I recently got the following comment on one of the stories in Tent City.

"You made me feel so close to home and so anxious to be there, with my people. I am swallowing tears of helplessness."

Heartrending! In response I have this to say: Don't feel helpless, you can do something very big! All of you reading this can do something big, just...

Volunteer to be an Observer with the OSCE
(Or IRI, or NDI, or Ukrainian Canadian Congress or...)

Yanukovych is hiding out in Luhansk, and the big eastern cities are threatening to secede, but the opposition, especially Yushchenko, are trying to hold another round of the election on the 14th of December. The hope is that this will further affirm that he is the legitimate President.

For the first round of the election the OSCE had quite a few volunteers on the ground, but a great number of them were unable to come back for round two. Round three will be just as critical, but the OSCE obviously couldn't prepare for it. They are likely to be very short on volunteers come the 14th, with so many things up in the air. If you volunteer, I assure you that you will be absolutely essential to the OSCE's work, and, in a larger sense, to the promotion of democratic elections in Ukraine.

There is one more thing. Not only are you needed to fill the places of all the volunteers who will not be able to make it back for another election, I need you to replace me personally. For the first and second round, I held my tongue about the abuse of power by public officials and concentrated on providing as balanced an assessment as I could. But after round two, I decided that the administration had clearly perpetrated election fraud and so I started this site. Just being a person who's sympathetic to the opposition is not enough to violate any code of nonpartisanship, a person would have to be daffy to dismiss all the evidence of crimes by the administration. Technically, anyone can be an observer so long as they don't express political favorites during the election, but starting a pro-opposition blog is too partial; I feel I would greatly compromise OSCE's well-earned reputation for being non-partisan if I were to be an observer now.

I desperately do not want my blog to have been bought at the price of one fewer observer. If you can observe in my place, I would be personally grateful, as well as happy for Ukraine, while you will be able to say "I've really done something big!"

What does it mean to be an observer?

I think the majority of observers commit a week of their time. They get in around Wednesday of the week before the election. Wednesday and Thursday are spent learning about what it means to be an observer, and about the situation in Ukraine, followed by meetings with the coordinators of the regions where the observers work. Thursday night everyone travels to their location. On Friday and Saturday they look around and make a plan of where they will observer. On Sunday they observer the election, which usually lasts well into the night. On Monday night they come back to Kyiv and fly home Tuesday afternoon.

How do I become an observer?

This I'm not sure about, because I simply called the US Embassy here in Ukraine. I would imagine that (provided you're from an OSCE country of course) you should simply call your nearest government/embassy offices and start asking them who to talk to or how you can get involved. If you're from the US, you might also try talking with the International Republican Institute or National Democratic Institute, and if you're from Canada, I'd imagine the Ukrainian Canadian Congress would be happy to have your assistance as well. If anyone knows how the process of observing for any of these organizations works and could tell me, I would be very grateful.

That's it, my whole pitch, you've got over two whole weeks before the next round might take place, spend that time gearing up to go!