I Have Hope
Category: world
Petition: One Month Later
Petition Update
The petition I mentioned a couple weeks ago didn’t succeed. However, ironically, the talk didn’t make it to the conference after all because the speaker didn’t get a visa to the UK. This was a mixed result: all of us felt like it was not the result that would satisfy us, but on the other hand, it was a relief not to see the name “PostgresPro” in the conference schedule. I felt physically uncomfortable while it was there.
However, we didn’t want to leave it like this, and we (all of the petition signers who were in London) got together after the conference and agreed to continue our fight.
We are going to send a letter to the Code of Conduct and to the Core Team, and we want to make sure we do not allow people to misinterpret our demands. During these two weeks, it was so many times that people would tell us that we were “discriminating on the basis of nationality” and that “not everybody can emigrate,” and all other nonsense. I coopted a couple more supporters, and I really hope things will move along. I also spoke to one of the Core members who said “he was not looking forward to that,” but also “was surprised it didn’t happen earlier.”
I will provide updates as long as there are any. As I already said multiple times, I regret I didn’t stir things up earlier.
Why I Stand With Alicja
Current Events On The Front
I kept quiet and didn’t want to jink it when things started to unfold last week, especially because even BBC was quiet. My friend Lena has relatives in Sumy, so she started to message me “did you hear the news” in the beginning of the week. At that time, her relatives experienced retaliation shelling from the Russian forces, and they had to shelter for over 24 hours.
When I visited Lena several days later, she said: I was hoping that now Russian people will understand something, but it doesn’t look like it! Unfortunately, I have to agree. Moreover, I am shocked with reactions of those few politicians who appeared to be normal so far. Now, all of a sudden, “you can’t be happy when your fellow citizen suffer” and “you can be against the current government, but you can be against people”.
I have no comment on that. None. Except for citing one more time late Frau Traudel: “Of course, we wanted Germany to be defeated!”
Ukraine Month In Chicago
August is officially a Ukraine Month in Chicago, and I only learned about it on August 1, and only because I went to the Daley Plaza Marked and saw the ceremony of the official proclamation of Ukraine Month:
Igor said he learned about this even at the last minute, but I didn’t know anything at all. It was very heart-warming to hear the words of solidarity and support for Ukraine, especially now when people’s attention is mostly focused on elections, and the war seems far away and irrelevant to way too many people…
Anti-Putin Protest In Chicago on March 17
More Coverage Of February 24 Rallies
On This Unbearebly Difficult Day.
The day when we marched in a group of anti-putin Russians to pay respects to the victims of the Russian invasion, when we chanted, “Ukraine needs your help!” That day, I felt more hopeless than ever. I remember the somber mood of the first rallies in February and early March of 2022. I remember when the mood started to be more elevated and more hopeful, when we marched, fired by our anger and energy. Today, I marched, but I felt hopeless. On the way to the rally, I read an article in TIME magazine titled “Ukraine Can’t Win the War.” To tell you the truth, it does not matter what the article says exactly. You just don’t publish articles named like this on the grim anniversary of the invasion. Lena and I briskly walked to the meeting point of the Russian rally for Ukraine, holding the Ukrainian flags in our hands and passing the groups of tourists and locals for whom there was no war going on. Two years, and people are asking, “Which war?”
I know that the world is driven by the economy. I know that the world economy needs peace, and there is no industry, including weapons manufacturing, actually benefitting from the war. But why people don’t understand the consequences?
Lena and I chatted for hours tonight, asking each other the same questions: why do companies care about their profits next week and do not care what will happen to them and the world two years from now? I do not have an answer.
Hettie's Reflections 