On Sunday, March 13th, Alisher Tagirovich Morgenshtern, who performs simply as Morgenshtern, released a new protest song oppofing Putin’s invasion into Ukraine.
The is not the first time (nor is it likely to be the last) the 24 year old rapper gets into dangerous territory because of his criticism against his own government.
The song ends with an audio message from the mother of his Ukrainian producer who talks about life surviving Russian airstrikes. The video ends with the message: “We want peace. We want friendship.”
Let’s all help bring Morgenshtern’s message of peace to people around the world. Please share.
While supporting Alex Navalny, the Russian politician allegedly poisoned by the Russian government, Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina was arrested and charged with “violation of sanitary and epidemiological rules” after attending a huge protest last January 23rd.
Maria was supposedly held for 48 hours and now waits for results from a criminal case. According to Russian media, Meduza Maria is currently under house arrest.
Pussy Riot demands that political prisoners in Russia are released, including Navalny and Alyokhina, and furthermore, they ask for: “the police to stop beating the protesters and stand together with us, we ask Putin and his team to leave the Kremlin ASAP”.
While shooting the music video in St. Petersburg Russian police interrupted the production claiming that it contained gay propaganda and that it incited hatred. According to Pussy Riot’s YouTube page 13 individuals were arrested during the video shoot.
Pussy Riot in collaboration with Las Tesis have released a new single condemning police brutality, which seems only fitting to share now in memory of George Floyd and everyone else that has fallen victim to the brutal hand of the law.
Las Tesis, a feminist art collective from Chile, recently become famous for creating the choreography and protest song ‘A Rapist In Your Path’ which became a massive protest sensation around the whole world in 2019.
“May 2020. Either we organize ourselves or we perish. We are facing an unprecedented escalation of state brutality and repression. And with it, the historic opportunity to set it all on fire.”
Furthermore, on the Pussy Riot YouTube page, the collective goes on saying: “Make social workers being in charge of the police institution. Their goals should be to help people to deal with social and economical problems, not to punish them and kill for no reason, as they just killed George Floyd in the US. The government and the police are our servants. Too often they forget about it and think that it’s us who’re here to serve them.
5 STEPS FOR POLICE FROM PUSSY RIOT
1. Refocus police forces towards protection of the civilians instead of oppression and violent suppression of our rights to express and demand what our communities need.
2. We are here to hold the police forces accountable for every act of violence against civilians. Nothing will go unnoticed.
3. We demand that if the police show up at the demonstration, they protect our right to speak our minds freely, act respectfully and peacefully.
4. We are the many, they are the few. We stand together with Chilean protesters, we are women who want to be safe while marching for female rights with Las Tesis. We express our solidarity with Argentinian, Chilean, Mexican, Colombian, Brazilian, Peruvian, and all Latin American sisters and street fighters who only want to have a damn right to be in charge of their bodies and their reproductive system (but only get police batons in response).
5. Police forces in Latin America and Russia need to be urgently re-trained to focus on protecting women’s rights, LQBTQ+ community, and the rights of alternatively able people.”
