Manuela Callini is the youngest voice in the Surviving Communism series. She was born under Ceausescu in 1986 and was not quite four when the regime fell in December 1989, old enough to remember the ration cards, the lines before dawn, and the euphoria on the adults' faces the night it ended. Jenny Beth Martin asks her what her parents lived through: the collectivization that took her mother's family estate, the state that assigned her father his job and his apartment, and the informers who made a summer sweater a risk. Then they turn to America, where Callini has lived since 2013 and now works in grassroots activism in Arizona, and to the patterns she says she recognizes: mass surveillance sold as safety, free things that make you the property of the state, and a younger generation that does not show up.
Guest: Manuela Callini, born in communist Romania in 1986, in the United States since 2013 by way of the Leadership Institute in Washington, D.C., and now in grassroots activism with EZAZ in Arizona.
Today's topics:
• Ration cards and lines before dawn: a father and three small girls, one kind of milk, and a shop that closes when you reach the front with the words "we ran out, try again tomorrow."
• Her mother's family, documented back to the 1200s, lost its land, livestock, equipment, and even clothes to collectivization. Afterward nine children shared one pair of rubber boots for a three-mile walk to school in the snow.
• Her father studied economics in Bucharest, then the state chose his job, his city, and his apartment. Business owners were told overnight that the business was no longer theirs. No compensation.
• School under the personality cult: identical uniforms, state-approved haircuts, hands inspected on white handkerchiefs "like merchandise," and Ceausescu's portrait in every daycare.
• Ceausescu's Romania: streets painted overnight and fruit tied to the trees for his visits, a dictator surrounded by relatives in government, and a trial of under an hour on Christmas Day 1989. Her lesson: nobody is safe under communism, not even the man at the top.
• Informers everywhere: why her mother would not let her wear a sweater in summer, and what trusting no one does to a family.
• Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, imprisoned for years for his faith while his wife sat in a separate prison, each lied to about the other. The "new man" the regime tried to build by stripping people of identity.
• Why the regime banned abortion and contraception together to grow its workforce, and the foster homes she says it filled.
• The 250-year-old house she grew up in had been taken from its owners. After 1989 her parents bought it, and the rightful owners came back.
• Flock and Axon cameras: a child of communist Romania on mass surveillance sold as safety, and Jenny Beth Martin on why no technology should require trusting the officer who holds it.
• Coming to America in 2013 through the Leadership Institute, becoming a citizen the legal way, and why rewarding illegal entry makes her angry.
• Arizona's Request to Speak system, the EZAZ office that changed her mind in one day, and why she sees no young people at legislative district meetings.
• Where it started in Romania in 1945: one man placed over the Interior Ministry, the courts, and the police. Her advice: watch law enforcement and the legal system first.
• Her message to Americans: do not be deceived by what arrives dressed as safety, fairness, equality, and compassion. Start asking questions. Show up.
Share this episode with someone who believes it cannot happen here, then vote for liberty and our constitutional system. To help get out the vote, go to iwillsaveamerica.com. Watch the companion interview with Ovidiu Frusina, also from Romania, who was labeled a traitor as a young man.
The Jenny Beth Show airs live Monday through Friday at 1:00 PM ET. Hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party movement and Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action. Subscribe for daily analysis of politics, policy, and the fight for constitutionally limited government. teapartypatriots.org
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