March 22, 2022 Volume 3
Dear Friends,
During the past several weeks, the most common sentiment I’ve heard is that people want to know what they can do to help Ukraine.
Here’s the answer: Make three phone calls.
The most effective thing you can do is pick up the phone and make three calls.
Do it today. Do it right now.
Call your state’s two members of the U.S. Senate and your member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Tell all three that you want them to create a rapid response in defense of Ukraine. Tell them that lives are at stake. Tell them democracy itself is under attack, and they need to do more, immediately.
Here’s how you can find your lawmakers: Search here for your two senators, and search here for your House member.
Tell them, in your own words, that you expect the United States to do more to help Ukraine—and that you expect them to do it faster. Tell them you want them to act right now.
To demonstrate what Ukraine is all about from another set of eyes besides mine, I offer you the following essay that speaks for itself.
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I am an American. But I am also a Ukrainian Jew. I left the USSR right before it fell apart. As I young girl in Ukraine, I did experience antisemitism – from both Ukrainians and Russians living in my city of Lviv. Lviv was part of the Soviet Union, and antisemitism was one of its many defining characteristics. Still, I’ve had wonderful classmates throughout both school and university and made lifelong friendships with several of them.
When I found my first part-time job in Brooklyn’s Boro Park, at a measly $4 an hour, I used the funds to buy school clothes for my girlfriend’s children in Ukraine, which fell into chaos, crime, and poverty in the early 90s. As we stayed connected through the years, however, I watched my friends and their children getting jobs, traveling, and looking to the West as a guide to freedom. And while Ukraine has had its challenges, the new generation wasn’t much different from that here in the US. They were teachers, waiters, beauticians, programmers, accountants, policemen, bloggers, and actors – they were free people making a living.
I periodically visited Lviv – first on my own, then with my husband, and finally with my husband and my daughter. We watched the city flower and every culture and language being equally respected. People spoke Polish, Russian (my mother tongue), Ukrainian, English, German – and everyone was friendly and eager to help.
That all has changed overnight on February 24, 2022. Some of my male classmates evacuated their families and picked up arms to help protect the civil population in Kharkiv and Kyiv – both traditionally Russian-speaking cities, with Kharkiv now reduced to ruins – but still free. Many of their adult children, if not armed and with the Ukrainian defense forces, then volunteer their time and resources to help refugees. Everyone who has stayed in L’viv shares their residences with those who made it alive from the Eastern parts of Ukraine. Those people, who lost everything 30 years ago when USSR fell and built their lives from scratch, just lost everything again.
Every night I wake up at 3 am and follow the Ukrainian Telegram channels to see real-time the bombing of the Ukrainian civil populations, its hospitals, buildings, schools – and can’t contain tears. How can this happen in this day and age???? HOW.CAN.THIS HAPPEN??
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Our politicians are worried that if we close the sky over Ukraine, we might inadvertently be dragged into WWIII. I believe we will be – sooner or later – as the lying Putin regime will escalate its commitment and will invoke the terrorist cells in the Middle East and its friendship with China. But by the time we come in, the 45 million-strong country the size of France could be totally annihilated from the air. Ukraine needs help NOW.
Thank you,
Sam Rozenberg & Janna Rosenberg
Glory to Ukraine