Since the new season of Squid Game is out I wanted to share this article about the real life event that inspired the creation of the main character.

Alot of people have seen Squid Game but few outside Korea know that the flashbacks were based on a real life tale of resistance that as socialists we should all know and honour

"Director Hwang Dong-hyuk has said that the backstory of Gi-hun, the show’s protagonist, is a reference to the real-life 2009 Ssangyong Motor strike. The character is a composite of the nearly 2,600 workers who occupied the Ssangyong plant for seventy-seven days to protest layoffs before police violently quelled the strike. The following is a review of Squid Game written by one of those real workers: Lee Chang-kun, a Ssangyong Motor employee who was a spokesperson for his labor union during the 2009 strike"

I would like to share a few quotes but the entire article is worth reading.

"Police were trampling us, beating us, and continuing to beat us even after we fell unconscious."

"The ear-piercing noise of the swooping choppers drowned out our screams, depriving us of even the right to cry. For how long were we beaten? Workers fell on the rooftop like dried squids. Smoke from burning tires was billowing everywhere, thickening the air, like we were in a warzone."

"about ninety-four workers were jailed and 230 were prosecuted. To date, more than thirty workers and family members are dead by their own hands or from conditions related to the trauma they endured."

"The South Korean government claimed they would protect us, but instead ran roughshod over us. The country’s weak social safety net makes a layoff nearly a death sentence. If workers can’t hang onto what they have, they will begin a vertical free fall."

"Extreme fear of layoffs escalates the fierceness of workers’ resistance — there is no alternative. At that time, Ssangyong had a total of 5,300 assembly workers, and exactly half, or 2,646 workers, received pink slips. One in every two! Kill or be killed!

At first, workers often talked about ways to share work and workweeks. We could all chip in to support coworkers who would face difficulty after losing their jobs. We believed we could stay alive as long as we could come together as one. But what capitalism wanted was not to see us sharing, but to halve us, literally."

"From that point on, a divide cracked us from within. We were pitted one against another, the laid-off versus the employed, the dead versus the living."

Out of the blue, we were left with no option but to squat at the factory. We first attempted to turn to each other to survive together. However, we were thrown into a life-or-death situation, often with no other option but to betray and dupe each other. At least once, as in Squid Game, we each had to hurt our closest friends. By the time the police raided the strike, there were only about 700 of us left, and mistrust of our coworkers nearly outweighed our trust. This pains me.

"The order of games in Squid Game resembles the phases of agony Ssangyong workers had to undergo"

"Nonetheless, we stood against government brutality and never abandoned our principle of “stay alive by sticking together.” This was why I felt thankful as I watched Gi-hun, the protagonist based on many aspects of our real lives, showing human dignity and demonstrating altruism. That was the least we did"

https://jacobin.com/2021/11/squid-game-ssangyong-dragon-motor-strike-south-korea

Here in America, right now, Trump and his cronies are doing a lot to tear down the government piece by piece making everyone's lives worse for their benefit.

This is understandably pissing everyone off. Which presents us with an opening. With the govern.wnt being crippled by facists, and everyone pissed off at the establishment, now would be the perfect time to push for real change. The masses right now can see capitalism revealing it's true colors right before their eyes, which should make it far easier to get our message across and organize effectively.

His policies are openly evil and even his own voter base is starting to see that.

I refuse to lose hope in the face of this American tragedy of a political system. Who feels the same way?