Below is an email from a Ukrainian journalism startup. It debuted just three months before the February 2022 Russian invasion.
Journalism and freedom are interlinked. Free speech is the first amendment to the Constitution in the Bill of Rights in America. Without this foundation, the rest of the “freedoms” in the amendments would be difficult to defend.
These Ukrainian founders are young, believe in their country’s future, and communicate in English in all their articles and videos to reach a broad, international audience. Their team is committed to a country where democracy and independence are the purpose of their enterprise.
As American policy towards Ukraine’s future is under review, it is vital we listen and learn from those whose lives are on the line, daily.
This third anniversary letter from the editor-in-chief describes their efforts and hope. It is ironic that their founding anniversary is on the same day as our Veterans Day. However this living example reminds us again of the costs and commitment freedom requires in any country yearning for government by the people.
This is Olga Rudenko, editor-in-chief of the Kyiv Independent, and I was never supposed to send you this email.
Because there was never supposed to be a Kyiv Independent.
As you might have guessed, today is our birthday, and I’m getting sentimental.
I’m writing to you from our office in the heart of Kyiv, Ukraine, where we are having an especially murky morning. In all fairness, it could have been much worse: For a moment it looked like Russia was going to attack Ukraine with a barrage of missiles, but then its planes turned back. Whether it was a training exercise or intimidation, it sure did a good job waking us up. What a way to start our birthday, right?
I locked myself up in a small conference room, away from the noises of our newsroom, to draft this note to you. I wanted to take a moment out of this hectic day to be alone with you, our readers and supporters, to share my thoughts and gratitude.
The Kyiv Independent is three years old today. It might not seem like a big deal. The New York Times is 173 years old. Le Monde is 80. Der Spiegel — 77. The Guardian is 203. What’s three years compared to that?
For us, every day of these three years was hard-won.
Nothing about how the Kyiv Independent started was normal. When you imagine yourself launching a new venture, you must imagine months of careful planning, pitching to investors, putting together a team, and picking out a location for an office.
Well, we had four days. You read that right.
Three years ago, we were fired from a newspaper for standing up to censorship attempts. It was gutting. We were a bunch of young journalists, standing up against a rich owner who thought that he showed us how the world runs — and who runs it.
Fortunately, we were young and rebellious enough to not accept it. Four days later, we announced that we were launching our own newspaper. We will show them, we thought. We will show them that you can do independent journalism, and not bow to anyone.
There was one tiny inconvenience. We had no money. This grand idea of doing independent English-language journalism from Ukraine had very good chances of crashing when it met with reality.
And then… you showed up. Our readers. Thousands of you have chosen to support our work — you made it all possible.
When the full-scale invasion hit, just three months after we started the Kyiv Independent, you were there for us. And we showed up for you, too — we became your window into Ukraine as it has been fighting for its existence.
I’m going to be very honest with you: It is getting harder. I did some math today: The Kyiv Independent has spent 90% of its short lifetime living through a full-scale war.
And I now understand that, for all its shock and turbulence, the first year of it was the easiest. We were getting a lot of praise back then, people often calling us “brave” for staying and reporting for Ukraine. I think there is more courage in what we do today: persevering, doing our job day after day, with no clear end in sight.
Because just like three years ago, we know this is the right thing to do — and we’re willing to beat the odds, again.
It’s you who make it all possible. We now have a community of 12,000 members supporting our work. Today, on our birthday, we are starting a campaign to get 1,000 new members in the next month.
Here’s why we need it: It’s not just a nice number. It would grow our community by 8%, meaning we can hire more people, like journalists who bring you the news, defense reporters who help you make sense of the war, or videographers who produce documentaries about Russian war crimes.
That means that, as we are facing 2025 and the uncertainties it will bring, we will be stronger, more resilient, and will be able to continue bringing you reliable journalism from Ukraine, whatever may come.
Thank you for being a supporter of the Kyiv Independent.
Many times on national holidays, Veterans Day or other civic events, I have heard these words of thanks. But the people who should also be recognized are those whose duty was on the home front. They too served, often out of immediate contact, coping with life in a foreign county and very much reliant on their own initiative.
When we arrived in Japan in April of 1970 the Navy put us up in local Japanese hotel, outside the Yokosuka Navy Base. I was the new Supply officer on the USS Windham County (LST 1170) homeported there.
Three days later, after restocking the ship, I was gone for a four month deployment. Our initial role was a joint U.S. Navy-South Korean amphibious exercise off the coast of Korea, called Operation Golden Dragon. Then on to transporting marines from Okinawa to their firing-training range near Mount Fuji and back. And then further south to the Philippines and Vietnam. With a cruising speed of about 7 knots, we spent a lot of time on the water.
