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Martha Bohachevsky Chomiak COMMUNICATING THROUGH BARRIERS “Communicating Through Barriers” — a panel dis cussion on Friday, May 22, 1987 kicked off the XXI National Convention of UNWLA in Cleveland, Ohio. The moderator was Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak. This panel discussion marks the kick-off for the twenty first triennial convention of the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America. I shall stray from the usual panel format and introduce our panelists as a group, so that the flow of their comments would not be needlesly interrupted by my introductions. But first let me answer a question which some of you may have and which is probably foremost in the minds of our panelists, who came here because of the dedi cated and gracious work of Nadia Deychakivska. The question is: why should our organization, which is not well known beyond its own membership, sponsor a dis cussion on COMMUNICATING THROUGH BARRIERS. Yet, upon closer reflection, the topic is actually a natu ral one for our organization. The Ukrainian National Women’s League of America was established sixty four years ago as a fusion of women’s organizations of Ukrainian immigrants in the major industrial centers of the United States. These women felt a need for an organization which would make their voice heard in their community, in their country, and in the homeland they left behind. As immi grants, part of the working class, the Ukrainian women could not readily indentify with the vision of organized American women of feminism and the struggle for equal rights. Sixty years ago Ukrainian women were not yet a part of the American community. But they shared the underlying American dream, on which the hopes of the American women activists were built — equal opportun ity, equality in the chances open to all, justice for every person. But they had in mind more than equality. Implicitly, the immigrant women adhered to the prin ciple that equality accepts heterogenity, that equality predicates differences, that acceptance of equality for all means the recognition of the value intrinsic in the other. They felt, although they were not able to say so in so many words, that the recognition of equality brought understanding is essential. We can create and maintain this beneficial atmosphere within our organization. I thank you for electing me to this post. I ask for your help, of those who are here today and of every member of our organization. I know that days of hard work, problems and trials lie ahead, but with cooperation and good will nothing is impossible. Thank you. (Free translation from Ukrainian) along the acceptance of the value of the different cul ture. To be equal means to recognize the worth inherent in your distinctiveness, not to make you be like me. Equality is the acceptance of the other, not the fusion of one into the other. Women were neither educated nor leisured to engage in articulating these niceties. Generally, they turned to the tasks at hand, doing the job that had to be done, and fighting the battle that they felt had to be fought. Whatever the society from which the women came, the tasks facing them were always the same: to care for those needs which society tended to overlook, such as welfare, health, child care, and like; while at the same time claiming equality within their own society. Facing that dual task, — of caring for others and struggling for their own equality — while carrying the traditional dual burden of care of the family as they worked for that family’s support, few women had the leisure or the inclination to recognize the other groups of women engaged in the same work, struggling toward a similiar goal but along different paths. Cleveland had been in the forefront of initiating the Decade of the Women, with the International Confer ence of 1973. What emerged clearly from the discussion in Cleveland and later was that the women’s movement was multi-faceted and that it was interconnected through women’s concerns. The whole decade, from Cleveland to Nairobi, underscored that women work through their communities, are fashioned by them, and tend to use their terminology. Thus women are often not aware of the similarities linking them in their very differences. A sisterhood is as powerful as a brotherhood — it exists only where there is recognition of the equality of the individual despite, or even because of the differences among us. Cleveland has been in the forefront of the recognition of the individual communities that make up our cities and our country. Cooperation, not cooptation has been the guiding principle of this metropolis, which is com posed of various communities, each pursuing the origi nal American goal of a good life, with equal opportunity for all. Neither the womens’ organizations, nor women engaged in various professions create or wish to create a separate ghetto. Within the last generation the silence of women on women’s and community affairs has been broken and the isolation of women overcome. Women participate fully in the affairs of the community and to the country. But that does not mean that we, as women, have nothing to say of value to the community. Pre cisely as women and as members of our communities we realize the need to recognize not only the worth of all communities, but the compelling need for these communities to communicate with each other, through ’’НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЧЕРВЕНЬ 1987 27
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