Peace Action Geneseo holds rally, calls for peace in Ukraine

On Friday, Mar. 4, dozens of students and members of the Geneseo community rallied together to call for peace in Ukraine in Village Park on the corner of Main Street. The demonstration was organized by Peace Action Geneseo (PAG) in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began on Feb. 24. 

PAG was joined by many Geneseo students, along with the groups Genesee Valley Citizens for Peace and the Rochester chapter of Veterans for Peace. 

The rally attempted to bring awareness to the invasion of Ukraine and demonstrate to the Geneseo community the importance of addressing these issues on campus.

Jess Rivera, senior sustainability and international relations major and president of PAG, spoke on Main Street about the importance of discussing and taking action on international issues, even in areas as small as Geneseo.

“We need to wake up as Americans who have historically benefited from imperialism to not repeat those same things,” Rivera said.

Arnold Matlin, one of the six founders of Genesee Valley Citizens for Peace, established in 1972, attested to the force and power of PAG’s impact as a member of the Geneseo community.

“No one else is doing anything about Ukraine…no one in Rochester, and no one anywhere in Genesee Valley other than Peace Action, so my hat’s off to them,” he said. 

Though Matlin and other members of the Geneseo community repeatedly identified a lack of action being taken in the area, the organizers of PAG maintained how important it was to bring this issue to the local level. 

Maggie Hewitt, vice president of PAG and senior sociology and international relations major, spoke to the toll that the Russian invasion has caused on Geneseo’s campus alone.

“There are several professors, and I know we have students from Eastern Europe, who are from the area, who have family in Ukraine,” Hewitt said. “I don’t know why I didn’t think about the fact that there are definitely people on campus who are from Ukraine or have relatives there or in the area, [but] I think that that just really hit home, how connected everyone is to this conflict.”

Rivera reflected on the greater impacts that the conflict has had on American citizens and national politics.  

“We don’t want the negative effects of this conflict to hurt Americans,” Rivera said. “I know gas and food shortages are going to be a big thing with those raising prices, and that’s a social equity issue. But we shouldn’t raise the bells just because they’re going to hurt us in a more minor way…we should raise the bells when we know there are war crimes happening to a new generation of Ukrainians that really, historically, have experienced way too much as a country.”

Many students understood this conflict as one that represents a larger pattern of imperialism in global politics. 

Nick Bruno, a junior geography major, said that “I’m here because this seems very representative of just the whole entire direction that our world is going in, and has been for so long, of super powers just vying for power at the expense of people.”

While the college has taken some action to recognize the conflict unfolding in Ukraine, the organizers of PAG perceived their efforts to be more related to information in the form of panels and dialogues than physical action. Hewitt said that physical action is “something that [Peace Action Geneseo] is equipped to do, and something that seems like students want to do.”

In addition to action on campus and in the Geneseo community, the information that students and community members have disseminated has provided an opportunity for more nuanced understandings of the conflict unfolding in Ukraine. Seasoned members of action groups, such as Matlin, were able to provide some needed context to show that the issue is not as black-and-white as it may seem.

“It’s a little more complicated than ‘Russia bad, Ukraine good’—the U.S. has a hand in this war by trying to push Russia to accept a NATO organization next door, Ukraine,” Matlin said. “We overthrew the government of Ukraine, helped overthrow it. So it’s not that our hands are clean and these evil Russians are killing Ukrainians. But, the fact remains [that] they are dropping bombs on Ukraine. So what we’re talking about is ‘stop the war,’ but we should also talk about changing, using diplomatic means, to make sure that we are not literally threatening Russia. No country wants to be threatened.”

Rivera also commented on the complexity of the conflict, particularly in conversation with broader global patterns.

“One of my friends, her mom is from Ukraine,” Rivera said. “Just hearing those stories and the effects of trauma, processing with someone of Ukrainian descent, then seeing this and then checking in and hearing that they’re having a really horrible time now is really disheartening. On the statements today that were made about anti-imperialism, the bigger issues at large, I think it’s important to build movements of other countries that are trying to fight for their own sovereignty. My family’s Puerto Rican, so essentially we’re a neo-colony in the U.S. in a really tough spot, and I just fought [at the rally today] the same way I would fight for my people if something unfair and unjust [were happening]—basically a larger, more dominant body saying, ‘Your identity as a separate thing isn’t valid, and your only utility is to be a process of Russification.’”

To further knowledge of and support for the Ukrainian conflict, Rivera and Hewitt both emphasized the importance of education, financial donations and community action. 

“People think that there’s nothing we can do here…but there is action you can take, like even just by donating and showing your support, educating people, reflecting [on] how does this affect me, how does it affect my family, how does it affect the Geneseo community?” Hewitt said.

In this specific instance of community organization, students expressed feelings of ambition and potential in participating in the PAG rally.

“People need to maintain hope, I think,” Bruno said. “Hope needs to be checked with realism so we can best help people, because hope can also be used as an excuse to not get involved, because then you just think that things will get worked out and you can continue to live obliviously. I think that we need to come together as a world, and I think that we are seeing that which is really reassuring. I’m just trying to do my little part. I still have a lot to learn.”

Matlin conveyed a great deal of inspiration and support in watching PAG organize this rally.

“It’s exhilarating. I’m old, and as an old person, you wonder who’s going to take over. Well, you’re looking at it —there’s a whole new generation of peace activists.”

To stay up to date with other Peace Action Geneseo events, follow @peaceactiongeneseo on Instagram, or email peace@geneseo.edu.