I imagine my grandparents felt as I do now in 1939 England, when German troops invaded Poland on the pretext of “liberating” German-speaking areas. And so the Second World War began. Change the names, the dates, and it could be Europe today. If we have learned anything from history, it is that we have learned nothing from history. However, sometimes you feel like you have to do something, so Saturday I made a poster, painted my nails yellow and blue like the Ukrainian flag, gathered my family and stood in front of the Russian embassy in Dublin to protest. .
I imagine my grandparents felt as I do now in 1939 England, when German troops invaded Poland on the pretext of “liberating” German-speaking areas. And so the Second World War began.
Change the names, the dates, and it could be Europe today. If we have learned anything from history, it is that we have learned nothing from history.
However, sometimes you feel like you have to do something, so Saturday I made a poster, painted my nails yellow and blue like the Ukrainian flag, gathered my family and stood in front of the Russian embassy in Dublin to protest against the invasion of that country from its sovereign neighbor, Ukraine.
Quite a crowd had gathered, quite a few placards, many more stuck to the closed embassy gates.
My poster was a drawing (by me) of Putin wearing a Hitler mustache, with the words “STOP Vlad the Invader”, glued to blue and yellow painted cardboard.
Holding it up, I’m sure Putin felt the earth tremble. Or not. But sometimes you feel like you need to do something, but you feel frustrated, impotent, you’re all too aware that you’re just one voice screaming, too far away to be heard, too unimportant to be do, like an ant riding on a bear’s hairy back.
Yet we were many ants, and this felt like something, which is better than nothing, better than shrugging and saying, “What can I do? I’m just one person.”
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My mother was born in England in 1941, her childhood was destroyed by war and her father did not fight. “I have to do something,” she said.
So a Mrs Ridyard wrote to her MP on Saturday in Benoni of her displeasure.
We can protest, yes. We can donate. But also, like my mother, writing letters. Contact your MP via email, via social media, on the phone and demand a meaningful response from the government, expel diplomats, cut ties with Russia.
Contact your pension company, your bank, and insist that they let go of Russian interests, because they are likely to have such interests, meaning their money – your money – is financing this cruel war machine.
My mother is only one person. But so is Putin. So is Hitler. Me too. You too. What can you do? Everything. Everything you can.
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