The mission and the work are sprawling, complicated and emotionally draining. There are a lot of high stakes, moving parts, big players and opinions. And although they are all linked for the same result, the organization can be passionate and tense.
On March 11, while the WhatsApp group chat was discussing the approximately 50 people stranded in Kherson, it became clear that it was too dangerous for them to go alone with the Russian army which controls the southern port city. Coalition members and groups like Black Women for Black Lives and Blacks for Ukraine jumped on a Zoom call. Some have floated the idea of extracting the Kherson group through Operation OpaLion, which works with retired US servicemen; others expressed fears that black civilians could be used as human shields. But what if they left them there?
Meanwhile, Kherson students continued to beg for help to get out. They were short of everything, including butter, and had no way of getting more. The thud of bombs seemed to be getting closer.
From their homes in multiple time zones, coalition members debated and collaborated on how to bring resources to people hiding from Russian troops in places activists had only seen via Google Maps. Through Telegram and WhatsApp groups, Twitter and other NGOs, they found volunteers in Kherson and Sumy to help them on the ground.
“Just like they did with the Underground Railroad, we’re using our allies on the ground to come get them food,” one person said. “Students desperately need food. They sent us their shopping list.
A coalition member chimed in, responding to a plan for a Ukrainian volunteer to deliver food to several drop-off points: “Did they give it a try?
“They did it yesterday,” someone replied.
“Right now we have four locations,” another caller said. “Three inns. We have another village with students there, and then we have people downtown. We have contacts for all three universities…”
“Wait, by ‘hostels’, you mean dormitories?” asked Treadwell, the only high school student involved in the coalition, sparking a group laugh when Europeans and Americans realized that after discussing hostels and dorms as different places for the past few minutes, they meant the same thing. .
“We’re getting more cohesion,” Treadwell told BuzzFeed News the next day, after helping coordinate the coalition’s first food-drop operation with help from Black Women for Black Lives. He was exhausted and a bit distracted. He had been studying for his criminology class while trying to find ways to enter a village where about 10 students had been hiding. Frustratingly, his contacts on the ground were unable to get inside as Russian troops occupied the area, he said.
At 17, Treadwell is already a seasoned organizer. He is the executive director of Minnesota Teen Activists, an organization that works to eradicate racial and systemic injustices in schools, and he was active in the protests over the killing of George Floyd. So on March 5, when the teenager looked an African student share how the Ukrainian authorities had refused to let her get on a bus to Poland because she was black, he plunged.
Since then, he has been constantly scanning Instagram, Twitter and Telegram, looking for accounts of troubled black people in Ukraine and among refugees in Europe. He DMs, emails, and calls just about every humanitarian group and major public figure he knows and could think of, as well as NGOs on the ground to build relationships.
“It’s all like that,” he explained. “It’s about finding out who the key players are and, like, boom, boom, boom. Who do I know at this level who can put me in touch with this person?”
To make sure he lacks nothing, he stays up until 2:30 a.m. and then sleeps until 6:30 a.m., when he has to get up and do his chores and homework. And since he’s barely in class, school isn’t going well. “I got two F’s omg,” he emailed BuzzFeed News one night. But he concluded he was focusing on “humanitarian work rather than school work”. Plus, he says, he learns a lot about the world.
“I learned that racism is very similar,” he said. “I hear from students from foreign countries who are now war refugees, and I can somehow understand how they are being treated.”
He is in regular contact with some students. They keep him informed of their fears and how much food they have left.
One of them is Christophe, who came to Kherson from Cameroon nearly two years ago to study international business. At 22, all he wants is to go to school. He and some of his classmates attempted to leave the town after Russian forces took control, but he said they were advised to return as it was too dangerous on foot. For days he took refuge in a one-bedroom apartment with 11 classmates. The only time they left the unit was when the shelling started and they rushed into the cold basement. They no longer knew what day it was. There were no more hours; they spent the whole day waiting for night to fall. They were “prisoners,” he told BuzzFeed News earlier this month, left to “pay the bill for a war” that has nothing to do with them. Before the coalition coordinated a big food drop last week, they were nearly out, he said. But, added Christophe, because of the shock and the fear, nobody really had an appetite. They hadn’t noticed that they weren’t eating.
“We don’t live. We are surviving,” he said in a late night WhatsApp video chat. ” We are scared. Day and night, living in constant trauma. We are just waiting for information. It is our reason for living. Those who can sleep, we wake up hoping that today will be the end of this nightmare.
He is not alone. Buassa, who has worked with African governments, said students are still “stuck underground in hostels and don’t know what to do”. Dozens of Africans are scattered, some in kyiv and Sumy, others near the border with Hungary, “where they have a lot of problems”.
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