A Warning for Americans From a Member of Pussy Riot

[SecularMotion]

MIAMI BEACH — On Tuesday, Donald J. Trump wrote on Twitter that people who burn the flag should be punished with “perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”

Two days later, I went to a little cafe here to meet with Nadya Tolokonnikova of the Russian punk band and activist art collective Pussy Riot. The group’s 2012 guerrilla performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, which viciously mocked Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church, resulted in a two-year prison sentence for Ms. Tolokonnikova and another of its members.

Pussy Riot became an international symbol of Mr. Putin’s crackdown on free speech; of how his regime uses falsehood and deflection to sow confusion and undermine critics.

Now that the political-media environment that we smugly thought to be “over there” seems to be arriving over here, Ms. Tolokonnikova has a message: “It’s important not to say to yourself, ‘Oh, it’s O.K.,’” she told me. “It’s important to remember that, for example, in Russia, for the first year of when Vladimir Putin came to power, everybody was thinking that it will be O.K.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/04/business/rutenberg-lessons-in-free-speech-from-pussy-riot.html

[still_one]

1. I have no illusion, we are in very serious trouble.

[Baitball Blogger]

2. Only those who voted for him want to give him a chance.

The majority voted against him. We don't believe that everything will be okay.

[bdamomma]

3. Majority rules

or is that out the window now. You can see where this is going tRump is trashing the Constitution. Free speech is the most troubling and the right to assemble. They will not and cannot stop us.

[Wounded Bear]

4. The "political-media environment" is not "arriving"...

It's been here for many, many years. It's finally coming out into the open, which leads me to believe it may be too late to stop the juggernaut. We may have experienced a tipping point.

[Pachamama]

5. Love Pussy Riot

These women are brave and endured a lot including Prison and being separated from their children for the crime of challenging Putin. I think what Nadya is saying is very important for us to pay attention to and to be aware of what can happen and will be coming from a Trump propaganda machine and freedom of speech and free media and rights of minorities and Muslims and women and LGBT.

Here is their "Make America Great again Video". My daughter sent this to me and said she thought these women had courage and while the video has disturbing images of "branding" of names as labels, it is purposely disturbing to make one think about Trumps vision of making "America Great Again"

[heaven05]

7. only place to find truth

thinking artists who love people. They are like the 'Dixie Chicks' to me although they didn't go to prison for speaking out against the shrub and darth.

[BumRushDaShow]

11. I remember when someone posted that here on DU

and agree that it was not only disturbing, but pretty graphic. And it cut through the sanitized version of oppression, and goes right to the core (actually close to what happened to enslaved Africans here in the U.S. that history classes try to suppress).

[DonCoquixote]

6. one important thing about Pussy Riot

These are the same people the folks at RT sold out or ignored. Remember that the next time they lecture on how wicked we are.

[lark]

8. Bad times are going to come and come quickly for us.

While we may not experience the bleak reality of Russia, it's not out of the question either with the orange fuhrer doing everything humanly possible to fuck over the working class and enrich himself, even at the cost of war with China. In some ways he may be worse than Putin, in others, held back by our courts, he may not be as bad. We will have to see. Most of us are not expecting anything other than doom and misery, and I'm sure don the con will deliver on that, if nothing else.

[jeffreyi]

9. I wonder if we

are on the precipice of a cosmic waterfall, phase transition and all that, Berlin Wall on nuclear steroids. As in no going back. What to do?

[CrispyQ]

10. It's not O.K. And I don't think it's going to be O.K.

I hope Democratic leadership is as concerned for our country as I am, but I'm not sure they are. They've gone along with election irregularities for over a decade now. Just before this election we had bipartisan consent that US elections are solid & trustworthy, in spite of evidence to the contrary. This is a cornerstone of our democracy & the dems have not defended it. Every election there are enough stories of flipped votes on electronic voting machines that should raise questions. And the tabulator, the fucking tabulator, a hack just waiting to happen & the dems have been like crickets on this issue. Why would they suddenly care about democracy? Especially since many of them will make a lot of money with a Trump administration.

I think election 2016 was a tipping point. We've been veering off to a bad direction for a while, but now we are clearly on the path & with the force of a GOP controlled government at the federal level & at many state levels, too. https://ballotpedia.org/State_government_trifectas

We're fucked. But here is something for grins:

[BumRushDaShow]

12. If I could

I would rec that graphic!

(as a note, we just took the governorship of NC so a tiny bit of good news)

[CrispyQ]

16. Glad you like it.

I pull it out when my pessimism starts to take over.

Congrats on the governorship!

[2naSalit]

13. She's right. Complacency is a dangerous luxury

with which many Americans fool themselves.

[SecularMotion]

14. Kick

[treestar]

15. food for thought

these are very interesting women.