McGill feels it's his mission to inspire his English students here in Kyiv, and his fellow Americans who have not yet decided to vote.
st the clock to get every American citizen in Ukraine to cast his ballot before Election Day in the United States (Nov. 2). He wants them to debate serious election issues and then to vote their consciences.
As for McGill, he states emphatically, “I’m working to bring about a new administration with a new vision.”
So when not teaching English at the Green Forest English School, or English theater to young Ukrainians at the newly formed Actor’s Studio, McGill has been helping organize Democrats Abroad, a grass-roots voter-registration and election discussion/debate initiative for Americans living in Ukraine.
“Our country is heading in the wrong direction,” he says taking a bite from his Santa Fe nacho platter (Hr 44) at Arizona BBQ. McGill is matter-of-fact about his distaste for incumbent U.S. President George W. Bush, but that’s not his only motive behind his registration/voting-as-a-right initiative.
“The United States should set an example as the most powerful country on earth,” he continues. “We were once an example of liberty. People used to aspire to be like us, but unfortunately that time is over.”
Sitting forward in his wooden chair to grab some more nachos, McGill tells me that although he is no Republican, he’s the son of one. “My dad calls me ‘his liberal son,’ but he still loves me,” McGill says.
He’s voted Democrat ever since he’s been able to (he first cast a ballot in 1988, for Michael Dukakis), but regardless of his distaste for Republican politics – “it’s just so in your face,” he says, “and Democrats need to stand up and change that” – he wants Americans living here, whether they feel the same way or not, to get registered. He says the number of votes that decided the 2000 American presidential race in 2000 (“less than 1,000”) means that the roughly 3,000 Americans living here “can make real change this year.”
Southern Roots
McGill remembers his dad, a cop turned businessman, taking him to see Atlanta Flames hockey games, including the franchise’s last game before moving to Calgary in 1980. “That move broke my heart,” he says. McGill’s family, which includes his mom (who teaches) and his younger brother Corey (“he lives to snowboard”), moved around a lot after his dad quit policing, and the moving continued for McGill after he graduated from high school.
Barely 19, McGill joined the United States Air Force in 1989, as a way to pay for college and learn some job skills. The USAF paid for McGill’s studies in American history at various Air Force community colleges and at the University of Central Florida, and taught him about computers, Web development and personnel management. He spent some months doing personnel protection for American non-combatants in strife-torn Haiti during the mid-1990s. By 2000 he’d already spent more than four years managing and testing new computer and Web technology programs at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina.
“They threw a lot of money at us to basically surf the Web,” he says of his former military and civilian bosses.
McGill left the USAF shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. The skills he learned “surfing the Web” for the Air Force got him well-paying jobs everywhere he looked – Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and then Denver, to which he fled the South in December 2001. He was managing computer programs and making all kinds of money, but the work wasn’t for him. “[There was] lots of money, but it was the same cubicle shit,” McGill says, taking a sip of grapefruit juice (Hr 8 for 250 ml). “And in late 2001, that’s when the Web bubble completely burst.”
“I packed up and drove to the Rockies where my younger brother [Corey] was living and working at a ski resort. I got another offer for an IT job in Denver within days and in two months the place closed up shop,” he says.
He worked for a little more than a year repairing skis and adjusting bindings at the ski hill until his long-time girlfriend and now wife Wendy, whom he met in Colorado, took a position in Kyiv. She invited him to join her and he arrived here in July 2003.
East and West
McGill immediately got work here teaching English at the small Green Forest School, which has grown from just 20 students when he started to more than 300 now. He likes the work and enjoys the responses he gets from his students. He likes to offer up his ideas about what it means to him to be an American and creates an open floor for his students to express themselves as Ukrainians. McGill feels obligated to teach his students “the true American ideal.”
“Democracy is for everyone,” McGill stresses, leaning in further to emphasize his words. “The administrations here and in the U.S. fear the loss of power and the people, who can take back that power any time they want. When I talk about the people of Ukraine or America leading a revolution, I mean like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, or John Lennon. They represent the peaceful will of the people,” he adds. For his part, McGill has escorted young women into abortion clinics past angry crowds of protestors, and took part in large protests in Atlanta following the victory of President Bush in 2000.
Recently McGill held a mock political debate and presidential vote in one of his English classes. He had the students select three candidates, each of whom gave a speech presenting his or her ideas on election issues: women’s and minority rights, treatment of pensioners and Ukraine’s entry into the European Union and the Common Economic Space. The potential voters – the rest of the class – voted on the candidates and chose the moderate. The liberal candidate, a female, came in second.
“We’re guests here in this country,” McGill says after a sip of water (Hr 8 for 250 ml). “We have a responsibility when living here; mine is to inspire my students.”
A Democrat Abroad
So far McGill has provided inspiration not just to his students, but to Americans living in Kyiv as well. He and Berlin attracted 50 people for a special screening of the American vice-presidential candidates’ debate on Oct. 10 at Golden Gate Pub; they had expected only 15-20. In addition to this screening, Democrats Abroad has organized an English screening of the Michael Moore documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” for on Oct. 18 at 7 p.m., also at Golden Gate.
McGill knows some of the people in Democrats Abroad see the film as too controversial for helping encourage debate. He understands such concerns, but he believes that the film has an underlying message that he needs to get out.
“I just can’t sit back and watch,” McGill says of the elections both here and in the States. “I want to create a forum for ideas and to say to people, ‘For God’s sake, vote!’
“Educate yourself, know your opponent, take an hour of your time and encourage your friends and family to vote.”
Arizona BBQ
25 Naberezhno-Khreshchatytska, 416-2438.
Open daily from 8 a.m. till the last customer.
English menu: Yes.
English-speaking staff: Yes.
Democrats Abroad
Contact Geoff Berlin at
