Rally for Ukraine and America

On Saturday I attended a rally at Peace Corner in Castro Valley where over 50 of us were extraordinarily fortunate to meet and hear from several Ukrainian citizens who personally conveyed the unspeakably tragic events their nation is enduring. Our guests spoke in a first-hand manner about the terrible death and destruction that has occurred in their deadly struggle to remain free and democratic. Their families and friends and millions of innocent civilians are in mortal danger, and we could not help but feel for them with every bit of our hearts, minds and souls.

We should take as a lesson what happens when a right wing autocratic dictator with too much money and political power is able to force their will as Putin is doing to the Russian and Ukrainian people. Here in the United States, we should realize just how close we came to a similar disaster after Putin and his operatives helped appoint a power mad, anti-NATO, anti-democratic, pro-Putin, crooked mob boss as pResident in 2016. We are now seeing in Ukraine what some on the American right want for us, and it could happen here if we do not stay vigilant.

As our Ukrainian friends stated several times during our rally, what happens in Ukraine happens to all of us. The Russian people are being subjected to well-engineered propaganda and disinformation and we have the same problem in America with Fox and social media. Just like the deadly disinformation spread about the Covid 19 vaccine that caused millions to die un-necessarily, we are hearing Putin-friendly propaganda (from the Kremlin perhaps?) that is threatening tens of thousands of Ukrainians with harm. Let’s not let this happen in America, we defend Ukraine’s freedom and democracy, and we defend our own.