My life was structured on the ship. My wife, Mary Ann, had to find housing, buy a car, learn to shop in local Japanese stores and take care of Lara, and then Alix. We would exchange letters often arriving days or weeks after being written-sometimes in stacks of five or more at a time.
Mail call was the only contact we had when deployed. No telephone, no Internet, no live connections. The wives were not supposed to know where we were, what we were doing or when we would be back to home port.
Mary Ann took our two girls to play on the beach in Hayama. The seaside town is where the Emperor’s summer palace is located. For the first 15 months we lived there “on the economy” in a Japanese family’s compound. Even after we moved into base housing, Mary Ann would take our two girls back to the beach and meet with our Japanese friends.
That’s Mt Fuji in the background hovering like a cloud.
So when people express appreciation today to those who wore a uniform, it is vital that we honor those who also served on active duty by their side for just as long and with equal devotion.
A critical strategic advantage for most credit unions is location, a place members can see and access as necessary. A local office serves a different and broader role than just convenience. While telephone or virtual web access are necessary, they are not the same as a unique presence.
A credit union office serves notice to the community that the credit union is theirs. Members not only have interaction with employees but also with each other. Many credit unions use signage and participation in events to reinforce being part of the community. Local emloyeess and directors provide real time market knowledge that are impossible to acquire in other delivery channels.
Following are two examples of service experiences, one remote and one in person. Both involve a member trying to resolve an issue.
A Remote Service Experience
Even before I read your article on Credit Union 1, I have been preparing to leave for another credit union. The credit union has become just a computer Bot. Call member service and it takes 15 minutes to get around the automated phone responder “LUNA”. You can repeatedly ask for a member service rep but she always has another set of buttons for you to press. I’m not against automation and use it often to transact much of my personal business. But when you need to talk to a person that is not an option.
Recently the credit card company they use overcharged me. I called CU1. Immediately they put the transaction on hold and referred the problem to the Credit Card Bank. After filling out several reports to file with the card bank and months (June to October) of waiting for them to remove the charges I was notified that they were going to go ahead and put the charge on my credit card as they did originally.
Contacting CU1, they gave me instructions on how to deal with my credit card bank and the airlines to maybe solve the issue. We’re talking about $775 and no help from the credit union. And I do not like the card processor. More electronics and fewer personal assistance.
I know this sounds like someone from the past not being up to date with what is going on in the present; but really I make many of my daily transaction payments with my Apple watch; having connected voice over internet protocol for my home phone service; and many more. I do like the speed and direct processing that the new electronics offer, but it can’t replace a person for everything.
Remote Islands, Microsites and Personal Service
Tongass FCU, Ketchikan, AK serves Southeast Alaska with locations in a region of islands (the Alexander Archipelago) and the Tongass National Forest. No roads connect these islands!
At September 30, 2024, the credit union reported $228 million in assets from 13,710 members served by 13 branches and 85 employees.
CEO Helen Mickel has worked at this 61-year old credit union for 22 years. For the credit union the distance to the nearest branch often requires a small plane or ferry.
It has developed Community Microsties to meet the financial needs of remote coastal villages. Microsites are built upon a relationship between TFCU and the local community. The community invests in TFCU by opening accounts and providing a free space to operate, while TFCU provides an ATM, lobby hours, and local jobs.
The future: TFCU seeks to build community-microsites and branches to promote prospering communities. We believe that a financial institution is a pillar of a community. It brings education, opportunity and financial access to the remote villages and towns of our beautiful state.
Here is a story with pictures from Helen of what this sometimes requires in practice.
A Grumpy Member
It started with a very grumpy member threatening to close her account, to one of the best visits I’ve had with a member!💯
The mail is tricky in southeast Alaska and our statement vendor is in the lower 48.
This grumpy and worried member told me over the phone she was going to pull her money out on Monday because she still hadn’t received her monthly statement for August. I told her I’d like to meet her when she comes in and asked what time she would be at the credit union.
She said she heard the weather was going to turn and maybe she wouldn’t come down after all. She uses a cane and has 45 stairs to navigate when she leaves her home.
I offered to bring her a printed statement and introduce her to our assistant branch manager, Sabrina, so she wouldn’t have to leave her house. She liked that idea.😊
When I called to make sure she was okay with us stopping by, she said, “Yes! I’ve been waiting for you!”
The Member’s Museum
What a wonderful time we had! We worked out our business problem and then got a tour.
She had a “museum” of artifacts she had dug up on beaches and old community sites all over southeast Alaska! We talked about the good old days of early Ketchikan and shared stories.
