Natalia Vasileva

Natalia is a part of the West Seattle Indivisible Immigration team. Russia-born Natalia Vasileva emigrated from Lithuania to the U.S. in 2021 with her husband, Yury.

By Miles Kotay

How and why did you get involved with West Seattle Indivisible?

In Russia, I saw first-hand what public indifference to the actions of a strongman gradually led to. For the sake of my own mental health, I needed to participate in activities to help wake people up, and be part of a movement that pushes back against the erosion of civil liberties, and against the blatant disregard that Trump and his loyalists have for the rule of law.

I was working a phone bank for Harris, and after the election, I was in a down state for a while. In January, I decided that I have to do something else or I would go mad. I got on a Zoom call with a lady from Colorado Indivisible and heard that there are Indivisible groups everywhere. I did an internet search and found West Seattle Indivisible. I attended my first meeting in January. I was impressed with the number of people there.

And, I was surprised and inspired by how my mental state improved by being involved. There is a sense of community.

What drives you to do this work – your key issues

Preserving the rule of law and due process. "Innocent until proven guilty" is lost now. In a sense, we have lost our innocence. If the law can be stretched to be made ambiguous, then nobody is protected. Anyone can be guilty.

Immigration policy: Trumpian rhetoric demonizes immigrants. I am an immigrant and have been helping other immigrants in the U.S. get back to working in their original careers.

What message do you have for activists?

History shows that public indifference creates opportunity for the abuse of power, and power in turn creates opportunity for more abuse. The faster it stops, the smaller the damage. Activists must spur people not to be indifferent; instead to care, to act.

Democracy is not a given. It was fought for by generations. If we want to preserve democracy for future generations, we must act now; we must be vocal; we must be in the streets. When 3.5% of the total population is actively engaged in nonviolent movements -- 5 percent of the adult population—— we can make a difference.

Contact our elected representatives in Congress. Many people believe in Congress and that they will defend us in Congress. In most cases, their role is to convey what their constituents think. If their constituents are inactive, then why should they be active?

It's easier for them to act when they feel their constituents' support. If constituents are inactive, it signals that they don't care, and it's harder to be in opposition. Some of them will be motivated by people in the streets; some will be motivated by the fear of not being reelected.

It's easy to destroy something, but hard to rebuild what is lost. The more that gets destroyed, the harder it gets to restore what was lost.

The faster we get to 3.5% in the streets, the less damage there will be to undo. The more people who stand up now when it's safe, the less risk we will face when doing so.

What are you hoping to see West Seattle Indivisible ultimately accomplish?

I liked what (West Seattle Indivisible member) Jeff Griffin said. He came to our Immigration meeting and said that we are a Democratic neighborhood, so we actually need twice as many people on the streets -- 7% -- because Republican states won't get 3.5% involved. So we need to work twice as hard to overcome that.

We need to be "vocal" on social media and be a supportive, friendly community that people want to join.

We need to show our elected officials we want them to be more vocal and that we support them.