The Indecent Prosecution of Charity

Russia is prosecuting a young lady with dual American and Russian citizenship for making a $50 donation to Razom, an exempt “friends of Ukraine” organization based in New York.  Razom had about $160,000 in donations in 2021 but $87,000,000 in 2022 according to its Form 990. Razom supports Ukrainian medics and first responders, health care, Ukrainian NGO relief efforts, and lobbying efforts in the United States.  Like many humanitarian organizations connected to a war zone, it cannot pursue its charitable mission without indirectly benefitting one of the combatants.  From the Guardian:

A Russian American ballerina who lives and works in Los Angeles has gone on trial for treason over an alleged donation of $50 to a pro-Ukrainian charity, in the latest court case to raise tensions between Washington and Moscow.  Ksenia Karelina, 32, was detained by police in the city of Yekaterinburg in late January while on a trip to visit her family in Russia. She faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.  The trial is being held behind closed doors in Yekaterinburg, in the same court that next week is to begin hearing the case of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested in March 2023 and charged with espionage. Karelina gave a wistful smile to reporters in court as she sat in the defendants’ cage ahead of the hearing, video published by the regional court showed. Prosecutors accused her of “proactively transferring funds to a Ukrainian organisation, which the Ukrainian Armed Forces subsequently used to purchase tactical medicine, equipment, weapons and ammunition”.  Her boyfriend has said she made a single donation of about $50 to a Ukrainian organization, according to media reports.

Bizarre, right?  But it’s only an extension of what we do all the time. Isn’t it? We demonize individual or organized charity towards our friend’s enemies.  Sometimes we even criminalize it.  We attack it in ways explicit, as with a group blocking aid to civilians trapped in war zones, or implicit as with the continuing hearings in the House.  It’s not just people or companies who donate that get attacked. We demonize scholars for writing and universities for educating, if what they are writing or teaching might charitably, even if only very tenuously, help our friend’s enemies. Last week, Ways and Means held yet another hearing on universities and their charitable support of everybody, including our friends’ enemies.  The public Army-McCarthy-ite style hearings are getting so boring I hardly blog about them anymore. At least during the red scare, the give and take between legislators and witnesses made for good television and eloquent speech sometimes. Take a look at the 5 minute video above for an amazingly dramatic colloquy.

Prosecuting charity, even charity to our friend’s enemies, is always indecent. 

darryll k. jones