Freeway Blogging For Pussy!

Placed this on an overpass on I-30 near Dallas

I've heard the criticisms. "They went too far." "Not in a CHURCH!" "They should have done it in a non-offensive way." Maybe they should have done it in their own backyard where no one would be offended. Maybe Rosa Parks should have compromised and move halfway back. Let me tell you this, people who do things in half-measures never accomplish anything.

The entire Pussy Riot protest was perfect to a T. Delightful, hilarious, free-spirited and completely within the ideals of Christianity. I understand the Christians In Name Only (CHINOS) being "offended". Of course you are when you're mocked for your phoniness! Believe you me, anyone feigning outrage over the protest is no Christian, but rather simply a religious person. And nothing about religion is important.

Here are some excerpts from the girls' closing statements:

By and large, the three members of Pussy Riot are not the ones on trial here. If we were, this event would hardly be so significant. This is a trial of the entire political system of the Russian Federation, which, to its great misfortune, enjoys quoting its own cruelty toward the individual, its indifference toward human honor and dignity, repeating all of the worst moments of Russian history.

Passion, total honesty, and naïveté are superior to the hypocrisy, mendacity, and false modesty that are used to disguise crime. The so-called leading figures of our state stand in the Cathedral with righteous faces on, but, in their cunning, their sin is greater than our own.

Despite the fact that we find ourselves in an essentially authoritarian situation, living under authoritarian rule, I see this system crumbling in the face of three members of Pussy Riot. What the system anticipated did not occur; Russia does not condemn us, and with each passing day, more and more people believe in us and that we should be free, and not behind bars.

- Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

I'm sure my sign has some heads scratching!

But I find it even more astonishing that people don’t believe that they can have any influence on the regime. During the pickets and demonstrations [of the winter and spring], back when I was collecting signatures and organizing petitions, many people would ask me—and ask me with sincere bewilderment—why in the world they should care about, what business could they possibly have, with that little patch of forest in the Krasnodar region–even though it is perhaps unique in Russia, perhaps primeval? Why should they care if the wife of our Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev wants to build an official residence there and destroy the only juniper preserve in Russia? These people . . . this is yet another confirmation that people in our country have lost the sense that this country belongs to us, its citizens. They no longer have a sense of themselves as citizens

And even though it hasn’t been very long, now people are acting as if there was never any Great Terror nor any attempts to resist it. I believe that we are being accused by people without memory. Many of them have said, “He is possessed by a demon and insane. Why do you listen to Him?” These words belong to the Jews who accused Jesus Christ of blasphemy. They said, “We are . . . stoning you . . . for blasphemy.” [John 10:33] Interestingly enough, it is precisely this verse that the Russian Orthodox Church uses to express its opinion about blasphemy.

Because all you can deprive me of is “so-called” freedom. This is the only kind that exists in Russia. But nobody can take away my inner freedom. It lives in the Word, it will go on living thanks to openness [glasnost], when this will be read and heard by thousands of people. This freedom goes on living with every person who is not indifferent, who hears us in this country.

-Maria Alyokhina



That Christ the Savior Cathedral had become a significant symbol in the political strategy of the authorities was clear to many thinking people when Vladimir Putin’s former [KGB] colleague Kirill Gundyayev took over as leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. After this happened, Christ the Savior Cathedral began to be openly used as a flashy backdrop for the politics of the security forces, which are the main source of political power in Russia.

Our sudden musical appearance in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior with the song “Mother of God, Drive Putin Out” violated the integrity of the media image that the authorities had spent such a long time generating and maintaining, and revealed its falsity. In our performance we dared, without the Patriarch’s blessing, to unite the visual imagery of Orthodox culture with that of protest culture, thus suggesting that Orthodox culture belongs not only to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch, and Putin, but that it could also ally itself with civic rebellion and the spirit of protest in Russia.

I now have mixed feelings about this trial. On the one hand, we expect a guilty verdict. Compared to the judicial machine, we are nobodies, and we have lost. On the other hand, we have won. The whole world now sees that the criminal case against us has been fabricated. The system cannot conceal the repressive nature of this trial. Once again, the world sees Russia differently than the way Putin tries to present it at his daily international meetings.

- Yekaterina Samutsevich

40 seconds that changed Russia. Who among us has done as much? Let's stop thinking of what we can't do and start thinking of what we can do. Returning to my freeway blogging roots during the Bush regime, I mean to pay homage to an act of freedom, an act of humanity, an act of love. While many of us think we're "smart" playing it safe, we do in fact become helpless pawns and fools of those who would destroy us.

Americans too have a short memory. How quickly we forget we were founded by men who vowed, "Give me liberty or give me death." Now we are fat and lazy, jeering and chiding these souls. Unrealistic. Radical. Hooligans. But the true hooligans are the ones who keep quiet, refusing to shine their light. Where is the hope in that?

Blessed are those who are persecuted

because of righteousness,

for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.