Maria Alyokhina, one of three Pussy Riot members famously arrested after performing in a Moscow cathedral in 2012, tweeted that she and Olga Borisova were taken into custody by police after protesting the imprisonment of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov in Yakutsk, a remote city in Siberia located approximately 3,000 miles east of Moscow. Continue reading “Pussy Riot Members Detained After Protest In Siberia”
Occupy Wall Street Hero and Founding Zuccotti Cecily McMillan was physically assaulted by the NYPD on March 17, 2012 and then perversely convicted of assaulting the police officer who put her in the hospital. Cecily is now in prison at Rikers Island awaiting her sentencing, for up to 7 years in prison.
Finally Nadezhda and Maria are free! Both denounced the cynical manipulation of President Putin seeking credit for amnestying them just before their release date anyway. Both called for a boycott of the Winter Olympics in Russia to protest the blatant neo-fascist style persecution of women, gays and minorities
Pussy Riot was founded in 2011, but shot to greater prominence after appearing in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in February 2012, to perform a radical brilliant song called Punk Prayer which attacked the Orthodox Church’s support for President Vladimir Putin.
”Virgin Mary, Put Putin Away” Lyrics (translated from Russian)
of women around the world experience some form of physical or sexual violence, whether by an intimate partner or stranger, and the problem is so widespread that it is now considered a global public health problem.
While legislative actions are commendable, to date these measures have not led to a world free from violence—women continue to be subject to it, the media continues to report it, activists continue to fight against it and we end up in a perpetuating cycle of institutional inertia.
Perhaps we need to look more closely at the history and present day use of Patriarchal Power…..
Putin and the Patriarch jailed Pussy Riot, only to see the Femen movement take off.
FEMEN will tell the truth about the horrors of the Tunisian captivity
Jun 27, 2013
Dear friends!
We are happy to inform you that our Tunisian prisoners are finally free after the month in jail. Josephine, Marguerite and Pauline have arrived to Paris to the head quarter of FEMEN in France.
Today at 4 pm local time it will be press conference with FEMEN sextremists in the training center of extremism in Paris by the address Rue Leon 35.
UPDATE: Pussy Riot member on hunger strike moved to hospital
A member of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot who went on hunger strike in jail last week has been taken to hospital. Maria Alyokhina was moved to a hospital in her prison colony in the Urals town of Berezniki, the husband of one of her bandmates told the Associated Press. Alyokhina began her protest after being barred from attending a parole hearing. She and two other members of the Pussy Riot group were jailed after staging an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in a Moscow cathedral in February 2012. One, Yekaterina Samutsevich, had her sentence suspended on appeal last October. Another, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, was denied parole last month. In a letter published by her lawyers earlier this week, Alyokhina claimed prison officials were attempting to turn fellow inmates against her by holding a security crackdown in advance of the parole hearing. Alyokhina previously spent five months in solitary confinement after claiming that officials deliberately lodged her with hardened criminals and encouraged them to intimidate her.The Pussy Riot trio were jailed for two years last August after being convicted of a breach of public order motivated by religious hatred. The prosecution prompted worldwide condemnation, with Sir Paul McCartney among those calling for the band members to be freed.
Europe / 23 May 2013… like a court hearing but like arm-twisting,”. A Russian court denies parole to a hunger-striking member of punk band PussyRiot, Maria Alyokhina,…
by Teresa Mollá Castells *Friday, January 25, 2013 (en español abajo) Of course we do! For me it’s a way of life not just demanding equal rights . Because it sees that power and authority are not the same thing, because it seeks horizontal human relations . Because it treats people NOT as objects and restores integrity and dignity ...Source: Cimac, with thanks
…..This goes some way to explaining the power politics behind otherwise inexplicable decisions. Faced with a gap between the rhetoric of equality and what actually happens within organisations, it’s not so surprising that some women choose the safe option of identifying with traditional centres of power.
Look at those “first ladies” who find it easier to get close to power than seek it on their own behalf. When Carla Bruni-Sarkozy announces in Vogue that women don’t need feminism, she’s speaking as a woman who’s experienced the material advantages of attaching herself to one of the world’s most powerful men.
These women have got where they have – somewhere quite comfortable – without rocking the boat, and they’re not keen on women who challenge the status quo. Identifying with men is a traditional means of negotiating patriarchal power, and women who go down that route tend to share reactionary male views of other women.
If you’re a conservative woman in the Church of England, the prospect of “pushy” women getting power is quite scary, so of course you’re going to vote against it. The last thing any traditional woman wants to be accused of is appearing confrontational, even if accepting male power is self-defeating in the long run….
The Free 