09/26/2026
"He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
King wrote those words during America’s civil rights struggle. They challenge us to face what Russia is doing in Ukraine—and to ask what each of us can do.
In Birmingham, a bomb killed four Black girls at church. Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was tortured and lynched; an all-white jury acquitted his killers. The violence spread fear far beyond its immediate victims. People who spoke out and organized refused to let the country look away.
Today, Russian forces have killed civilians in Bucha, Kyiv and many other cities and towns, tortured people in detention, and used drones to track and deliberately attack civilians in the Kherson region. By the end of August 2026, UN monitors had verified 17,257 civilians killed and 53,693 injured in Ukraine since the full-scale invasion. WHO has verified more than 3,000 attacks affecting health care.
Russia has also taken Ukrainian children from their homes. A UN commission verified the deportation or transfer of more than 1,200 children from five regions. Most children in the cases it examined had not been returned. Russian authorities have placed children with families or institutions, granted them Russian citizenship, and listed some on adoption databases.
Americans have a painful reason to understand the danger of separating children from their families and suppressing their identity. For generations, U.S. authorities removed Native American children to boarding schools designed to assimilate them into white society and cut them off from their languages and cultures. These are distinct histories, but both demand that we take family separation and the loss of a child’s identity seriously.
As this war continues, the carnage is almost unimaginable. Ukrainian forces are estimated to have lost 125,000 killed and over 400,000 wounded. Russian losses are estimated to be around 425,000 killed and about 1 million wounded.
It is easy to feel that atrocities on this scale are beyond our ability to affect. Operation Lifeline is our answer to that feeling. Through Heal-Corp, we are working to put 1000 lifesaving tourniquets into the hands of Ukrainian frontline troops. One tourniquet cannot end this war. It can give one wounded person a chance to survive it.
That is one way to act, and it is not the only one. We can share verified accounts, challenge denial, press our elected representatives to provide military aid, to protect civilians and help return Ukrainian children, support humanitarian and medical work, and keep listening to Ukrainians themselves.
King’s words call us to refuse silence. Each of us can choose one concrete way to help.
One Tourniquet. One Chance. One Life.
