COMMUNIT Y // BY LEE F ISHER
We Are All Ukrainians This is a time when we can all come together and learn from the bravery of people who are fighting for their freedom.
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18 COMMUNITY LEADER | MAY 2022
the struggle for human freedom, we are all Ukrainians. There’s a lesson we can learn from watching the courage of the Ukrainian people defiantly defending their homeland, willing to risk their lives against unprovoked Russian aggression. There’s a lesson we can learn from the Ukrainian woman who walked up to a Russian soldier and told him to put sunflower seeds in his pockets, so that when he dies on Ukrainian land, flowers will grow. There’s a lesson we can learn from the Ukrainian man who stood in front of a Russian tank.
There’s a lesson we can learn from U.S. Army Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, a devout Christian, who, as a prisoner of war in World War II, refused a German commandant’s order that he round up all of the Jewish soldiers outside of their barracks. Instead, Edmonds assembled all 1,275 American POWs outside of the barracks and told the commander, “We are all Jews here.” The lesson is hiding in plain sight. Watching Ukrainians fight not just for their survival, but also for their identity and soul has reminded us that we humans are at our best when we focus on something bigger than ourselves.
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ur country has never been more divided. We retreat to our partisan bubbles and ideological culde-sacs. How do we rebuild the human bridges of a divided nation that is coming apart at its seams? Virtually every war, every conflict, every argument, every debate and every divorce comes down to one thing — not valuing what we have in common. So, it is rare when we Americans agree on something. But, we Americans have been united in our support of the people of Ukraine. At this watershed moment in
