DDGC Steering Committee Statement in Solidarity with the Peoples of Ukraine

As the devastating news about Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine emerges, we mourn with the peoples of Ukraine. International experts and Ukrainian local organizers, municipal officials, and community organizations have long warned that this attack is an eventuality. We join our colleagues around the world who condemn Russia’s intentional and unprovoked harm to Ukraine’s population. And we express our solidarity with all those who oppose this war, as well as with its targets and victims. 

There was a wager circulating in recent decades that empires and colonizers had moved away from large-scale territorial aggressions, toward “softer” means—cyber, cultural, and economic. This invasion shows that imperialists reserve the recourse to both paleo- and neocolonial forms, that they relinquish nothing with the passing of time. Misogyny, white supremacy, antisemitism, homophobia, and classic nationalism are still the tried-and-true friends of would-be invaders. Resistance to these things in 2022 must also mean resistance to military occupation, to the stealing of lands, to social death as well as to imminent danger to life and limb.  

In alignment with our DDGC Guiding Principles, we offer this list of action items to our broader DDGC community and those beyond. With it, we hope to mobilize a collective force intended to counteract both this invasion and various iterations of imperialism globally as well as its permutations in our own local contexts: 

• Reach out to your local, regional, and national representatives and urge them to support humanitarian measures in Ukraine. This includes immediate material support that benefits the peoples of Ukraine. 
  
• Support Ukrainian and Ukraine-based nonprofit organizations providing services to the Ukrainian population. 
  
• Stay informed about the unfolding events by reading various news sources, especially those that center reputable Ukrainian media practitioners, nonprofit organizations, and academics. Condemn Russian state-sponsored misinformation strategies as well as those forms of it that proliferate through various (in particular right-wing) media contexts beyond Russia. This work can begin in your personal circles and extend into your social networks. Avoid sharing images that have individuals or groups in them which could expose them to further harm. 
  
• Form or contribute to mutual aid networks where appropriate to support members of your immediate community affected by the various circles of violence attached to the invasion. For more information about what this could look like, check out the work of the DDGC Mutual Aid Group. 
  
• Support your campus initiatives that immediately benefit Ukrainian students, faculty, staff, and community members. This can take the form of, for instance, joining a protest or helping with the formation of a local solidarity group. Foster any potential solidarity movements on campus and beyond that link the ongoing imperial aggressions in Eastern Europe to those in the Middle East, North America, etc. 
  
• Amplify the work of scholarly associations, scholars, and solidarity groups condemning Russia’s invasion, such as the work of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL), the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES), the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, and the Ukrainian Institute London.