I can smell sweat and acrylic paint, and my hand aches from holding on to a wooden handle for a few hours too long. A heavy weight on my chest has eased for at least a few breaths after all of this and I feel a strange love for all the people around me.
The past two weeks were only bearable when I was lost in a mass of people protesting against the war. After two of the most dark and loneliest years of my life, I was reminded of what solidarity feels like, but I would have never wanted it to happen like this.
Since the protests were the first things I joined after Putin invaded and started a war in Ukraine on February the 24th in 2022, I have some thoughts on those and why I did as I have, and will do until this is solved.
A friend of mine grew very sceptical on these and accused anyone joining of either provoking Putin even more and risking an escalation, or of slowly accepting the consequences of war and making a world war even more likely. I did not agree.
I see masses of people all over the world realizing a bloody pattern in the political handwriting of one man and showing resistance.
It is a symbolic resistance, but in times like these, we need symblos more than ever. We need to see and feel the masses that we are.
The masses of people that did not fall for propaganda, and that do not accept this violence. I would swear that we are more than those who do. And we need to be loud and impossible to ignore.
The biggest protests I have joined so far counted in Düsseldorf 6000 people, and in Cologne 250 000!
Symbols reach people. An idea cannot be killed. The image of our masses will reach Russia, even in the isolated state it is in right now. The symbol that we are can make someone think who would have otherwise just followed orders.
I know that this is vague and surreal, but just remember all the little cold-war-tales we all grew up with which all included someone preventing a nuclear disaster by just not doing exactly as they had been told!
We need symbols like this.
And I need the protests to think clearly, because this crisis either scares the hell out of me, or it makes me furious.
Putins web of lies to justify the war against a culture which he denies its right to exist needs to be broken. Making up a war against so called Nazis because those accused of such a horrible thing were politically oriented differently cannot be successful. It just can‘t. It can’t be the reason for losing the people meaning the world to you, or your home! And this is happening right now, with ever second this continues.
Seeing us masses all over the world, I want him to feel provoked. I want him to see streets full of a mass he can‘t control spreading a message he fears, and without the opportunity to shoot us all.
We can be an idea that never dies.
To keep this going, I have joined a lot of different ways of spreading information and the truth about what is happening right now. Ways which I will not describe too clearly here to not endanger their success. I have also registered my couch as an emergency shelter, and have started collecting different donations. I did so in the other refugee movements as well. In fact, I have only ever stopped when the pandemic isolated me, and I regret having done so.
But I also cannot deny that this war is closer to my heart than any other I have ever had to witness. I have close friends from Ukraine, and also still in Ukraine. I even have someone who is still in Kyiv at this point. Also, one site of my family originally came from Poland, and I studied Polish for a little while and found a lot of friends there. I feel the war Putin declared against a slavic culture not being under his control to the very core of my heart.
But this is not the first war that is fought like this. This is a pattern that needs to be broken.
Another thing about the protests that I loved was the understanding of this crisis the people joining and speaking communicated. We were all united with our desire for peace and democracy while carrying different flags and speaking various languages, and we addressed our words not to the Russian culture or people, but to the system around Putin!
Let us be louder and let us be more, and let us be the symbol needed to end this war!
Mistress witch writes 