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In the depths of the winter of 2013 thousands of Ukrainian students and others took to the streets of Kyiv, occupying Independence Square, in what came to be called the Revolution of Dignity. The protestors chose that term because they wanted their wishes to have closer ties to Europe, to have a European future and the opportunities that came from that, to be respected. The Ukrainian president at the time, Viktor Yanukovich, had promised a turn toward Europe but instead allied with Russia’s dictator, Vladimir Putin. For the young people, an alliance with Putin spelled corruption, autocracy, and diminished economic and political possibilities.

After months of standoff, Yanukovich resigned and fled to Russia, thus showing his true colors. A pro-Western government led by Petro Poroshenko took its place, and Russia responded by occupying Crimea and directing a bloody separatist war in the Donbas, the 2014 precursor to the full-scale invasion of 2022. The Ukrainian people have paid a huge price for insisting on their dignity and their freedom. Their willingness to do so points to the importance of these universal values.

Why do the Ukrainians continue to fight, and what does that mean for people everywhere — in both large countries ruled by dictators and wannabe dictators, and smaller countries threatened by these big bullies?

The people who called their struggle the Revolution of Dignity stood up against a future in which they had no freedom, and no dignity. The concepts of freedom and dignity are intertwined, as dignity implies the ability of individuals to make decisions about their own lives and to have those decisions respected by others. For women, it involves bodily autonomy. She makes decisions about health care, education, marriage, reproduction, the ability to work outside the home and travel, and her own financial affairs. In dictatorships, women generally have little or no autonomy. Decisions key to their lives are made by the State, or by fathers, brothers, and husbands who are considered to be carrying out the will of the State.

Similarly disfavored groups — racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, and political minorities — are denied the equal rights central to human dignity. Wilholt’s Law, “There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect,” is central to the position of disfavored groups deprived of their dignity, as they watch insiders prosper while they go hungry, enjoy privileges that they are denied, and engage in behaviors and activities for which they would be severely punished.

And the punishments themselves are an assault on human dignity. These include conditions inside detention centers where both immigrants and protestors are kept in crowded, filthy cells, denied medical care, and often not even given food and water. Public humiliation, torture, and sexual abuse are hallmarks of regimes all over the world as they deny the basic human rights and dignity of their people.

Knowing this, why would a free people willingly give up not only their freedom but also their dignity and the dignity of their neighbors? Perhaps they think they’re only brutalizing their neighbors, neighbors they don’t particularly like, but they’ll be okay. It doesn’t work that way. As soon as you give up your freedom to an all-powerful State, thinking that you’ll be in Wilholt’s in-group, you have also given up your dignity. By treating other people as less than you, less deserving of being treated the way you would want to be treated, you have given up your moral principles. (All religions have the Golden Rule for a reason.) In permitting the government to wield outsized power over the people you don’t like, you have given up your ability to choose your own future, and the future of your children and grandchildren. For dictatorships — the leaders and their cronies — are always hungry, and they take what they want because they can.

Today the people of the Twin Cities are on strike, perhaps the largest general strike in the United States in a very long time. The strike was called to protest the growing presence of ICE paramilitaries in the cities, the brutal arrests of brown and Black residents (including legal residents, citizens, and young children), the ICE killing of Renee Nicole Good, and investigations and threats to arrest the state and city’s Democratic political leaders. There are solidarity vigils all over the country, including one that I attended in New York City’s Union Square. The crowd of several thousand filled the square and spilled onto 14th Street.

May this be the beginning of our own revolution of dignity.

Update 1/25/2026: One day after the general strike and all the rallies in support, the regime responded with the cold-blooded execution of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old VA nurse who was helping a woman protestor who was being roughed up by ICE and CBP goons. They pushed him to the ground, beat him unconscious, took away the pistol he was legally carrying in a holster at his waist, and shot him ten times. Contrary to the regime’s story, he was carrying a cellphone in his hand, not the pistol. There is video of him holding the cellphone, and anyone who says it was a gun is either brainwashed or deliberately lying. Spokespeople for the regime are united in smearing Pretti, in a manner reminiscent of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia defaming martyr Jan Palach — the subject of the acclaimed HBO miniseries Burning Bush, which I reviewed on this blog years ago (and which inspired my writing of Torch).

In addition, the dictator and his minions said they would stop brutalizing, disappearing, and killing Minnesota residents if the governor handed over the state voting records. I hope Governor Walz continues to resist this extortion, which if allowed, would give the regime the ability to persecute all registered Democrats in the state. Already, business owners in red states who are registered Democrats or Democratic donors have been targeted for immigration raids and tax audits because their state officials handed those records over to the federal regime. And will arrests of these rank-and-file Democrats, with their names and addresses in the voting records, be next?