I took pictures and told her I would be posting them and she was okay with that. She has lived in her home for 80 years – her whole life. It was the “cabin” for the first house that was built by her family on the side of a mountain.⛰️🌲
Pioneer members are some of my favorites. I love it when something difficult turns into a blessing for everyone! I couldn’t have started the week off better! ❤️
In addition to consumer inflation concerns as in the price of groceries, another economic topic on voters’ minds was affordable housing. High interest rates have brought the home purchase market to almost a standstill except for the well-to-do.
The average home price in the United States in 2024 is around $420,400, a 25% increase from 2020. Home prices vary widely by location. For example, the average home price in Iowa in 2024 is $205,988, while the average in Alabama is $217,75. Even with candidate Harris’ $25,000 down payment assistance for first time buyers, many would still see the aspiration as very difficult.
Today an update on the median home price for every state as of August 2024 was published by the Visual Capitalist website. The overall median (not average) for the US was $385,000.
Credit unions have been innovators in assisting members first home purchase efforts. These changes often go outside the standard secondary market underwriting requirements as many credit unions hold non conforming loans on their balance sheet. Product initiatives include low or sometimes no down payment, waiving transaction closing costs, and structuring variable rate loans with initial lower short term fixed rates followed by variable price reviews to ease the first years of payments.
This video is an example of how Community First (WI) structured their home lending to meet a family’s unique circumstances.
FHLB grants and other forms of community assistance are sometimes available. But given the continual rise in home prices even in the current slow markets, the prospect of a higher normal level interest rates, and the lack of affordable supply in many markets, is another approach required? Housing is also a market where technology would seem to have limited potential to change the cost side of the problem.
New approaches rethink the structure of home ownership by separating the cost of land from the house built on the property. Here are two examples of this approach. The descriptions are largely from the linked websites.
Neighborhood Housing Trusts
The first example is the Community Housing Trust (CHT) based in Ithaca, NY. CHT helps people with modest incomes buy their first homes. Since 2009, all of Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Service’s (INHS) home sales have been part of the Community Housing Trust. By using a special ownership structure, It is able to keep CHT homes affordable for the first buyer, and all future buyers as well.
INHS got its start by trying a new way to reverse the decline of downtown Ithaca: fixing homes up rather than tearing them down. In the 1960s and 1970s, Ithaca faced the problems challenging urban areas across the nation: a depressed economy, deteriorating housing, and the flight of homeowners to the suburbs.
Most of the homes in Ithaca’s downtown neighborhoods were more than 100 years old and owners could not get bank loans to buy new ones or didn’t have the skills or financial resources to make repairs.
In late 1976, inspired by an urban renewal program created in Pittsburgh which relied on a partnership between residents, businesses, and local government, Ithaca joined a network of successful Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS). Recognized by Congress in 1978 and known today as NeighborWorks® America, the national network of NHSs continues to recognize and nurture local solutions to local community development.
The Program’s Structure
The CHT is a “shared equity” program: the homebuyer purchases only the house and the Trust owns the land. The homeowner has a 99-year lease on the land, with a small monthly land rent. This arrangement greatly lowers the purchase price of the home. Because most CHT homes receive a special tax assessment, the property taxes can be much lower than a market rate house. INHS ensures that all CHT homes are built or renovated to be energy efficient and environmentally sustainable, another way that operating costs are kept low.
In exchange for these financial benefits, CHT homeowners agree to limit the amount of profit they can take from their homes when they are sold. CHT homes have a resale value that is capped at 2% increase per year. This allows the homeowner to build wealth in their properties, while ensuring that the home remains affordable for future owners.
The Funding
CHT homes cost on average more than $400,000 each to develop. The homes are sold for only about half that amount—between $150,000 and $210,000. INHS receives grant funds from a variety of sources to help fill the gap between development cost and selling price.
The permanent affordability of CHT homes means that the grant funds utilized to build them will benefit many lower-income households for generations to come!
The Durham Community Land Trustees
The timeline of this second example begins in 1987. The development of this North Carolina affordable housing initiative can be found here.This video, from 2017, shows a before and after look for one neighborhood built with members’ self-help.
How It Works
Similar to to Ithaca, a community land trust nonprofit organization retains land ownership, ensuring future housing affordability. Purchasers buy DCLT homes and lease the land these houses sit on for a low monthly fee for 99 years.
Owners can improve and maintain their homes.
They can leave their home to their children.
If a homeowner decides to sell, DCLT retains an option to repurchase the home to sell or rent to a future low-income resident or to assist the homeowner in identifying a new income-eligible purchaser.
The key feature: Homeowners share the equity they earn on their homes with future buyers, thus fostering long-term affordability even as surrounding neighborhood property values grow.
