The Ukraine's almost unbearable bravery

It's a parlor game we all play. We ask ourselves, from the comfort of our homes, sitting on our comfy couches, sipping tea: what would YOU do if...

You saw someone bullying a Muslim girl because she was wearing a hijab? Would you say something? Do something? Step in to protect and defend the child? Rally others to help intervene? Would it depend on whether the bully was a physically imposing man? Or a skinny kid?

What would you do if fou saw Derek Chauvin with his knee on George Floyd's neck? Would you yell at him? Jump on Chauvin's back to stop him? (Remember, Chauvin and the other cops with him have guns.) Film it on your phone? 

Most of us don't have to make decisions like this. Maybe we've seen some bullying, but mostly we're not first-hand witnesses to the truly terrible things. We hear about it on Twitter, we see it on the 6 o'clock news, we breeze through an article in the paper. We can tell ourselves we'd speak up, knowing we weren't there. Knowing we may never have to.

What if the stakes were a lot higher. The downside - your life - of doing anything, taking a stand, a lot greater?

What if you were in Nazi Germany? Would you have hidden a Jewish friend? A Jew who wasn't a friend?

Would we have been big brave? Or a little brave - maybe a furtive wave to someone you knew being marched off to the train station for deportation? Or not brave at all?

And what if your country were being invaded, the enemy at the gates of your town, nearing your neighborhood? Would you flee? Would you stay away from your windows and just wait and see what happened next? Watch out your window, peering out from behind a curtain? Would you yell at the enemy? Hurl an insult? Hurl a brick? Step in front of them?

Chances are, this is a circumstance most of us will never have to face. 

Not so for the people of Ukraine.

And, damn, if they're not demonstrating incredible bravery, sometimes unbearably so.

We've all seen the pictures, read the stories.

The grandmother who gave the Russian soldiers sunflower seeds to put in their pockets so that something good would come of their being in the ground.

The old man, arms outstretched, standing in front of a Russian tank.

The tough bald guy, in his jeans and black leather jacket, cigarette dangling from his mouth, picking up a Russian mine and carrying it in his bare hands from the middle of the road to the woods where, if it went off, no one would be harmed.

The people armed with old World War II guns, preparing to
use them if they needed to.

The kids learning how to make Molotov cocktails.

The woman who gave birth in the subway station.

The 13 Snake Island defenders who told the Russian warship to 'fuck off' before the Russians blew them to bits.

I'm sure everyone in Ukraine isn't ultra-brave. There are plenty who aren't. Who are doing what, no doubt, most of us would do. They're cowering under their beds. Or are sitting, stunned, in state of denial. They're trying to flee with their families. 

But we've seen so many instances of bravery that's almost unbearable that you really have to believe it's something of a Ukrainian national characteristic. These folks are just incredibly tough and brave.

There leaders are good models.

President Zelensky, of course, is outstanding in his bravery. Sure, it helps that he has a background as a performer. He's a brilliant communicator, and he knows how to sell it, with near insouciant ease. And he has been just magnificent.

We have so few real heroes. This guy is one. 

Who wouldn't follow Zelensky into battle? 

I might not pick up a gun, but I'm thinking (hoping) that if I were in Kyiv, I'd be putting together some Molotov cocktails. Or at least rolling some bandages. 

Zelensky, along with other political leaders, are on Putin's kill list.

Maybe, with the whole world watching, Putin won't dare it. But he's so evil, so insane, so unhinged, such an unprincipled thug, that no one would put it past him. 

The threat to Ukraine's leaders (and their families) is very real. Putin has no problem ordering the murder of his enemies, the assisted "suicides" of those who cross him. 

The bravery being shown by Ukraine's leaders, and by the Ukrainian people, is amazing. Inspiring. 

I'm also in awe of the bravery of the Russian citizens, who risk arrest and unknown brutality, to come out and protest Putin and his war in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other Russian cities. 

I'm no stranger to protest. 

I came of political age picketing for Cesar Chavez and the grape workers, and marching against the Viet Nam War.

Since 2016, I have participated in a dozen - maybe more - protests. The Women's March of January 2017. Rallies in defense of immigrants, Black lives, science, the environment, gun laws...

The worst risk I ever faced was getting tear-gassed at the Department of Justice during the 1969 Mortarium march. My friend Joyce and I missed the tear gassing because it was a bitter cold day and we ducked into a Walgreen's to buy yellow, shed-o-rama blankets for $3 a piece to see if they would help warm us up. They didn't. They just shed yellow wispy material all over our pea jackets (knock offs from Mickey Finn's Army-Navy store). Some of the folks we'd come down to DC were tear-gassed. On the bus on the way home, we caught faint whiffs of it.

Other than that, other than the heckling of bystanders and, at one of the anti-Trump marchers, vague threats to the crowd made by a few thugs carrying assault weapons. (I assume they were for intimidation purposes only.) 

Oh, and one time a store owner whose store I was picketing on behalf of the grape workers shoved me. In retrospect, I don't blame him. We should have stuck to chain stores, not mom and pops. Which, after that episode, we pretty much did.

Yesterday, I stood for a while in the Boston Public Garden, in solidarity with the brave people of Ukraine.

Walking across the street to join in this rally took no courage on my part. Nothing brave about it. All my protests have ever cost me is time. But joining the pro-Ukraine protest felt like a little something.  And it did feel good to be doing a little something.

So did making a donation to Chef Jose Andres World Central Kitchen, which is helping feed Ukrainian refugees in Poland. And a donation to some young Ukrainian journalists, who are so bravely covering what's happening in their country.

Bravery isn't an imagined parlor game for Ukraine. They're playing for keeps. And it does this old heart good to see how spectacularly, almost unbearbly, brave these Ukrainians are. 

Slava Ukraini!