Сорока на плоті / The Magpie
Barking Up the Wrong Tree
Twenty-six years ago, at the 13th Congress of Ukrainian Americans, the Ukrainian community in the United States tore itself apart. The finger-pointing reasons for that split are best left to historians.
In the course of the next two and a half decades the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America and its affiliated organizations and the Ukrainian American Coordinating Council and its aligned groups held numerous discussions about reunification, without the community coming any closer to having one letterhead for everyone. Yes, some organizations rejoined the UCCA and others decided to straddle the civic fence and proclaim allegiance to both the UCCA and the UACC but that did not have any noticeable impact on community life.
Since the break up, a new generation of Ukrainian American kids graduated from college, entered adulthood, got married and began their professional careers. However, except for their activity in the youth organization of their choice – SUM, Plast or ODUM – they are nowhere else to be seen.
Eleven years after the break up, Ukraine declared its independence and subsequently tens of thousands and some would say hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians immigrated to the United States much like they did in the 19th century to find a better life on these shores for themselves and their families. However, except from filling Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox churches every week, they, too, are nowhere to be seen civically.
At the same time, while the two central Ukrainian American community organizations haggle over reunification and endeavor to influence events in Ukraine, their member-associations, those that have existed for nearly a century, or were created by the post-World War II émigrés, or contemporary ones are wilting. Using New York as an example, the vibrancy that was present there in the 50s, 60s and 70s, when there were fewer people, has for all intents and purposes come to a halt.
The Ukrainian American community that established churches, national homes and camps, daily newspapers, scores of broad and narrow-focused organizations, created chairs and departments of Ukrainian studies at numerous American universities, helped free political prisoners and ultimately Ukraine from Soviet Russian subjugation, and became a force to be reckoned with in Washington, DC, and state capitols and city halls, is heading like lemmings toward a precipice.
Life is the single greatest issue that stands before the Ukrainian American community. Consequently, the UCCA and UACC should immediately suspend their fruitless negotiations about reunification in favor of a summit that would have a single theme and goal in an otherwise sparse agenda: to lay the groundwork for a plan to revive the Ukrainian American community without regard to generations or immigration waves.
If not, then the last person standing or the last organization still receiving mail will not be the victor.
IHOR DLABOHA
posted 06.12.2006
