On Saturday, March 8 over 200 community members joined together in Keene Valley to show support for Ukraine and protest the Trump administration’s sickening attack on President Zelesnkyy. It also happened to be International Women’s Day and the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday—which led to the passage of Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act, which has afforded rights and protections for everyone one of us.
First, a shout out to Kelly Metzgar and the Adirondack North Country Gender Alliance celebrating the first ever Winter PRIDE event in our region.
As Van Jones said, “We live in a world that their love and courage created.”
When Russia unlawfully and mercilessly invaded Ukraine three years ago, the United States led the world in support of Ukraine and its sovereign right to defend itself. Many of us here now stood together, in this same place, almost to the day, in solidarity with the people of Ukraine.
In a made for TV ambush of President Zelenskyy last Friday, Trump, Vance and acquiescent Rubio and Republican Party, the US-Ukranian alliance and eight decades of imperfect cooperation with the nations and peoples of Europe were torn asunder.
Many of us are here today because we were sickened by their attempt to entrap and humiliate President Zelenskyy, sell out the Ukrainian people, and align the United States with Vladimir Putin, to the shock and horror of people around the world.
We are here to stand with Ukraine, call for the restoration of aid, and resist the Trump-Project 2025 program of erasure so depraved in its cruelty and so sweeping in its reach that I ask myself: “How many of us to they want to kill? And how many ways and means will they use to erase us, at home and abroad, literally and figuratively?
Paraphrasing John Pavlovitz: Whether we resist our collective erasure,
“Whether we survive or not as a nation is going to depend solely on whether or not We The People are willing to do what we’ve never had to do in this nation: stand together and oppose our own Government.
And this does not necessarily mean violence, but it will likely mean exposing ourselves to violence directed by those in power, pushback from our neighbors, rejection from our families—but believe me, those we stand with and for—and each and every one of us– are worth it.”
To set the stage for Richard Robbins, who has a few words about the power of money, I’ll repeat what abolitionist John Brown told the packed court when he was sentenced to hang because I think it is an essential and terrible truth about the United States.
“…had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends — either father, mother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class –…, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment…”