(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)
***
I now own an “I Stand with Ukraine” t-shirt that bears the image of a Ukrainian flag. That pleases me, of course. But it’s pretty weak stuff, really, and wholly unsatisfying. Like so many others around the world, I’m deeply indignant at Russia’s unprovoked invasion of a sovereign, democratic nation. But I’m also frustrated, feeling powerless. Vladimir Putin doesn’t care about my t-shirt. He won’t be affected by it. Ukrainian fighters won’t be helped by it. Ukrainian refugees won’t be fed or sheltered by it.
We had little eclairs at a pre-premiere reception last night for the donors and workers who had made Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon possible. It wasn’t coincidental that the icing on them was blue and yellow. The Interpreter Foundation is entirely apolitical, but I don’t think that we were overstepping our bounds by taking so small a stance against an aggressive and murderous tyrant. Still, such a gesture does nothing to save Ukrainian children or to spare them suffering and trauma. As far as I know, Vladimir Putin didn’t attend our premiere. He won’t be influenced by the icing on our eclairs.
So what can an ordinary American do? Fairly little. But not nothing.
There are, for example, groups that are trying to provide humanitarian aid to Ukrainian refugees — something like one and a third million of them, by now. But I hope that people who want to give to such organizations will be very careful about giving to legitimate operations and not to scams. There are other worthwhile groups, obviously, but, without denigrating them, I personally trust the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to make efficient use of humanitarian donations without charging for overhead:
So, if you want to help, I strongly encourage you to consider making special donations to the Church’s Humanitarian Aid Fund. The longer the crisis goes on in Ukraine and in the countries around it to which refugees are fleeing and, yes, in Russia itself, the more the already pre-positioned and available resources will be drawn down — and the more necessary it will be maintain those resources, to build them back up, and to prepare for other emergencies, as well. Earthquakes and hurricanes don’t take vacations simply because murderous tyrants decide to squander their own young men and to murder their neighbors.
Beyond the Church’s Humanitarian Aid Fund, I also like this idea:
“People around the world are booking Airbnbs in Ukraine. They don’t plan to check in”
And here’s a relevant item that I found in the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File©:
While I was looking in the Hitchens File, by the way, I also came across this:
“Watch: Ukrainian Latter-day Saint shares precious food storage supplies with neighbors”
But André Zinkovski is actually in country, in Ukraine. Some of us outsiders, though, would also like to do something, anything, to actually help in the defense of Ukraine and/or to undermine and combat Vladimir Putin. (I confess, for example, that, although I take no pleasure at all in the deaths of Russian soldiers, I did find this story gratifying in a grim sort of way: “Ukraine’s army is using a nimble ‘game-changing’ drone called The Punisher that has completed scores of successful missions against the Russians, say reports.”)
Is there anything at all that we ordinary folks can do?
I very much enjoyed this article, which was brought to my attention by my wife:
I have some comments on a few of the examples give in the article to which I’ve linked immediately above: To put it mildly, I’m not always a fan of the hacker group Anonymous. But, in doing things like taking down the website of the Russian Space Agency, surely they’re doing the Lord’s work. And, sometimes, you just have to love Gypsies. Still, I particularly liked Idea #26, which is perhaps within the reach of ordinary gringos like you and me:
Go to Google Maps. Go to Russia. Find a restaurant or business and write a review. When you write the review, explain what is happening in Ukraine.
I may try doing that. I’m a bit embarrassed to say that I’ve never written a restaurant review, neither on Yelp nor anywhere else. But this seems to me a really good possibility for painless citizen guerrilla action even from a completely safe distance. Imagine the impact if thousands of ordinary people were each to write one or two restaurant or business reviews that would be read by Russian citizens.
For pretty much the same reason, if you have the wherewithal and the ability to do it, Suggestion #28 also seems a good possibility.
Any additional ideas would be most welcome.
***
I think it appropriate here to quote, in closing, from one of the late chapters, the war chapters, of the Book of Mormon’s book of Alma:
And now it came to pass that . . . Moroni, who was the chief commander of the armies of the Nephites, . . . was angry with Amalickiah. And it came to pass that he rent his coat; and he took a piece thereof, and wrote upon it—In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children—and he fastened it upon the end of a pole. And he fastened on his head-plate, and his breastplate, and his shields, and girded on his armor about his loins; and he took the pole, which had on the end thereof his rent coat, (and he called it the title of liberty) and he bowed himself to the earth, and he prayed mightily unto his God for the blessings of liberty to rest upon his brethren, so long as there should a band of Christians remain to possess the land. . . . And therefore, at this time, Moroni prayed that the cause of the Christians, and the freedom of the land might be favored. (Alma 46:11-13, 16)
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