The Rock River Patriots will be having a meeting this Friday March 14th in Fort Atkinson at 6:00pm. The meeting will be held in the community room of the Dwight Foster Library, 209 Merchants Ave. At this meeting we will discuss the current events and initiatives including the recent “Sham” hearing on SB619 on Common Core Standards.
We also welcome Olga Halaburda Hietpas to present information the current situation in the Ukraine. This should be a very interesting presentation! Hope to see you all there!
Olga Halaburda Bio
Olga Halaburda is a first-generation Ukrainian-American and has family in Ukraine. She grew up in the Detroit-area, where there is a large and active Ukrainian community, a Ukrainian elementary school, and several Ukrainian Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox churches.
Olga is a former local television news reporter. She reported for WFRV in Green Bay for nearly 18 years.
In her time with WFRV, she put her television production skills to work on personal project that grew into a business. She started Ukrainian Power Videos, Inc., and Olga produced a series of Ukrainian language puppet videos to help teach children the Ukrainian language and instill in them pride for their heritage.
In 2004, Olga had an opportunity to travel to Ukraine to cover Ukraine’s peaceful Orange Revolution as a journalist for WFRV. The Orange Revolution was the people’s reaction to government corruption in the rigged presidential election. It was widely known that Russian President Vladimir Putin funded the pro-Russian candidate, Victor Yanukovych. The peaceful Orange Revolution resulted in a repeat presidential election, in which Olga also served as an election observer. Mr. Yanukovych lost the repeat election in 2004, but gained the presidency in 2010.
Olga will speak to the public about the current crisis in Ukraine, which began in November 2013 when then-President Yanukovych ordered his police force to beat protestors who disagreed with his decision to pull out of a trade deal with the European Union. When the protests began to focus on the abuse of citizens, abuse of power, and corruption within the Yanukovych regime, Mr. Yanukovych illegally stripped the people of basics freedoms including, but not limited to the freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press.
We have invited Olga Halaburda to speak to the general public about the deadly Maidan Revolution in Kyiv, and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine which immediately followed. An expert in the history of Ukraine, she will explain the current crisis and provide insights not being reported in the western media.
