The War on Cuba, Resistance Family
Getting Beyond Young Adult School (YAS) Indoctrination
Consciously growing one’s “resistance” family is not something one learns at school or Young Adult School (YAS).
YAS institutions largely take pride in convincing students that the way forward in life is to follow an established career track. Students, particularly the Model Minority, come to think exclusively in terms of grades, test scores, and politically correct social-justice activism. Everything involves commensurate payback and maximizing “right visibility” while rejecting associations with those on the “loser-track.” They are reinforced by Instagram or Meta cohorts, who at least right now, are attending “safe” anti-ICE-rallies.
Today, education is to train for a career but with some embellishments along the way in order to allow students to learn to think for themselves. However what opportunity is there for that when more and more professors are hired as adjuncts and can only advance to become associate professors? The curricula they teach is scrutinized and their potential is limited by tenure professors who push them to make their curricula available at Coursera.
So thinking outside the box is something that is ignored, dismissed out of hand, or left to the theorists, because neither the YAS board nor technocratic lobbyists want that. Professors who come to know and love this, sort of like “How I Came to Love the Bomb,” are certain to pass on this ethos to their proselytes.
There should be a department within Peace Studies about resistance networking and growing your resistance family. But these kinds of manuals are few and far between, after all, how many Peace and Conflict Studies departments are there? The consensus of the establishment has lately generally been that a “war economy is a healthy economy.” Gene Sharp’s book, 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action, continues to be a seminal work. But critics note that institutions such as the Albert Einstein Institute, tend to grow through funding by agencies connected with the State Department, which in turn compromises the mission and/or fosters cliquishness.
Furthermore, UNEP grants or World Bank funded scholarships, while generous, tend to demand specialized reports with extensive bibliographies that may be produced years after the conflict is over. For instance, Project summary: ‘Protecting the environment in armed conflict in Ukraine’ is a summary of what can take place were a fully funded study provided through Norwegian People’s Aid. The Environmental Impact of the Escalation of Conflict in the Gaza Strip by UNEP from June 2025 is already outdated.
Activist-journalists don’t have this luxury in time. BreakThrough News (YT) is podcasting daily about the ongoing wars whether in Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Gaza, or Lebanon. Developments are unfolding as we speak; the reporting and commentary occur simultaneously because the corporate media continues to redirect public concerns towards what they have predetermined matters most for Americans. For instance, how many times have Americans heard CNN, ABC, BBC, MS Now talk about the price of gas over the past week? When they interview people it is to discuss in this tiny Overton window what they are experiencing regarding “prices at the pump” in the new war.
Translation: Don’t dare to share your concern over human rights violations in the wars against Iran or Lebanon right now because the USA-Israel are bombing. Just focus on being a good consumer and limit your free speech to talking about affordable goods. Dido whether it is war in Gaza, Venezuela, or the blockade on Cuba which is causing Cubans massive suffering and power outages on a grand scale.
“They didn’t do what the USA-Israel wanted so this is what they get!” is what the Golden mouthpiece screams on social media, while the YAS Christian nationalist groups provide a safe echo chamber and reward their participants brownie points for reporting on professor-bias ( much like the antipodal nationalist groups did during the Biden era).
Trump, Rubio also threatening Cuba Collapse
BreakThrough News hosts Eugene Puryear, Rania Khalek, and Brian Becker continue to unpack the blatant lies told with their guests from The People’s Forum. First, Cuba has never posed a terror threat against the USA. Second, Trump does not care or love the Cuban people if he is enforcing such massive suffering. The idea that we will “starve Cuba into submission” is as old an argument as used during the siege of Leningrad. A third lie is that Cuba is being punished for being communist. If that is the case, then why not Vietnam or China? More likely, journalist Jose Luis Granados argues, it is because America wants to teach the Global South a lesson using a small country for a convenient scapegoat.
Now is the time to sign onto petitions (Let Cuba Live), attend rallies, and show your support for Cubans, while learning about their history of resistance. Asian Green News (AGN) explored the history of Cuba during the Special Period when it suffered massive trade embargoes during the 1990s. We reviewed the book, Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change, and developed a lesson plan based on the documentary, “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil,” produced by Eugene Murphy, Faith Morgan, and Megan Quinn. (AGN presented an exciting lesson during one summer school.)
While the trade embargo eased in the 2000s, times have changed. Cuba developed close trade ties with Venezuela and now that is cut off. Right now the Trump administration is routinely issuing tyrannical threats mixed with boasting on his Truth Social. He told Politico in a phone interview:
“Cuba’s going to fall, too. We cut off all oil, all money, or we cut off everything coming in from Venezuela, which was the sole source. And they want to make a deal. How long have you been hearing about Cuba, Cuba, Cuba — for 50 years?…And that’s one of the small ones for me.”
Trump hints that he favors “a friendly takeover of Cuba” that will serve as the “icing on the cake” once the administration finishes the “conflict with Iran.”