Credit Union’s Enhanced Role
Cooperatives are critical mortgage lenders in their local communities versus the nationwide all-comers model such as Rocket Mortgage. Many credit unions also sponsor foundations for local grants. Partnering with local housing agencies can facilitate oversight of land trusts or gain zoning support for both building and then managing the subsequent turnover with foundation land ownership.
Credit unions creative lending with on balance sheet solutions are a start to home ownership for some situations. But the broader challenge of affordability requires a collaborative effort that brings multiple resources and a different ownership design to the economics of single home ownership. A design that is partly cooperative but also combines with individual ownership responsibility.
If you are aware of credit unions participating in efforts to develop new ways of organizing home ownership and address affordability, I would welcome examples.
If one looks at the amounts of foreclosed property reported on the quarterly 5300 call reports, this suggests credit unions are already vested in home ownership turnarounds. Why not go the next step and create CUSO’s or other organizations that will restore neighborhoods and members’ ability to build financial well-being from home ownership?
November 5th’s outcome is not the end but just the next stage in our country’s political life. Regardless of the final party balance in Congress, for credit unions our work is cut out for us. We will find more ways to help members in need thus beginning to heal political divides in our communities and country.
While credit unions are rarely overtly partisan, their purpose is inherently political. The collective resources managed on our members’ behalf are intended to address member circumstances in ways for-profit market forces may overlook.
The role for the cooperative spirit has never been greater. Our mostly local focus is a critical advantage. Credit unions can again be leaders bringing light and hope to those who feel left out, or left behind, by economic events. Let’s get to work.
On the eve of the final voting in our quadrennial Presidential election, many feel anxious, nervous and even contentious.
Leaders, whether elected, appointed or rising to the top through performance, can be temped to sustain their positions by highlighting external threats.
Political contests especially bring out this tendency to identify internal or external “enemies” that should frighten us. These dangers might be foreign countries, economic uncertainties, governmental overreach, climate change, and sometimes even the character of one’s opponents. These risks become our “enemies” to be overcome and defeated.
Political campaigns are especially prone to this form of hyper rhetoric. Here are several observations, old and new, to help put this tendency in perspective. Because objectifying our worries may instead be revealing something about the inner voices we are paying attention to.
Do Enemies Make Us Whole?
Aspiring leaders efforts to persuade us to see external “enemies” has a purpose: to unite us behind someone or an entity which will protect our well-being and security.
However, what if these appeals just reflect internal confusions about shared values and purpose. Are these appeals more a reflection of an “enemy within,” an “uncertain soul,” as much as an external danger?
Decrying enemies is a common tactic to seek public support for a candidate or public action. The chorus lyrics of Andrew Bird’s Indie song Archipelago describes this as an attempt to “make us whole.”
Chorus
Whoa
We’re locked in a death grip and it’s taking its toll
When our enemies are what make us whole
Listen to me
No more excuses, no more apathy
This ain’t no archipelago, no remote atoll
Wisdom to Know the Difference
Leaders who p;oint out different social groups or “the other” in our midst to divide is a tactic as old as the country. It can be a short-term gambit to gain power. But It can damage future aspirations.
Here is a long-term perspective on the American democratic experiment by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, a Reformed pastor, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs:
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
Niebuhr’s most often quoted phrase or closing blessing is: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Those words may be his challenge to us as we head to vote tomorrow.
No Man An Island
In most of life’s remembered moments, cooperation builds success, not domination whether personal or institutional.
All Souls Day (yesterday) is one of the times when a bell is rung as the names of those who have died are read aloud. This can occur in a religious service, reunion or other communal remembrance event. On these occasions the words of English poet John Donne are a reminder of our shared destiny:
For Whom the Bell Tolls by poet John Donne (1572-1631)
No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. . .
Each man’s death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.
Winners and Losers Will Need Shared Purpose
After the voting results are counted, the imperative will be to revive the common individual and institutional journeys on which we are all joined. America faces very real challenges. Overcoming our own internal feelings of deep uncertainty or dread may be the most important first step. Hope must win.
in this brief video from the Buffett’s 1996 Annual Shareholders meeting archive, he answers a question on what makes a good manager.
The questions for credit unions from his comments might be:
Are credit unions a “great business” or do they need “great managers” to succeed?
Does Buffett’s description of a good manager apply to credit union CEO’s?
What are the implications that the leaders of the Fortune 500 are not uniformly top quality and that there are a lot of mediocre ones, suggest about credit union CEO’s?
Here’s the brief video where he responds to the question of what good management is. You will need to click on the link and then again on the video.
Dear reader,
