in Gaza. One of them left a note for his daughter, so I'm going to read it as he wrote it, and I will put a link to this as well.
Speaker 3:This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. First, peace be upon you and Allah's mercy and blessing. Allah knows. I've gave every effort and all my strength to be a support and a voice for my people. Ever since I opened my eyes to the life in the alleys and the streets of the Jabali refugee camp. My hope was that Allah would extend my life so I could return, with my family and loved ones, to our original town of occupied Ascalon. But Allah's will came first and his decree is final. I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and lost many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification, so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accept our killing and those who choked our breath and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.
Speaker 3:I entrust you with Palestine, the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world, the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people and with its wronged and innocent children, who have never had the time to dream or live in safety and peace. Their pure bodies were crushed under thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn apart and scattered across the walls. I urge you to not let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges towards the liberation of the land and its people until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over the stolen homeland. I entrust you to take care of my family. I entrust you with my beloved daughter Sham, the light of my eyes, whom I never got the chance to watch grow up as I had dreamed. I entrust you with my dear son, salah, whom I wished to support and accompany through life until he grew strong enough to carry my burden and continue the mission.
Speaker 3:I entrust you with my beloved mother, whose blessed prayers brought me to where I am, whose supplications were my fortress and whose light guided my path. Whose supplications were my fortress and whose light guided my path. I pray that Allah grants her strength and rewards her on behalf of the best of rewards. I entrust you with my lifelong companion, my beloved wife Umm Salah, from whom the war separated me from many long days and months. Yet she remained faithful to our bond, steadfast as the trunk of an olive tree that does not bend, patient, trusting in Allah and carrying the responsibility in my absence with all her strength and faith. I urge you to stand by them and to be their support.
Speaker 3:After Allah Almighty, if I die, I die steadfast upon my principles. I testify before Allah that I am here with his decree, certain of meeting him and assured what is Allah is better and everlasting. Oh Allah, accept me among the martyrs, forgive my past and future sins and make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people and my mercy. Forgive me if I have fallen short and pray for me with mercy, for I kept my promise and never changed it or betrayed it. Do not forget Gaza and do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance". And again, that was written by Anas al-Shadaf.
Speaker 1:And so is the importance of journalists.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and as a moment just to reflect on that, the scary part is that if the five remaining journalists in Gaza are dead, who is going?
Speaker 1:to be reporting what's happening now. I just wanted to Matt it's the five remaining journalists of the last Al Jazeera team. So there are other journalists. Thank you for clarifying that, but it is very much so that he was in areas reporting in areas that would have been recording what is now happening in Gaza City In the Israeli invasion of the city. Ground invasion of Gaza City.
Speaker 3:Thank you for clarifying that, erica. Thank you, julie. Erica, were there any final things you wanted to say for Julie, or ask Julie?
Speaker 1:Julie, I am glad that you are here. Aw, thank you, I mean like anyone who emerges, who survives right, and the birth that comes afterwards. So you existing is a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:And an example of human resilience and human resistance. So thank you for being here.
Speaker 2:And thank you for sharing this story. Thank you for sharing this story.
Speaker 2:Thank you for sharing this story of your family thank you, thank you so much for having me and giving me the space to share, because it is, it's. It's again I know we've said it history repeats itself and we're seeing it now and I think it's. It's up to us to say, like, enough is enough, like when, when does it stop? Because I think in this day and age, like all we want is peace and we don't want to see any more violence. I mean, like I said, cambodia is under attack. They just want peace there. There can only be so much violence that people see in a lifetime and it's, it doesn't need to be passed on, and that generational trauma and the things that we hand down to the next group of children. It needs to stop, it needs to end.
Speaker 3:Very well said, Julia. Thank you. Thank you, Erica, Hello everybody, and thank you again for listening. This is just a reminder that no part of this podcast can be duplicated or copied without written consent from either myself or Wendy. Thank you again.