Both Womxn’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and Code Pink are defending the human rights of the Cuban people.
Code Pink, through its travel agency, Global Exchange, has led travel tours to Cuba, including authentic opportunities to learn about Cuban life. Code Pink, Progressive International, The People’s Forum, and allied movements are hoping to launch a flotilla to Cuba (“Nuestras Americas Flotilla to Cuba”) in March 2026 to deliver humanitarian goods. Visit “Breaking the Blockade” at Codepink.org/ConvergeCuba to sign the petition, donate, and keep abreast of the activities. Learn about the flotilla also here: https://act.progressive.international/flotilla/ and here: https://nuestraamericaconvoy.org/.
Your voice, your signature, tells our legislators you care. It emboldens them to take positive humanitarian action that counters the Trump administration brutalist tactics.
These are the kind of activists to think about including in your Resistance Family. You may not agree with all the politics of the Green Party or the Democratic Socialists of America, but they act from a standpoint of collective, not just individual, survival. Only a coward thinks in terms of saving self by hoping to ride out World War III in an underground bunker while thinking “Be damned with the rest of humanity!”
Your Resistance Family Matters More Than Ever
The way to really grow your Resistance Family is to adopt an egalitarian open-minded flexible perspective. Look upon each organization as part of an evolving web of connections. They are like stepfather, stepmother, sister, brother, cousin, second-cousin, adopted child, adopted son, and so on. You have to try and discover those organizations and the people who resonate best with your personality, values, and interests.
It is even nicer if they have a similar background and culture as yourself but it is more or less optional today. A real danger today is that people can become hypnotized by neurolinguistic programming used by nationalist groups who force their participants to kneel and repeat the same three words over and over again for hours and for days on end. What are they really up to? Cui bono? If there is no room for you to carry your own handcrafted signs and messages; if you are pre-labeled, shamed, or snubbed for even wanting to share; you must dare to question what is really going on. There is no organization that anyone should believe everything—creed, personhood, political agenda, background, context, mission, goals, funding mechanisms, board, history—without question. One should do so independently and not take the word from some smear-artists or fad-group online. There are always people with less than altruistic purposes or are ruled by egotism.
In life, one even makes friends with someone only to discover that they are no longer the person you used to know. Even a sibling can become a fly-by-night thief and cutthroat. Operatives try to hijack the organization from within in order to implant a subversive divisive agenda. Malignant perverts “hunt” like predators for “meat” and play “mind games” to try to “manipulate the mission.” Moles, infiltrators, and even robots enmesh themselves in chat groups are overly interested in your background, hoping to seed your consciousness with fear-based memes about name-fame-gain.
In one bad dream had recently, the House staff had morphed into nursing home contractors to punish those who had not supported BLM or who did not vote properly. They had transformed the home into a collection of shelter beds, but there were more than one person per bed due to crowdedness. Furthermore, the nursing staff were doctor interns who specialized in euthanasia. The staff were responsible with locking people into their beds, while the interns were responsible for feeding their patients via inserting long sharp invasive steel needles that extended deep into obscure parts of the human body for purposes of “providing nutrition and adequate vitamins,” but in the process damaging organs.
This is why it is always important to not put all of one’s eggs in one basket. Growing a Resistance Family helps prevent this. One can spend a few days with World Beyond War, and a few days with ANSWER Coalition, attend an event sponsored by Refuse Fascism, or even support a poetry jam being held at Poets and Busboys.
The point is, especially decades after attending various YASs, some academic stock-types will never invite you to contribute to their academic milieu unless you become very famous, provide the faculty splashy publicity, make a generous donation as a rich alumni, and are already in their social niche. Also the East Coast is different from the West Coast.
Along the East Coast, it appears that Asian Studies programs are geared toward first generation and even ESL students. Speaking from personal background, AGN has relatives who migrated from Hong Kong to the East Coast specifically because they were focusing on YAS elitist campuses and not necessarily on a quality healthy life-style. These children are already part of the top graduating classes in Hong Kong or Taiwan, but they may also be considered first generation ESL. Taking a few courses would be a break, but at the same time, they are neither personally nor heavily invested in Chinatown or International District communities. It makes no difference whether they can visit a Chinatown or not, unlike in the Bay Area, where the Cantonese-Chinese have a long history and are outgoing and vocal about fair practices, reasonable taxes, and inclusionary laws in the city.
No where is the deplorable state of dysfunction between theory and practice in Asian-American Studies more evident than inside Washington, D.C. Chinatown. AGN was told that the block-and-a-half of authentic businesses “didn’t exist.” The “Save Chinatown” organization itself—from what AGN can gather—is basically a front organization that does not respond to queries or email. The organization is probably to offer the city and the developer a cover for the ongoing continual attempts to gentrify and transform the block into an upscale hotel. An NGO is probably receiving funds from both the city and the developer, but since they are not holding regular meetings, who really knows.
