FREE PUSSY RIOT

I have been a feminist and a riot grrrl my entire life of adolescent to adult consciousness. every decision I make, every bit of food I put in my body, the way I choose to raise my child, and what culture I consume (and how I think about it) is guided by my feminist politics, experience, and worldview. In the coming out years where I wasn't sure what kind of feminist I was, and watching my feminism in a land of other feminisms, I was sure (and still am) that I am a feminist of a radical kind. You want equality? Then, well, Women get to dominate over men and seriously oppress them for centuries. Everything that happens around me goes through my systemic-focused radical feminist lens. But I just fucking get by within the system and it's exhausting and heart breaking.

Anyway, the trial of Pussy Riot has moved feminists all around the world to stand up against the global patriarchal fuck against women's bodies and minds. And today they were sentenced to two years in prison for a peaceful punk protest in a church. And they had incredibly beautiful and inspiring closing statements.

We are absolutely against and feel compelled to act against the measures of force used to regulate society, harsh mechanisms to control our citizens’ behaviour. We are against the passivity which is forced upon the majority of the population, and the complete domination by executive power over judicial and legal processes. We are also honestly angered by the low level of political culture. ~Nadya Tolokonnikova

Education, the beginning of the formation of the individual in society, effectively ignores the particular nature of each personality, there is no approach based on the individual, there is no study of philosophy, nor the basic principles of contemporary art culture. These subjects exist formally, but they are taught using the Soviet model, and as a result we have ‘the average citizen’ not interested in thinking in philosophical terms, favouring gender discrimination, their civil rights brushed into a far corner. Today’s educational institutes teach people to live ‘on automatic’ from an early age, without ever asking the vital questions, they develop in them cruelty and a hatred of alternative ways of thinking. From the earliest age their liberties are forgotten. ~Maria Alyokhina

On the other, we have won, because the case against us is fabricated and the state is not able to hide the repressive nature of the judicial process. Russia once again does not appear in the eyes of the world as Vladimir Putin wishes to portray it in his daily international meetings. All the steps he promised to take towards a legal state were clearly never taken. And his announcements that our trial would be objective are just another deception, practised on the country and the world community. ~Ekaterina Samutsevich

Thank you PUSSY RIOT for reminding me.