Pussy Riot for the 99 percent: on the growing campaign to free jailed Russian feminist punk rock collective Pussy Riot
by Alexander Billet
Socialist Worker
WHEN YOU'RE in a hole, you stop digging. Even if this weren't a cliché by now, it would still be common sense. Does this mean, then, that Vladimir Putin and the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church lack basic reasoning skills? The decision to extend Pussy Riot's stay in prison certainly seems to proves it so.
In roughly five months, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alokhina--three feminist activists accused of storming the altar of Christ the Savior Cathedral during Pussy Riot's "Punk Prayer"--have become a global cause célèbre.
It's not an exaggeration to say that most of the young people forming the core of the Occupy-Indignado generation know about the band and support the three women. Benefit gigs and actions in front of Russian consulates and embassies have become commonplace from LA to Prague to Tokyo.
As Pussy Riot's profile has grown, so has the level of embarrassment for the Russian state. All of the Putin regime's least savory characteristics are encapsulated in the Pussy Riot case: the disregard for democracy and civil liberties, the nepotistic coziness with the Orthodox Church, the willingness to sink to any low in order to silence his political opponents.
Given all of this, it seems that the smart thing to do, the reasonable thing to do, would be to simply let Alokhina, Tolokonnikova and Samutsevich go. Hit them with a fine, cut the government's losses, and live to fight another spineless fight another spineless day.
The court that heard their case on July 20 didn't think this the best move. Instead, the judge decided that, with still no word on when the actual trial will start, the three women will remain in a Moscow jail for at least the next six months, until at least January 2013. For singing a song.
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