This is just another reason why people need to think about becoming involved and growing their Resistance Family network. Currently AGN does not have the capacity to absorb more involvement in the local gentrification fights. At any rate, almost all the fights have resulted only in postponements. And most of the resisting organizations have also been infiltrated. So many DC residents have lost their jobs, businesses, and low-income residence, that local historians cannot keep apace with the rate of change. Twenty years from now, for sure, a few more fancy documentaries will be produced to show the world how Chocolate City became like an Oreo Cookie…
An Operating Resistance Family Models Independence
Along the West Coast, the Asian-American studies programs have a long history and nearby vibrant Chinatowns and International Districts to draw upon. There is a cross-section of support from young to old, including from Benevolent Associations, various religious sects, and well-established businesses and professional classes. There is lively transfer across the curricular in and between theory and practice. Students can study subjects as a cohort interconnecting art, history, political science, social science, business major, marketing, information technology, law, and liberal arts. This is what has allowed the establishment of thriving museums, such as Wing Luke in Seattle. K-pop groups flock to UC Berkeley and the Bay Area and perform on campuses at low cost. Asian Army veterans even perform the methodical research necessary for creating special local exhibits.
They have the will and the stamina to organize and fight back against injustices! And the city knows and have people on the inside who support that!
This kind of liberalism simply does not exist on the East Coast, or it exists in different forms, often heavily doused or controlled and manipulated by corporate lobbyists who want to influence the curricula to instill a race-hierarchy within the curricular in order to deter the melting pot and liberalism and free-thinking effects of Western campuses and civic activism. Whether it is East Indian, Latino, and Asian, when all of them are complementary and not focusing on race-based resistance hierarchy, a more amiable Resistance Family network is created. The converse is also true: that divisiveness, such as enforcing a historical race-based entitlement consciousness within Asian American Studies, does not necessarily heal.
All of this matters for young neophyte political activists. Today, there is practically nobody watching out for you unless you are fortunate enough to be part of a special recruitment body, such as Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin’s young college progressives. The environment among the grassroots has increasingly become one dominated by aging Baby-Boomers and waning membership dues due to an increasingly oppressive American economy, combined with wholesale indoctrination in consumerism (often the source of a lot of ennui about community civics). Just witness the transformation between the time Dr. Noam Chomsky started at MIT and finished at the University of Arizona—from the Vietnam War during which there was so much anti-war fervor, to now, at the University of Arizona, heavily dominated by Turning Point born-again Christian nationalists.
Asians should not feel resentful about the limited opportunities for publishing and media involvement as a group. It is near impossible, from AGN‘s experience to interest other Asian groups, although those which are affiliated with Museums, tend to be more open to offers for Asian-American community contributions and APIA artists networking.
Enlightenment Will Always Matter More than Name-Fame-Gain
The gem in the lotus for Asian cultures is not what they are unable to evoke in Western society, but what they have done in a whole half of the Old World. They are the first societies to foster religious traditions and describe theories for enlightenment. Even today, Eastern concepts of enlightenment are unknown, ignored, dismissed, or minimized by the West. The notion that human beings are here on Earth as a transit point to reach Nirvana, and that name-gain-fame are something that ordinary humans fixate on is itself an important concept.
Here is what Master Li Hongzhi writes about this in his seminal text, Zhuan Falun:
“There’s another way that a person can change his life, and it’s the only way. It’s when he takes up the path of cultivation and sticks with it. And why can his life be changed by taking up cultivation? Who could just go and change something like that, right? Once a person wants to take up cultivation, once that idea comes out it shines like gold, and it shakes the Ten-Directional World. (The Buddhist concept of the universe is the Ten-Directional World theory.) That’s because, the way higher beings see it, a person’s life isn’t for him to be human. They see people’s lives as something that comes into being in the space of the universe, and that has the same nature as the universe, that’s good and kind, and made of the matter True, Good, Endure. But at the same time, these lives have community-like social relationships, and during social interactions among the group, some become bad and so they drop down. And at that level they again can’t stay there, and they become even worse, so they drop another level, and they drop, and drop, and drop, and finally they drop to this level of ordinary people…” —-from “The Second Talk” of Zhuan Falun: Turning the Law Wheel
In fact, personally, socially, psychologically, mentally, and spiritually, Turning-the-Law Wheel (Falun Gong) practices have nurtured my mind, nature, and longevity during the most impossible times. Were it not for listening to the Lectures during the period when AGN was temporarily homeless, AGN would not have been able to survive the nightly onslaught of disturbed spirits and their wicked tendencies at the shelter. AGN would not be able to survive even in permanent supportive housing right now.
Faith more than anything else is needed in these times when hubris and evil abound, perpetrated by people whose names have become all too familiar in the nightly news.
Op-ed republished from christinehkroll.wordpress.com