500,000 Ukrainians in Maidan Square

Sunday, the 24th of November’s protests were called the second largest to date since the Orange Revolution. In Kiev’s Independence Square, almost exactly nine years before, some 500,000 Ukrainians assembled at Independence Square to protest the rigged presidential election. Back then the president-elect, Viktor Yanukovych, was forced out after a second, unprecedented, election. Viktor Yushchenko, disfigured by poison, was declared the winner. It was a peaceful reversal which resulted from weeks of civil disobedience, sit-ins, and strikes. The revolution was orange, after the unified color of the protesters who thought they were starting down the road to a better, democratic life.

Although I hadn’t come to protest, I was drawn to the crowd like a moth to a flame. The passion of 50,000 Ukrainians marching through the streets of Kiev was inspiring. In the United States, protest marches have become a commodity, even comical. The last major march in Washington was Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” with some 200,000 participants. In the rest of the world, openly protesting still carries the risk of imprisonment. In 2012, Transparency International judged Ukraine’s public sector to be just as corrupt as Syria and Bangladesh – not great company for a country who thought it had broke from its past.

Triggering the Sunday protest was Ukraine president Yanukovych’s refusal to sign an association agreement with the European Union. The agreement offered few material benefits for Ukraine but the public viewed it as a sign of the country’s future direction. Would it seek closer ties to Russia or to the European Union. As the crowd marched they chanted “Ukraine is Europe”. I walked with my two new roommates and their university classmates. We formed a sea of people swimming under a sky with flags of all colors: red & black, white, blue & yellow. It was a rousing day of speeches with rock concerts at night. The crowd felt civic minded, the young carrying signs in the street and the old cheering on from the sides. I went back to the apartment, feeling quite “American”. Once again, free speech triumphed. My two feet helped make the world a better place. I didn’t know it at the time, but while I was watching an odd Ukrainian metal band performed bare-chested in a kilt, a dedicated group of younger protesters set out to squat Independence Square, Kiev’s revolutionary heart of 2004. Their aim was more striking than the dissonant sound of Ukrainian rock. Theirs was the flicker of hope to rekindle the revolution gone dark.