Added after the event:
The protest was featured on in the MetroWest Daily news !
Here is a PDF about what you can do to help.
Here is Tania’s speech:
“Thank you all for coming out today! My name is Tania Vitvitsky, one of the organizers of Sudbury Stands for Democracy, formerly known as the Sudbury Protest Group. For over two- and one-half years, we stood on this same spot protesting the actions and policies of the Trump Regime.
You are here because you have watched and read the news, seen photos and videos of the shocking unprovoked attack on a sovereign democratic Ukraine by Russia — with troops and missiles from the north, the south and the east. This is David versus Goliath and so far, with the help of democratic friends and allies, David is holding his own. But this is also much more than a war between two countries. Ukrainians are fighting and dying for the right of sovereign states to choose democracy over autocracy.
Putin wants to drag his country and neighboring countries back to a 19th century style imperialism and colonialism. But Ukrainians want neither a Russian Tsar nor to live in a Russian colony. The people of Ukraine simply want to live their lives in their own country and chart their own future. Unlike their warmongering neighbor to the north and the east, Ukrainians enjoy actual not sham elections, a free press and a vibrant civil society.
Now you may ask, why am I holding a strange-looking stringed instrument — this is a bandura, the national instrument of Ukraine and I would like to tell you a story about the men who played this instrument.
The tragedy of the Ukrainian kobzars was described in “Testimony,” Dmitri Shostakovich’s memoirs “as related to and edited by” Solomon Volkov, a Russian musical journalist, published in London in 1979.
“Since time immemorial, folk singers have wandered along the roads of Ukraine.” Volkov quotes Shostakovich. “They were almost always blind men … but no one ever touched or hurt them… And then in the mid-thirties the First All-Ukrainian Congress of Lirnyks and Bandurists was announced, and all the folk singers had to gather and discuss what to do in the future. ‘Life is better, life is merrier,’ Stalin had said. The blind men believed it. They came to the congress from all over Ukraine, from tiny forgotten villages. There were several hundred of them at the congress, they say. It was a living museum, the country’s living history. All its songs, all its music and poetry, And they were almost all shot, almost all those pathetic blind men killed… In his book the “Harvest of Sorrow” the late scholar Robert Conquest also mentions this assault on Ukraine’s “national heritage.”
“The popular and patriotic culture of Ukraine had long been sustained in the countryside by the blind bards — the Kobzars, celebrated by Taras Shevchenko— who wandered from village to village, earning their keep by singing the old national songs and reciting the national ballads. Thus, the peasantry were constantly reminded of their free and heroic past.”
So, I say, when your neighbor kills your culture, steals your history, and denigrates your language, the logical next step is to kill the people. And that, tragically, is what is happening now.
What can you all do!
• As constituents — contact senate and house — keep the pressure on with sanctions and in particular, continuing to freeze Russia’s foreign exchange reserves
the U.S. Treasury Department announced new sanctions that would immobilize any assets of the Russian central bank in the United States or held by Americans. The Biden administration estimated that the move could impact “hundreds of billions of dollars” of Russian funding.
Biden administration officials said Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Japan, European Union and others have joined the U.S. in targeting the Russian central bank. EVEN THE SWISS!
• As donors — the needs are enormous and growing and I keep getting requests for suggestions — working on a list
• As consumers – Russia uses fossil fuels as blackmail. YOU can ask liquor stores to dump Russian Vodka — there are plenty of other vodkas
And finally, to finish the story of the bandura, you will hear a plea to the Almighty to protect Ukraine, by the Ukrainian National Bandurist Chorus.
Thank you. Now, I will ask State Representative Carmine Gentile to say a few words.”
February 28, 2022
Original post:
Our friends over at Sudbury Stands for Democracy (formerly the Sudbury Protest Group) are holding a stand out in support of the people of Ukraine. It will take place on the commons in front of the Sudbury Town Hall (322 Concord Rd, Sudbury MA 01776), on Monday, Feb. 28, from 4 – 5 PM.
It isn’t necessary but if you have them, bring signs or Ukrainian flags or even yellow sunflowers tied with blue ribbons. You can make your own sign by printing this file on nine sheets of regular 8.5 by 11 inch printer paper. Then use scissors and tape and a big piece of cardboard (approx 32 inch by 27 inch) to mount the sheets in a three row by three column pattern.
But don’t hesitate, just come! There will probably be some spares or you can just wave at the passing cars.
