By Frank J. Diekmann
People Hurting People.
Whooooaaaa, you’re responding. What in the name of Ed Filene is with the negativity, Frank? This is supposed to be a week of celebration! Accomplishments touted! Good deeds in the old home town! Cupcakes in the lobbies! And that’s certainly not the slogan anyone in the world’s credit union community wants to run up the flagpole in 2022—or ever, I can hear some of you thinking.
And yet it’s the response to People Hurting People this year that is the best global example credit unions have of manifesting People Helping People. I am referring, of course, to Ukraine, where on Feb. 24 neighboring Russia invaded, killing untold thousands of people, destroying tens of thousands of structures and livelihoods and even credit unions, and changing geopolitical history forever and with reverberations being felt by America’s credit unions and their members.
International Credit Union Day will take place on Thursday, nearly eight months to the day since Russia’s invasion of the country. What has been early-birthed is a tragic/joyous reminder of what ICU Day is supposed to represent.
For all the liquidity pressures some U.S. CUs are feeling as rates rise, and for all the jitters more members are feeling as they turn to credit cards as inflation turns grocery bills into something resembling car payments and car payments into something resembling mortgage payments and mortgage payments into, well, who can afford a mortgage when rates are north of 7%?, there are credit unions and their members some 5,600 miles away who would tell you the operating environment in the U.S. sounds pretty darned good.
Need a New Simile
And that even includes parts of the U.S. that have been hit pretty hard lately. Credit unions in Southwestern and Central Florida, along with their members, have described the aftermath of Hurricane Ian as being “like a war zone.” The defiant, proud, angry and determined credit unions of Ukraine are too preoccupied to tell their counterparts in South Florida to find a new simile, especially those in Eastern Ukraine where it isn’t even certain how many CUs remain or what has become of their management and members in what has been a never-ending, real-life war zone.
And all because one group of people wanted something another group of people has/had, and decided the best way to get it was to hurt people.
Perhaps you don’t support the war in Ukraine. Or you have war fatigue and have become indifferent to people half a world away. Or you care, but don’t believe there is anything you can do. (See below).
This International Credit Union Day slogan is “Empower Your Financial Future With a Credit Union,” and it’s an admirable objective. But if ever there were a year in which a cliché would have made a better slogan, “Actions speak louder than words,” this would be that year.
If those Seven Cooperative Principles seem like some dusty holdover from the days of top hats and corsets and just feel abstract to you, here’s a chance to dust off and live the final two: Cooperation Among Cooperatives and Concern for Community.
The Only Thing That Matters
There is a credit union community in Ukraine (and let’s not forget neighboring Poland, where incredible work has done by CUs in helping refugees) that will doggedly survive with or without you, but some of that cooperation and concern would go a long way right now and be received with the kind of deep appreciation that will never be captured by any slogan or EQ measure.
Because people are hurting people right now. And, ultimately, the only thing that will defeat those who are doing evil will be if there are more doing good—in other words, people helping people.
CUToday.info has launched a week-long series on International Credit Union Week, beginning with a look at the situation in Ukraine that includes a link to site where you can make donations.
Frank J. Diekmann is Cooperator in Chief of CUToday.info and can be reached at Frank@CUToday.info. Mr. Diekmann is also author of several new book, including the brand new “The Last Lyric,” a humorous satire about a murder investigation at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in which every line of dialogue is either a classic pop/rock song title or lyric. Available on Amazon, Apple iBook, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. Mr. Diekmann is also author of a non-fiction compilation of the very best & worst he has seen and heard in covering more than 500 CU meetings and conferences, “501 Name Tags: How Everything You Need to Know About Business Can Be Learned at a Conference & Forgotten in the Trade Show.” It is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Lulu, and Smashwords